IrishBrewer

I've recently started making my 12 mile commute to/from work on my road bike and it has been going well. However, my wife was not excited about the idea even though I do a lot of riding on the road (sometimes alone and other times on group rides).

I found a couple things I could do to ease her fears. One was to take a slightly different route that avoids a road that contains several blind hills and has non-existent shoulders. The other was to provide live tracking of my rides to and from work. After an internet search I found an Android app called Glympse and it is perfect for live tracking.

Only the cyclist needs to have the app (not those following his/her tracks) because it provides the recipient with a link to a live map of your track and current position. To initiate the tracking you start up the app and provide the following info:
1. The recipient(s) i.e, a phone contact to send the link via a text message or email
2. The time frame that you want the tracking to be active (can be up to 4 hours)
3. Your destination
4. A brief message to accompany the tracking map link

It also keeps track of recently used items for the above to make it quick and easy to set up and send out your live tracking link and even better, you can set up "favorites" that let you establish a live track with a single shortcut click. I've set up several shortcuts to use for my commute, group rides, etc. I even set some up to send if I stop to fix a flat along the way.

I'm just using it for cycling but you can use it to keep people apprised of your location for other modes of travel.

I have no affiliation with Glympse, just a satisfied user.

What's also great is that it is free to download and use.

RubeRad

Pretty cool, I will look into that if I ever get a smartphone. Looks like it would be good for keeping tabs on teenagers when they go out as well. Does it have the ability to tell whether they are vertical or horizontal, or whether their pants are on?

HardyWeinberg

verizon has an option where you pay $10/month for the option to ping a phone, see where it is. Not sure if it's per account or per phone on the account. My wife is interested in that (to track me) but we haven't pulled the trigger yet. $10/month!!!

So do you have to set up glympse before each ride so that it knows how long to track that ride for?

Leisesturm

To paraphrase Franklin: he who would forgo essential Liberty, for a measure of domestic tranquility deserves neither Liberty or his cojones. -Leisesturm

RubeRad

How often do you need to go places that your wife can't know about? If a wife has (unreasonable) concerns for your safety, what is better, to tell her don't worry I'm safe (and letting her stew in her (unreasonable) fears), or show​ her you're safe?

Leisesturm

NOYB. And not the point.

First. Her fears are not that unreasonable. I mean... do I need to mention the running thread that is constantly on page one about a fellow BF rider who was hit. Hard. During a commute. A tracking app would have been useful how? Second. If we were meant to track each other just because we are married, nature would have provided those tools a lot more efficiently than some profit oriented start-up.

JohnJ80

Glympse is good for real time, to the second, tracking. The downside is you chew through a lot of battery since it is continuously transmitting position information back to the server. But, that works well for a reasonably short ride.

What we've done in our family is go to Find My Friends. It's not real time, but basically when you want to know where someone is, a request is sent and you get their position. That works really well for almost all of our use cases *and* it has no impact on battery life.

So the deal I made with my kids was that I'd pay for their phones and plans but Find my Friends had to be on their phones and enabled. The same goes for me so they can see where my wife and I are too. It pays off when we go to pick them up (their in college) or when we were worried about where they were in high school late at night etc... We also were able to use it to help my daughter get her phone back when she dropped it at her university and didn't know where it was. Worked great.

When I go on a ride, I just have my phone with me. That allows my wife to know where I am and the last place I would be if I were to have stopped.

I think it actually works better than Glympse simply because of the battery life issue.

J.

RubeRad

In that particular case, tracking app would probably make no difference. In case of a hit&run, say, tracking app can direct wife where to find you. But if the wife is psychologically reassured to be able to glance at the tracker and see you're maintaining a steady 15mph, what's the issue?

True, it is none of my business, but isn't it your wife's business? It's not like she's spying on you all the time without your knowledge, you would initiate the tracking when you leave, and shut off the tracking when you arrive. Why wouldn't you do that for someone you love if its something she wants and it costs you nothing?

HardyWeinberg

We have had a couple hit and run victims in our small county found in one ditch or another after various periods of time. Usually commuting at crepuscular hours (which are well into the workday here in the winter). When I got hit I could make a call (actually it turned out I couldn't make a call but didn't know it because someone offered to dial for me and held the phone up) so didn't need a phone app to notify people I wasn't where I intended to be. But those other hit & runs could have benefited from it.

chefisaac

Some of ya'll are missing the point. If it makes the wife happy so the gent can ride, let it be.

RidingMatthew

with the iPhone couldn't you just use find my iPhone? I have not used it and am not sure how to exactly get it to work but I think it might work the same way.
Some friends of ours have an app on their sons phone and whenever he gets close to the apartment complex it lets them know by text. I think she can see exactly where he is at all times. I don't know the name of the app.

IrishBrewer

Yes, some of you got the point that if not for Glympse, my wife would be more worried about my rides and as a result, I'd be hearing about it - neither of which is a good thing. Using it, she's happy so I'm happy.

Also, even though I set the time of tracking to be much longer than I expect my ride to last, when I get to my destination and use my phone, I get a message from Glympse that I've arrived and I click on the "Stop Sharing Location" button. So, for those that want to "go dark" after your live tracking session is over, no issues there.

As far as battery consumption goes, it hasn't been a big problem for me. I try to have my phone fully charged when I start a ride and the amount consumed by using Glympse is reasonable. It does not take as much as a mapping GPS application like Google Maps navigation (which uses so much juice it makes my phone hot) because it is not constantly downloading maps to your phone. All Glympse is doing is periodically getting a GPS fix on your location and sending it to their database. The map generation occurs on the "watcher's" end.

So, I know it's not for everyone but I thought I would put it out there because there might be others like myself who find it very useful and hopefully not just so someone can pull you out of a ditch somewhere.

IrishBrewer

Yep, someone gets it.

Leisesturm

Unless I am missing something, the gent was riding already. I'm not sure how the app reassures their spouse since, AFAIK it does not magically confer blanket immunity from random acts of life from taking place during the window of time being monitored. I'd sign up in a heartbeat if that was the case. I actually asked my wife last night what she thought about this, and she reminded me that I asked her opinion some months ago when this topic came up here. She said she would miss the surprise of being surprised with a bouquet every now and then, because she would know that I have deviated from the flight plan filed with Ground Tracking earlier that day.

She is also very dubious about the practice of tracking college age children around. As am I. Children, more than legal spouses, need the freedom to develop into full adults free of monitoring. We had that freedom. Why shouldn't they. My wife is totally blind and since we have moved to Oregon which has "right turn on red", everywhere that matters, her trips home from work are, on occasion, very exciting. I, more so than she, would be well within reason, according to some of you, to want to track my wife's progress home, out of concern for her well being. She should welcome that kind of concern on my part. She does not. She does not want any part of that kind of intrusion.

Most days she tells me what bus she is likely to catch home. Sometimes stuff happens and she does not catch that bus. Or the next. Sooner or later, usually sooner, she comes home. If it got to a point where I was concerned, then I pick up the phone and call her. Come on people. Stop trying to shame people for having a sense of personal privacy. Technology like this belongs to those who need to keep track of relatives (or spouses) with Alzheimer's or children under 14. Not adults or near adults. No, just no. "Find My Friends" is just what it implies. Friends who want to make their friends aware of their whereabouts. Friends that will not judge. Our family members are not (always) our friends.

IrishBrewer

One thing that is playing into her fears about my riding is that we had a close neighbor die in a biking accident a couple years ago. As an engineer, I can still look at the event objectively as a single datapoint but she doesn't.

So, if your point is that the app makes no real difference in real situations, that may indeed be true and it is only calming a somewhat irrational concern. Nonetheless, it is serving its purpose in my case and I personally don't feel constrained by it in any way.

RubeRad

And if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!

alan s 

She may want to know where you are so you don't come home and surprise her.

MMACH 5

I use the similar Road ID app. It gives my wife (or whomever else I designate) my real-time location.

It can be set up with a stationary alarm. If I stop moving for 5 minutes, it can send a notice that someone might need to check on me. I don't use that though, because if I'm riding through downtown, the tall buildings oftentimes obscure GPS reception.

I'll give glimpse a test-drive.

MMACH 5

I tried Glimpse. It has a sharp modern look. Unfortunately, that was about the only thing I liked about it. : (
First, it didn't text the message that I selected. Instead, it launched my texting app, loaded the message and I had to send it myself. It may seem minor, but if you want to share with more than one person, it doesn't even group them into one message. You have to send each one separately. (By contrast with the Road ID app, I tell it who to notify and it does it all in the background--once I start it, I just start riding.)
Second, it tried to predict my route. That was just weird since it somehow thought I would be taking the interstate for my bicycle ride across town. I checked in a few times and it tried to put me on the Interatate right up until I was just a few miles from the house.
And finally, the app's estimation of commuting time was absurdly short. This is likely related to its tendency to act like I was in a car and planning to take the highway.


I will stick with the Road ID app and I would recommend it to anyone looking for this type of app. For functionality and ease of use.

chefisaac

Thanks for the reco. Does it eat your battery life up?

MMACH 5

Any real-time tracking app is going to cut into your battery life. My commute is two hours and I don't notice any huge hit in performance. I haven't specifically tested for this though.

wsgts

Did you happen to try using Glympse with another app like Strava? I am wondering if they can both run at the same time.

I like to use Strava to track mileage on my stuff since I take multiple bikes on the commute.

T

JohnJ80

I've run multiple apps that use the GPS simultaneously many times. SHouldn't be an issue.

J.