Morning all.
Has anyone figured out the best way to live track someone’s position/location on a bike? Mr gozarch has an iPhone 4S and I want to be able to follow his progress when he’s riding the Etape du Tour. He’s downloaded the MotionX app, where you can view the phone’s location on a map on their website, but you can’t zoom in enough to get a proper level of detail. I suppose ‘find my iPhone’ might be an option, but are there any other alternatives?

We’ve considered using the facility on an Edge 510, but I imagine that’s going to be heavy on data usage and battery life on the iPhone. I suppose battery life will be an issue whichever solution we go for.

Edward Snowden to the forum…

I think you can do it through the Endomondo app, not sure how much detail it’s in though.

Life360 uses Google maps and doesn’t impact battery like Endomondo because it just seems to locate on demand. But I’ve only used it on Android.

Endomondo does a pretty good job of it and is pretty accurate timing wise. I’ve used the live tracking to meet some one at a particular point on a trail

google latitude?

Is data roaming an issue? GPS tracking takes no data but reporting the position will need a data plan.

The 2 challenges are going to be data and battery life.

Endomondo works really well for live tracking. You can even send messages from the site and the phone reads them out! Main issue you’ll have is battery life with GPS and data reporting on.

Edge 510 is meant to be much lighter on phone battery and the unit itself can do 20 odd hours.

Other option if the phone will be in a pocket is to connect a backup battery.

Mrs keeps an eye on me via Find My iPhone (so she knows when to put dinner on!)

That works well enough and has the advantage that it doesn’t broadcast position all the time, so it is lighter on battery usage. Plus it doesn’t require any app to be running.

Endomondo is probably the best bet if you want more detailed tracking. If battery life proves to be an issue then just add an external battery.

Find My Friends seems to work pretty well, at least in the UK.

Spot

Mrs keeps an eye on me via Find My iPhone (so she knows when to put dinner on!)

That works well enough and has the advantage that it doesn’t broadcast position all the time, so it is lighter on battery usage. Plus it doesn’t require any app to be running.

What level of detail does it show? The Etape route this year is vaguely a circuit, so just knowing that he’s ‘somewhere near Annecy’ wouldn’t be enough.

Detail on Find My Friends just seems to depend on the accuracy of the fix on the phone itself. If I’ve got a good GPS fix then it is a few metres. If I’ve lost GPS (eg under heavy tree cover) and it switches to using the WiFi signal for position then it can be out by a mile or so, but never more than that. If I have no phone signal though it just fails to update and can look as though I’ve stopped (although I think it does show when the last report was made).