Help: In the event of a non-life threatening emergency, you can use this function to notify your personal contacts that you need assistance. Additional SPOT Assist services can be purchased and programmed to your Help button as well. When activated with SPOT Assist, the Help button will notify professional services either on the land or water. SPOT has partnered with national service providers to offer non-life threatening assistance.

HOW  IT WORKS:
Once activated, SPOT acquires your location from the GPS network and routes it along with the HELP message through the SPOT satellite network every five minutes for one hour or until cancelled. Your contacts will receive an SMS text message including coordinates, or an email with a link to Google Maps™ showing your location.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
Even if SPOT cannot acquire its location from the GPS network it will still attempt to send a HELP message – without the GPS location – to your personal contacts. 

 Check-in / OK: This feature allows you to let your friends and family know that all is OK with a pre-programmed message along with your GPS location. With a push of a button a message is sent via email or SMS to up to 10 pre-determined contacts and your waypoint is stored in your SPOT account for later reference. Your stored waypoints can be easily integrated into a SPOT Shared Page or SPOT Adventure account.

  Track Progress: This feature allows you to send and save your location and allow contacts to track your progress in near real time using Google Maps. With your SPOT account you have the ability to set up a SPOT Shared Page which allows you to show your SPOT GPS locations to others on a Google Map.

HOW  IT WORKS:
Once activated, SPOT acquires and sends your GPS coordinates to your SPOT account automatically every 10 minutes for 24 hours or until canceled. SPOT tracking must be reengaged to continue. Creating a SPOT Shared Page allows you to share your GPS route with your friends and family easily in near real time on the web through a personal link. You can make your Shared Page private or public. Your choice! Just share that url with your friends and family and they can easily track your adventures. You can also link your SPOT Messenger to SPOT Adventures, a social portal, where you can set up a profile and blog with others sharing their SPOT adventures.

TIPS FOR USING TRACKING:

To engage tracking – Turn the unit on, wait two seconds. Press and hold the OK button down UNTIL the green light goes out and the two lights (ON/Off and Check/OK) blink together.

Positioning – To ensure tracking reliability it is recommended to place SPOT in a horizontal position with the SPOT logo facing the sky.

It is possible that some Track messages may get blocked by environmental factors. Track Progress messages are scheduled every 10 minutes to ensure overall performance.

Power: SPOT has a separate power button to ensure long battery life and to help avoid sending messages accidentally. To turn SPOT on, press the ON/OFF button. You must then wait an additional 2 seconds before activating any SPOT function. When power is on, the indicator light will blink once every 3 seconds. This is also helpful for making SPOT more visible in the dark. To turn SPOT off, press and hold the ON/OFF button for 3 seconds.

SPOT Self Test: SPOT is designed for maximum reliability. Spot performs a self-diagnostic test each time it is powered on. Additionally, Spot strongly recommends that you send and verify a Check-in/OK message each time before use. This allows you to evaluate your entire messaging system, from the operational condition of the SPOT Messenger to the readiness of those you’ve chosen to notify of your messages.
Visit www.spotwarranty.com.

 

SPOT Message Schedule: SPOT is designed to provide outstanding quality and reliability. With a perfect view of the entire sky, the SPOT Messenger is designed to transmit virtually every message. In everyday conditions, the view of the sky is often blocked due to hills, buildings, or other obstructions so it is normal for some messages to be blocked. That is why the SPOT Messenger automatically sends multiple messages in every mode, giving you excellent overall reliability. In some modes this means multiple attempts to send the same message, while in other modes it means regularly updating GPS coordinates and sending a new message. Placement of your SPOT unit can make a difference. Experiment with placement until you are familiar with the reliability of your operating environment.

 

GPS Location Acquisition: If you have the SPOT Satellite Personal Tracker, your device needs to download the GPS almanac in order to obtain your GPS location. Due to the nature of the GPS system, you will need to get a GPS fix the first time you use your unit, after more than two weeks, anytime you change your batteries and anytime you travel more than 600 miles. It is strongly recommended that you do this at the start of each usage session. It can take up to 20 minutes to obtain a GPS fix. The easy way to accomplish this is to turn your SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger ‘ON’, wait 2 seconds, and then press ‘OK’ and wait until the LED above the ‘OK’ button goes out – this allows the unit time to acquire the GPS fix. While unlikely, it is possible that a GPS fix won’t be acquired if you only use other functions (Track Progress, HELP and SOS/911) due to the transmission burst cycle.