Feature Request: Real location tracking and incident detection
Answered
I have a Garmin Edge 830. It's not a particularly inspiring bike computer. In general, I'd way rather use my Karoo 2. But there are two features the Garmin supports that keep me using it instead:
1) Location tracking. Because Garmin has a companion app on my phone, and because Garmin (and Strava, which it's connected to) automatically alert my contacts that I'm going for a ride and include a link to the live location map. It's essentially magic once it's setup. And I don't need to think about connectivity because it proxies through the phone companion.
The Hammerhead solution of having a single permanent link that shows my ride location doesn't really cover it, because it doesn't include the start/stop notification aspect.
2) Incident detection. I wrecked on my bike a few weeks ago, and Garmin automatically contacted my wife. She called me pretty quickly, and we could talk through whether I needed help or whether I could handle (I was able to get back on the bike and ride home). It made me appreciate the incident detection feature A LOT.
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Karoo2 Live Track is working here much more reliably than Garmin + Phone + App.
On my usual route the Garmin routinely drops out a couple of times, sometimes failing to restablish tracking during the ride.
The Karoo Live Track has so far been 100% reliable with no noticable dropout experienced.
I've now fully moved off Garmin and onto Karoo. -
I can't speak to reliability of the live tracking as I don't have an extra sim to use or feel like paying more each month for one. It would be great to at least have the Strava/Live Tracking as a connected feature as I already pay for the annual subscription.
As John mentioned, the notification text that my wife receives when I activate strava is very very helpful - I think this would be a huge plus for the Karoo 2 to have.
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Hey John. Thank you for sharing your suggestions. Let me address your feedback.
1. Location tracking: Garmin has its own ecosystem where it notifies your contact about the ride and the location where you are riding over the companion app connection. We do not have this feature as of now. However, we have live tracking where you will be able to share your Karoo 2's live location with your family and friends during a ride.
We do not have any plans as of now but I have taken your suggestion to our Product team to look into it.
2. Incident Detection: I totally agree to with you on this safety feature. Currently, we do not have the accident detection on Karoo 2 and we see something like this as it will be beneficial for mojority of our users. I appreciate you for sharing this suggestion with us. Let me take this to disucss with our concerned team.
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Thanks for the responses and discussion here!
I totally get that there are "interesting" issues with both the Garmin and Strava models. For me, the biggest gap with the Karoo location sharing is the lack of start-of-ride and end-of-ride notifications with a link to the route. For me, it's a critical piece of the feature. Otherwise my emergency contact needs to be aware of my ride times, and be able to dig up the link that I probably sent months earlier.
-jse
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Hey David, great suggestion.
typically I would be all over that but my phone is a ‘work phone’ with fairly limited data so unless it’s work related I need to be mindful of how much data I’m using. However, It might be worth trying it out to see how much data it would actually use on a ride… -
We're talking a few megabytes per ride, which on the 1pmobile PAYG data sim that I have is... GBP£0.01/mb... I would rather not drain the battery of my phone using it as a hotspot and have a sim permanently installed in my K2.
My experience with Garmin Livetracking was that it was consistently unreliable. With plenty of drop outs, to come home and find my other half telling me she couldn't track me. Whilst Hammerhead's system is far more basic with a fixed link that you can share with anyone, it does seem to be much more reliable.
I had upvoted incident detection a few months ago, but i'll vote for that again! That said, all my helmets come with ANGI crash detection and tracking too!
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Agree with Mark - I'm seeing much better reliability with K2 Sim than Garmin/Phone/App combo.
The SIM usage is completely transparent - no user interaction needed - fit and forget.
Here at least the cost of a suitable data/sim is negligable compared to the price of the Karoo and has proven so far to be 100% reliable compared to patchy on the Garmin combo. -
Thanks @rob hague!
I don't understand the aversion to a cheap data sim that makes the device independent of a connection to a phone. Sure, i download my maps generally within wifi at home but once out on the road, the data option is there in case you need it!
I've been told of even cheaper alternatives to 1pmobile in the UK but this worked out of the box, free sim with next day delivery, 1p per mb! I simply couldn't get the 3 mobile sim to work with it.
Here's a link for other UK users: https://www.1pmobile.com/
index.taf?friend=N130239M (disclaimer: I don't work for them but if you use this I get £5 free and so do you!) -
Hi John, turning on / off my mobile hotspot has just naturally become part of my ride ritual now so it's not a pain...i'd certainly give it a go. I see this thread has a data usage figure from Mark so I will cost up the payg
Data sim feature as well as a pop in and forget about it option. Main thing is getting out in the saddle and keeping those peddles turning! -
I would love to not have a separate SIM card or have to hotspot to get Live Tracking to work, but it's not a big deal for me, I ordered a FreedomPop SIM(located in the USA). I do agree with the comments above about missing the ride-start/end alerts with a link that I used to have with Garmin(that was 5 years ago and they had that feature) and Wahoo devices. Without that text my wife has to know exactly when I'm riding and she has to keep the link bookmarked(I realize bookmarking is not a big deal, just not as convenient).
Overall the Live Tracking feature has matured and has gotten better this year, so a big thanks to the Hammerhead team, but this would be a great addition. -
I've already commented on this before, but without trying to copy cat another brand's functionality like for like (it would seem many users want a Garmin inside a Hammerhead or Wahoo inside a Hammerhead), I think the live tracking is good right now only to be improved with an automatic SMS or email sent out to nominated individuals at the start of a ride. Perhaps the K2 could actually sent the SMS itself considering we've already installed active SIM cards with data plans? I assume this has already been suggested too as it would seem very logical!
It would be great to hear back from Hammerhead to see if this is something they are going to include in the future? It has been over 5 months since the last comment on this unless i've missed another thread on it!
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I don't follow the logic of people who want everything to go through the one single point of failure - their mobile phone - when devices are build to be independent and to 'just work' via their own connection. And more importantly, just start working again automatically when there is a dropout, which seems to be the speedbump for the Garmin model.
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Rob, I think it’s poor form to say that the way you do it is right and everyone else is wrong. Look at it logically and you can see both sides.
If a user doesn’t mind buying a SIM and paying that monthly cost OR using their hotspot and having the phone battery drained then they will be happy. Assuming their technical enough to know how to do any of that. That’s the camp you, Mark, and I fall into.
Now think about being a user that didn’t know a SIM card was required(especially since it’s not really in the advertising), maybe doesn’t know how to hotspot or has a plan that doesn’t include it. Or maybe they just don’t want their phone battery drained because they’re doing a 7+ hr ride. That group will not be happy(I’m guessing this group is much larger than our group)
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Hahaha yes, I like the magic option!!!! Rob, the Karoo connects to a mobile phone via Bluetooth. Mobile phones have cell radios. This is how tracking works for Strava, Wahoo, Garmin, Polar, etc. there is a reason every other company does it this way, it’s what consumer are expecting and easily the most convenient method for a user.
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So I actually bit the bullet and got a cellular SIM for my Karoo 2 to try this out, and I'm a little underwhelmed. The live tracking doesn't show the route I've ridden at all - it's literally just a dot (with direction) on a map.
My wife finds it very comforting, when she checks in on me mid-ride, to see where I've been - it gives her a ton of context on where I'm likely to go next (since I'm a robot and tend to ride the same routes) - whereas many of the segments I ride belong to many routes.
Also - 4 weeks ago I was hit by a car (don't worry - I was super lucky and wasn't too badly hurt) - but again, Garmin's incident detection alerted her, and she called me, found out what the situation was, and met me at the hospital. I seriously don't think I could ever ride w/o a bike computer that had some reasonable form of incident detection ever again.
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@john I’m with you, I got a SIM to use this feature and was extremely underwhelmed. Both my wife and I train 10-15hrs/week on the bike and it’s nice seeing where they’re at and how far into their ride they are, especially if you’re planning to leave right when they get home and can take over with the kids 😂. We switched back to using Strava Beacon from our phones, which is kind of frustrating since it’s one of the selling points in the Karoo marketing.
The single dot that is provided is a very spartan implementation, the Karoo wouldn’t even need to send any more data to have more robust tracking, that could all be cached in the session on the server.
Every review on YouTube mention how poor the live tracking is and that they wish there was an app(lol loading a route while out on a ride isn’t the easiest thing, grab the route, go to the hammerhead dashboard, sync it, connect Karoo to hotspot, sync routes 😂). So hopefully if Hammerhead/SRAM are ignoring this forum they will at least see the professional reviews.
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@Tommy Kline
I've found the Karoo2 + SIM live tracking to be 100% reliable and ALWAYS continues for the whole ride, even when I've passed through areas I know there is a mobile 'not spot'.
This was NOT the case with Garmin+BTlink to Android phone - the connection dropped and didn't pick up again.
This was NOT the case with Android 'find my phone'.
This was NOT the case with Apple's 'find my phone'.
Perhaps you have not already been through multiple vendors looking for a working implementation of this feature before arriving with the Karoo? -
Lol Rob you’re being a 🧌. But regardless yes I have been on multiple platforms. I don’t get why you’re so against adding other features. No one is asking that they pull sim support. We’re asking for options and you’re over here saying “it’s my way or the Highway” 😂. Why do we need color tv, we have black and white and I’m color blind so that’s perfect, who cares that everyone else can see color. Have an open mind that there may be other use cases besides your own.
Rant over….In regards to my comment it had nothing to do with reliability which seems to be how you read it. It has everything to do with implementation. Why just have a dot with where you are when it would be extremely easy to cache that data in the users session on the server and show where they have been, how many miles they’ve ridden etc? This is in fact the normal implementation and I’m sorry you use it different than me but that doesn’t make either of us wrong. Go search YouTube and you will find countless review videos that mention that the live tracking is “a feature that’s not a feature” either because of the impracticality of everyone buying a SIM card or because it doesn’t have any detail on the map that adds any value to sharing your location via Apple/Android.
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