Feature Request: Real location tracking and incident detection
AnsweredI 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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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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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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Hi, I have developed start/end ride notifications via SMS with a sideapp (I bought the device 1 week ago). Here you have the app https://github.com/oscarpenelo/hh-sms-notifications/releases
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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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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!) -
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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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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@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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My first post in this thread said how reliable and great the feature is but it would be great to have the improvement the author asked for, texts to auto send with a link to live tracking. Then I agreed with another user asking specifically for route details showing where you’ve already ridden. The single dot is not how Garmin, Wahoo, or Strava have implemented it, they all have a trail showing where you’ve ridden. Not saying that means Hammerhead needs to follow suit but your comment above says “The 'single dot' is exactly the implementation I've seen on those other platforms.” Which is wrong. Here’s an example screenshot of Strava beacon: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/8/4/12326916/cycling-and-running-app-strava-adds-beacon-safety-feature
Garmin: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/fitness/use-garmin-livetrack-track-activities-real-time/
Wahoo: https://www.wahoofitness.com/blog/set-live-track-elemnt/
Here are the quotes for ease of reading:
“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.”
“But just the auto send would be enough for me.”
“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…”
“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.”
This one’s not from me but the feature I was agreeing with:
“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”Hope that helps you understand where the rest of us are coming from and what we’re asking for. Al of those platforms both have more data on the map and have auto text/email. Here’s another thread with even more users asking for the same changes:
https://support.hammerhead.io/hc/en-us/community/posts/5218215917467-Request-Enhanced-Live-Tracking -
I am with @Tommy on this one... @Rob you need to relax a bit dude. I have had a Garmin, Wahoo, and now a HH. I would not go back to my Garmin or Wahoo but do agree that HH need to continue to evolve their Live Track to catch-up with features of their competition. While they may be more reliable there are other aspects to the Live Track feature than just reliability. These features are usually referred to as "usability". I am happy that HH started with reliability and by providing feedback here hope to influence future enhancement priority for usability of their Live Track feature. While this may not be a priority for you it is for Tommy and many others so exhale and relax.
@HH we love the Karoo 2 and we do have a sim card to enable live track. It is very reliable but would love to see where we we have been as well as other Karoo 2 users in our area similar to what the competition (Wahoo/Garmin) does.
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Hi All, we know that this has been a request from many. Our product development is fast paced, and we always looks for improving the user experience with all the features on Karoo. That being said, it does take weeks of user research, designing, development while also keeping in mind the business side of things.
There are plans to improve the Live tracking with more additions, but not immediately. We will get to it, and we promise to improve it's usability. If you would like to speak with our Product team directly and share the feedback, please book a call with them from the link provided on the Software release email.
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Gracias Oscar!!
1 año con el Karoo. 1 año de actualizaciones. No se cuantas actualizaciones cada 15 dias. Y seguimos sin tener un envío del enlace de seguimiento. Una cosa tan básica y tan facil de implementar y seguimos sin ella. Un dispositivo que lleva una sim integrada, pero que tienes que copiar el enlace de seguimiento en un papel o hacer una foto con el móvil, para pasárselo a un contacto, dado que dicho enlace ni siquiera aparece en el dashboard via web.
Increible pero cierto.
pd: Por cierto Oscar, implementaras poder enviar correos electrónicos. Lo del SMS está bien, pero hay mucha gente que tenemos cargos por cada SMS enviado.
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Hi, I have implemented the email notifications!!!
Aquí lo tenéis!
https://github.com/oscarpenelo/hh-sms-notifications/releases -
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. -
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… -
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!
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