SPOT Connect Units now in stock

And for that matter, smartphones know your altitude. A message every
5 minutes that includes altitude would be dramatically more useful
than what we have with Spot 1/2 and only cost $1.20/hr. My Spot
connect should arrive in a couple days. I'll try to assess if there
is a flaw in this idea.

You can always power the phone from the ships battery. I understand
that the Spot Connect unit returns to AA batteries instead of the
stupid AAA batteries that were used in Spot 2 so I wouldn't think that
Spot Connect battery life will be an issue -- Spot 1 lasts quite well
on the AA lithium batteries.

Actually 41 characters is plenty of room for a status vector that
includes more than altitude. The phone's GPS sensor also can yield
cruise track direction and cruise speed over the ground; it might also
include current or last average climb rate, etc. If the phone is
also running a glider navigation program, then there would be other
interesting things to include like the current destination waypoint.
Perhaps a bluetooth link to Spot Connect could be a feature of an
Android glider nav program, or for that matter, any other glider
navigation computer that is provided with a Bluetooth add-on.
Wouldn't it be cool if ClearNav, for example, spoke directly to Spot
Connect; then the phone could remain off and stashed.

Sorry Guys but a quick perusal of the manual shows that track mode for
this is exactly the same as Spot 1/2. Every 10 mins for 24 hours,
then you have to reset it to start the 25 hour period. No way to set
that value less than 10 minutes.

Now if someone were to hack the app......ok I won't go there. :-)

-Mark
On Apr 1, 12:31*am, Steve Koerner wrote:
Actually 41 characters is plenty of room for a status vector that
includes more than altitude. *The phone's GPS sensor also can yield
cruise track direction and cruise speed over the ground; it might also
include current or last average climb rate, etc. * If the phone is
also running a glider navigation program, then there would be other
interesting things to include like the current destination waypoint.
Perhaps a bluetooth link to Spot Connect could be a feature of an
Android glider nav program, or for that matter, any other glider
navigation computer that is provided with a Bluetooth add-on.
Wouldn't it be cool if ClearNav, for example, spoke directly to Spot
Connect; then the phone could remain off and stashed.