Strava - alternatives etc

[ebikeerwidnes]

Hi all,
I use Strava when I ride my bike and when I go for a walk
I do it for 2 reasons
a) to log my rides out of interest and to see where I have been (sometime because when I get back I have no clue where on Earth I actually went at some points on the ride!)
b) so my wife can see where I am if she needs to know for some reason - e.g. if she gets worried for some reason or if something changes and she needs to know if I will be back soon or does she need to ring and tell me I need to come back


Anyway - so I use the free version which include a thing where you can send a message to someone and they can then see where you are

But - recently at times it seems to be telling her that I am some distance away - then I walk through the front, in spite of the 4g and 5G signals being OK for quite a lot of the nearby route so it should have updated OK

Also - I tend to prefer to avoid the normal market leader and use smaller players

But I don;t know of any that do both - but then I could use a possibly more accurate tracking app AND something different for the tracking


anyone got any experiences

 

[Supersuperleeds]

If you both have smartphones you can have tracking apps that let you both know were the other is.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

If you both have smartphones you can have tracking apps that let you both know were the other is.

any experiences of tracking apps
contributions from MI5 would be welcome!!!!

 

[craigwend]

as a family we use Life360 [plenty of others available] to see where we are & for me Strava / Garmin Connect to log rides

 

[lostinthought]

I ditched Strava a few years ago, and since getting a Garmin, I now use Garmin Connect to plan and keep track of rides. I'm pretty sure it's free to use, and you can import rides from anywhere. It's clunkier than Strava, and there isn't much of a social aspect to it (not my thing, but you never know). The route planner works pretty well, however, and the stats and charts are tolerably well done.

There certainly was a live-tracking feature, but I found it fiddly to set up and unreliable. I'd guess it also requires a Gamin device. If you both have iPhones/other apple devices, you can easily use "Find My" to keep track of each other. I bet there's an android equivalent.

 

[Norry1]

as a family we use Life360 [plenty of others available] to see where we are & for me Strava / Garmin Connect to log rides

We do too - free and very good.

 

[OldShep]

We use Find my phone and she knows exactly where I am. Not always a good thing 😊
If they want to worry they will. One call I got she thought I was in an ambulance because I was going so fast 🥲. Going downhill dear.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Funnily enough my wife has only rung me once when I have been out riding

It was about the only time I had stopped and got talking to a good looking woman!!!!!

turned out that the GPS on my phone had decided to stop working after about 2-3 miles and kept supplying the same location to Strava

After a while - quite a long time but whatever - the system decided to send her an alert saying that I had not moved for a long time

so she rang to check I was OK
which was weird

(Note - either that or she is WAY better at computery stuff than I think and managed to hack the route so that it appeared that I was stationary for 45 minutes then started again when I stopped and restarted GPS on my phone


What is also weird is that if I accidentally forget to stop STrava when I get home and leave it switched on in my coat pocket then clearly it also does not move for a long time
However, inb this case it never sends an alert to her phone
and of I look at it after it shows me a moving around alot - just in a very small area as the GPS error varied

so as an alert system it is probably a bit rubbish as the GPS signal needs to be exactly the same for a long time - whereas it varies even if you are stationary

 

[Bristolian]

If you have WhatsApp on your mobile phones you can send your live location to each other for up to 8 hours. This is free and, so far, has proven to be accurate (as accurate as the phone's gps anyway).

I use this when I go out for a ride on the bike and also whenever I head off on a photography jaunt (in the car), particularly if I'm going on my own. I just go back into WhatsApp when I get home and cancel the feature to stop it.

 

[Drago]

turned out that the GPS on my phone had decided to stop working after about 2-3 miles and kept supplying the same location to Strava

Which by an amazing coincidence was at the local massage parlour.