How To: SPOTII and SPOT Tracking Manager

You bought a SPOT II — a Personal Satellite GPS Messenger — and you want a free service to track your messages in the most flexible way: The SPOT Tracking Manager (STM) by Jason Jonas is the answer. This page will describe in easy steps what you need to do from an Australian customer perspective: from receiving your SPOT II to viewing your trip data on STM.

This "How To" assumes you know what SPOT is good for and understand its basic function, the service options SPOT offers, and you are familiar with basic Internet tasks, such as filling-in forms, etc. You can skip reading any manuals, nevertheless, I recommend reading at least the SPOT User's Guide and the SPOT website to understand the services offerings, to make appropriate choices during the following set-up.
You need an Internet connection to access the different websites mentioned in this article.
Take it easy! One step at the time, no need to rush. You should give yourself one hour to complete this set-up. It can be done in 6 minutes, if you can, you do not need to read any further. For those who intent doing this only once and feel their computer literacy has given them a hard time in the past, may find this guide useful.

Preparations

Of course, you need your SPOT II device. And as a general outline this is what you need to do, and is described in detail further below:

1. Activate your SPOT device on the SPOT website
   This is required to make use of the device and its attached / subscribed services.
2. Login into the SPOT website and set-up a shared page
   Only required if you want to share your trip with others, and a must do if you want to use STM.
3. Create an account on the Jason Jonas SPOT Trip Manager page
   Like anything these days: you want to use it, you need to sign up for it; this service is free of charge.
4. Configure your account on the Jason Jonas SPOT Trip Manager page
   The key thing here is to enter the same SPOTII serial number, you entered during the SPOT registration.
5. Put the batteries into your SPOT device
   Yes, it needs power and does not run on nuclear batteries yet 
6. Roam around to check if it is all working (it usually does, literally spot on )
   Well, as funny as it may sound, you need to switch on your SPOT, hit the OK button at least once, and let the unit generate some tracking messages. In particular, if this is all new to you: I have seen the odd person wondering why no messages pop into STM, because they set it all up nicely, but forgot to generate some messages that then could show up in STM.

Activate Your SPOT device on the SPOT Website

In order to complete this task, you need:

• Your personal information (address and phone number)
• Emergency contact information (name and phone number, in fact you need a primary and secondary contact details for emergencies which need to be different)
• SMS and / or e-mail addresses for messaging
• Of course: credit card information to pay for the basic and any additional services you chose to subscribe to

Prior to the activation some thinking has to go into the question who you want to contact in case of S.O.S. and HELP messages, because this is information you need to provide during set-up.

Steps

1. Open the  International SPOT Home Page
2. Select "Oceania"
3. Select the menu point: "Explore SPOT"
4. Select from the drop down list: "Activate Now"
5. Click the "Register" Button

Fill in the required fields and submit your registration.
Please note: The serial number of your device (ESN) needs to include the dash after the first digit!
If you leave out the dash, the registration will fail; you may even get a message that could scare you, saying: your serial number is already in use. As it stands today (Dec 6th, 2009) adding the dash now (after it first failed, because you forgot) will still not allow you to register. The fix seems to be: close the SPOT page in your browser, and start the registration process again.

Login into the SPOT Website and set-up a Shared Page

In order for the Jason Jonas STM page to see your SPOT data, a shared page needs to be set-up that STM can read.

Steps

1. Open the  International SPOT Home Page
2. Select "Oceania"
3. Select the menu point: "Explore SPOT"
4. Select from the drop down list: "Activate Now"
5. Sign-in to your SPOT account
6. Click on the SHARE menu button
7. Under the "SPOT Shared Pages" headline select the link "Create Shared Page"
8. Name the page something like "SPOT/STM Feed" in the "Shared Page Name" text box
   I suggest not to use the word "SPOT" at the end, because this name is being used in the subject of e-mails being sent to the contacts you have nominated earlier. [E.g. The subject line reads "Check-in/OK message from MaxG's SPOT SPOT Messenger"]
9. Select the messenger (i.e. SPOT device) for the shared page.
   If you only have one, it will be selected automatically. If you have more than one device, you must select the device for which you are creating a feed to STM. Do not select multiple devices! If you have more than one device, you will need to create a shared page for each device to setup the XML Interface (between SPOT and STM).
10. Check all message types to share on this page.
    If you are creating a shared page for a Generation I device, you will see three message types — Check-in, Help and Track. If you are creating a shared page for a Generation II device, you will see a fourth message type — Custom. Be sure and check all message types.
11. In the Share GPS locations from the last list, select an appropriate number of days.
    Personally, I would not select anything over 2 days.
12. This is important! For the Share message detail setting, please select "Yes". This allows STM to pull the custom messages that you have set up for OK and Help messages. Additionally, when new message formats come out for the SPOT II devices, this will allow STM to pull those too.
13. Password protection is not currently supported. Ensure the page is public, as in: not password protected.
14. Do not email the link to STM! Select the "Send the shared page myself" option.
15. Click the "Create Now!" button.
16. At the bottom of the page just below the Create Now! button you will find the link to your newly created shared page. Copy this link to the clipboard or otherwise save it somewhere: You are going to need it in a step further below.

Steps 7–16 courtesy of Jason Jonas.

Phew! Now preparations within the SPOT environment are complete! 

Create an Account on the Jason Jonas SPOT Trip Manager Site

You are now going to set-up your STM account on the Jason Jonas website. This is required for the Jason Jonas Internet application to read your message data directly from the SPOT website; yes, form the shared page you have set-up in the previous steps. This is exciting stuff! True collaboration!

Steps

1.  Open the Jason Jonas website
2. Select "Create an Account" from the top-right menu
   Yes, it is small, almost inconspicuous; yes, the blue type up there.
3. Fill in the details on the form provided
   Please note: The location ID may sound a bit strange to you at first. It is being used as your personal identifier on joint pages. E.g. for the name Mary E. Clark, the ID could be "MEC". You could use your initials, or as a FarRider you could use your FarRider number, etc.
4. Solve a simple equation and hit the SAVE button
   This is not a maths test, but this step provides a significant hurdle for automatic SPAM bots. If you do not understand what I am talking about, simply forget about it, but solve the math question.

Configure Your Account on the Jason Jonas SPOT Trip Manager Site

You have set-up an account, which is just that: an account. In order for STM to receive the data you have set-up in the previous steps to be shared, a device needs to be configured. Don't be scared, this is easy to do.

Steps

1. Select "My Devices" from the top-right menu
2. Select "SPOT Personal Tracker" from the drop down list
3. If you have already created the device for this feed, click the Update button for the device. Otherwise, click the New button to create a new device.
4. Fill in the three form fields
   Here you need your SPOT II serial number (ESN) again. Please remember to enter the dash contained in the serial number as well. In other words the ESN must be identical to the ESN you have used for you SPOT registration! Otherwise you will not see data coming into your STM page.
5. Paste the SPOT shared page link (I have asked you to save in an earlier step) into the "Shared Page" field.
6. Feel free to tick the box: "Checking this box makes this the default device when creating trips."
7. Click the Save button

Put the Batteries into your SPOT device

Yes, now is the time to put the batteries into your SPOT II and start travelling.  Yes, you could walk your dog with it; or go for a 1,000 km trip around the block to test it all.

Make yourself familiar with the buttons; how long to press them, what the red and green lights mean; etc.

Roam Around and Check if it is all Working

… it usally does, literally spot on 

Managing Your Trips

You are now familiar with the easy-to-use Jason Jonas SPOT Trip Manger website. If you roamed around a bit and sent some OK messages and switched on the tracking option (in case you chose to subscribe to the tracking service during the SPOT registration) you will have tracking messages in your SPOT account.

The STM website allows you to set-up any number of trips. Now try to get this: A trip is effectively a window into your SPOT data which STM has received for you and stored in a database. For example: You travelled for one week, and you want to display a complete trip from Monday to Friday, and a trip page for each day that week. This is not a problem at all; and exactly what STM was designed to do.

Each trip will get a reference number in a link. You can share this link as you please, and you can even password protect these trip pages if you so wish.

All-in-all very exciting stuff. Yes, daunting at first, but once you went through these steps, there is no need to do this again. Except when you want to set-up further trip pages.

Happy SPOT-ting! Enjoy your trips and ride and drive safely!

Please let me know — via the e-mail link below, or comment form — if there are changes on the discussed websites that require this page to be updated.

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