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news
Strava_Image_Beacon-Hero@2xlogo.jpgNew Strava safety feature allows friends to see your real time location
Strava has launched a Beacon safety feature, allowing riders to share their exact location in real time with selected contacts.
Available for iPhone and Android, as well as select Garmin devices, the feature allows athletes to select up to three safety contacts.
These contacts receive a text message with a unique URL when the athlete begins an activity. Safety contacts can click the URL to track the athlete on a map in real time, as well as view the athlete’s remaining battery power.
Safety contacts do not need a Strava account to view real-time information.
Beacon also saves contact settings, allowing athletes to use Beacon during future activities with one tap.
Strava Premium members who use the Garmin Edge® 520, Edge 820, Edge 1000, Edge Explore 820, Forerunner® 230, Forerunner 235, Forerunner 630, Forerunner 735XT, and Fenix® 3 may set up Beacon with Garmin’s automatic LiveTrack sessions on Garmin Connect Mobile™.
“We received a lot of positive feedback when we introduced Beacon this summer,” says Aaron Forth, Chief Product Officer. “We also had lots of athletes say they wanted to use Beacon with their Garmin devices. We’re happy to see that Beacon has become so valuable so quickly, and excited to extend Beacon’s safety benefits to Garmin athletes.”
“Garmin and Strava have a great track record of working together to enhance the athlete experience,” said David Lorsch, Vice President of Business Development at Strava. “We are excited to continue our partnership by working with Garmin to bring our Beacon safety feature to our mutual customers.”
Beacon is available now for Strava Premium members with Strava v4.22.00 or later.
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17 comments
I' Swedish and have it hard with the pronunciation. Is it beacon or bacon?
If your first-born is cycling alone around Britain I can see some sense in this, but otherwise what is the attraction? Is it connected to the apparently universal need to be in instant contact with everyone you know and a good many you don't?
l
I use this as my wife suffers from ptsd and worries when I am out on the bike. This reassures her I haven't been run over and killed by an arsehole driver when I am just running late due to the hills I thought I could get up more quickly than I actually can. Consequently saves me from worrying about her worrying about me.
Very useful.
I use glympse. Will check out G+.
As others have said, useful to let your other half know when you're likely to be back from work (to be fair, this is a requirement on or off the bike, if your other half has a social life, you have kids, you have kids that your other half or you are supposed to be taking out after work, you try to eat together every now and then etc. I'm probably more reliably back home from work at a particular time when I'm on the bike, than when I'm in the car/on the train).
Co-ordinating meeting up with other rides at cafe stops etc...
There are a few buddies that live 10-20 miles from me and I can factor in calling at theirs along the way of a training ride. They have much more accurate information as to when I'll turn up, so it saves them waiting around in their kit or me texting them if I have a flat and don't leave the house bang on time, or if I pick one up, or the wind's right in my face, or whether I'm just not as up for it as I thought I'd be.
I've never contacted anyone I don't know like this, and of course, it doesn't have to stop you riding in absolute solitude without communicating with anyone else ever, if that's your thing...
Google Plus, built into every Android phone, has been doing this for years. For free.
I'd be cautious about iusing this for anything over 100 miles. real time tracking requires the phone to have bluetooth/gps and mobile data switched on - both of which put a drain on the battery. It's all very well having people able to track you, but if the end result is no phone at the end of the ride when you may need it, perhaps not so useful.
I suppose you could always take an external battery pack.
Not a problem in my experience. I can do a full day's ride with Beacon enabled and be left with 50% charge at the end of the day. It also tells the recipients how much charge you've got left so they'll not worry so much if you do run out.
Another tip: if you don't set up any Beacon contacts in Strava, it'll let you email the link (or share via any other app) instead of texting it.
Free on Garmin Connect, along with many other features which you have to have a Strava subscription for. If you have a compatible Garmin don't pay for the pointless Strava add-ons, you've already got them.
You can also do this for free on an iPhone without having to download any additional apps. Just go to iMessage, open a message to the contact you want to be able to track you, click on the 'i' in the top right hand corner, then click 'share my location'.
To track you, that contact then just has to follow the same steps - open a message to you in iMessage and click on the 'i'. It'll open a screen with a map showing that contact's location in real time.
New? Been using it for weeks. I send it to my wife for a laugh and she finds it strongly addictive; apparently the café stops are her favourite. Also available on garmin connect.
Makes stopping for a "coffee" at your training partners house when he is out training a bit tricky!
Probably one of those features you'd try once, and then following the inevitable 'meh, whatever' moment, not use it again. In any event a better 'model' is to have a feature available to all website users, but with some paid premium features...
An even better addition to Strava would be a real-time alert for your local burglar to notify when your miles away in the countryside.
Why make such a good thing available only to those who pay for Strava? Rubbish.
It's almost as if they're trying to make money!
And I'm sure they do, however, this is a great feature that I feel everybody should be able to take advantage of as opposed to just those who pay for an algorithm to tell them how much they "suffered" on a ride...
A free non-premium alternative is Glympse.
It lets me generate an email to my wife, with a link to the Glympse website that shows my track and current speed. Default max duration is 4 hours, but that can be extended mid-ride, or just start another track.
Works ok on my Android, but if you're in an area with patchy mobile data coverage, there can be large gaps in the trace - it doesn't seem to fill in the gaps between successful updates.