Location tracking takes a leap forward

We have invested in a Spot Gen3 tracker, and boy oh boy, it's lovely.  The annual subscription is a little on the steep side, but, seeing as it includes private Search & Rescue if he's in trouble, that's OK.  We will be testing it out on DunRun later this month.

It is not in anyway dependent on cell phone towers or signal, and runs directly off the satellites to send position and a selection of messages to a phone via SMS.   We have experimented with all the buttons (except the SOS button), and it works beautifully.



The SOS button, which calls in the emergency services, for life threatening situations only, and the button to call in your personal support team in an non life threatening emergency to are both covered by little flaps to ensure you don't press them by accident.

The other three buttons are an 'I'm OK' message, 'This is where I am' message, and another customisable button that we have set to 'Bring me food/drink as soon as you can'.

It also sends a position to website every 2.5 mins (or less if you set it for less), and we're now using it for dot watching.

I am still using the android tracker we use to find each other though, because it updates every 15 seconds, which is pretty good, but of course, because its entirely mobile phone dependent, is unreliable in very rural areas.