Bear tracking

So that the friends of the two little bears can find out where they are at any time we operate a position tracking system which enables anyone to view a website that shows where the two little bears are at present together with a bread crumb trail showing where they have been on their current trip. The position reports are annotated with additional little pieces of interesting information telling you what is going on in the lives of the bears. We call these annotations bear barks because bears don't tweet! This blog outlines how the bears tracking system works.

How new position reports and bear barks are sent

Yachts reach some pretty remote locations so we need to be able to remote our latest adventure via a reporting mechanism that works in as many places on the planet as possible. We don't want to pay a lot for sending routine reports so any approach that has high overheads such as logging into a remote web site or using a satellite link is to be avoided. At the end of a hard days sailing we don't want to wait a long time for a laptop to boot to make a new report instead a very quick and simple mechanism is required.

By keeping new position reports and bear barks small we can make use of the almost universal coverage of the mobile network SMS system. In theory any satellite phone which provides a SMS compatible service could be used for those times when out of range of a land based mobile signal albeit at additional expense.

New position reports and bear barks need to be sent as a SMS message in a format which will be recognised by the receiving end. We have two simple message formats; one for reporting a new position and one for a subsequent bear bark update.

Where do these message go

We make use of specially created Twitter accounts to collect new position reports and bear barks. Message remain on the Twitter feed until processed by a back end program which uses the message data to update the tracking web site.

Web Presentation

The current location position is displayed on a Google Map together with a bread crumb trail (in pink) showing all previous visited locations. The bread crumb trail connects all previously visited locations using direct 'as the crow flies' lines which are obviously not the track actually followed by the boat. Periodically we upload track data which shows the actual route (in blue) taken by the boat as it travelled between locations. A number of interactive elements make the map more interesting for visitors to explore the locations we have visited.

Visit the a tracking page for our 2009 trip