Suggestion: Live route/position sharing with ride participants

[richtea999]

Problem:

• live routing is dynamic, and the most carefully planned routes can still be altered by the routing engine once you're on your trip, for valid reasons - traffic problems or closed roads for example.
• if you're travelling in a group (motorbikes in my case) you share the route ahead of time, but there may still be some live variance on the day between each rider's live route (see this discussion as an example: https://forum.myrouteapp.com/topic/4896/duelling-banjos-with-myrouteapp. We have also experienced the same effect.)

Solution:

• the lead rider enables his version of the the live route to be shared on the fly to others in the group
• whenever the lead rider's route deviates from the planned one, the other riders also get those changes reflected in their route too

Implementation thoughts:

• it would requite internet connectivity to share the live routing changes, for all participants
• just the changes (not the whole route) need to be broadcast to the group
• if only the changes were broadcast, the amount of data should be very small and speed of delivery very quick
• it would need a new subset of 'Friends' to exist - 'Trip Friends' or 'Live Friends' or similar

This would probably only work for connected MRA Navigation users, not Garmin/TomTom users, but on the 'up' side that's a pretty good future selling point for MRA over the incumbents.

[Corjan Meijerink]

Love the idea!

[Con Hennekens]

This is not a bad idea for sure. I would think of it as a group-mode. It would completely disable all local route calculation, but simply show the route of the leader of the group.

I like how the intercom app Zello approaches the use of groups. You can make such a group on-the-fly and others can join-in either with or without a password.

Also this would integrate very nice with the somewhat older idea of seeing other participants of a group ride as a dot on your screen.

[Jörgen]

We use the App BT-Talk for communication in our group, this App has a similar function to see the group member's position on a map.

[Mopetenpit]

@Jörgen
that sounds interesting. How does it work in practice together with the MRA navigation? Does the BT Talk app move to the foreground and "overlay" the navigation or does it stay in the background?

[Jörgen]

There are two options, you can leave it running in the background, then you need a push button for talking (is available from midland) or you can use it with MRA in split screen mode on your Android device and use the onscreen button.

[Mopetenpit]

@Jörgen Thank you!

[Con Hennekens]

Zello offers an overlay button that you can place in an empty area of the full navigation screen.

You can place multiple of these overlays if you wish.
You can add a (or multiple) hardware key(s) too.

[Jack van Tilburg]

@Corjan-Meijerink said in Suggestion: Live route/position sharing with ride participants:

Love the idea!

But not completely strange to you?
I recognize something in this question in one of the road book topics. Don't you?

Milestone 1.8

[Mopetenpit]

@Con-Hennekens many thanks for the hint!

[richtea999]

Rather than live tracking of individuals I was trying to decrease the problems a group encounters when the route changes dynamically by sharing it immediately.

However, live tracking of group participants would also be fun, agreed.

I guess there could also be a button for those that regularly get lost:

• Make group leader my next waypoint

Or a 'Round them up' button for the Group leader to warp all the follower's routes to point to him/her.

Can't wait to test that one if it ever makes it into production.

[Con Hennekens]

@richtea999, both things came up indeed, because we can imagine it makes use of the same group-functionality. I think it's pretty complementary.