We’ve known about this one for awhile, but now it’s official — the SPOT Gen3 satellite messenger has been announced. The new device offers expanded tracking options, longer battery life and a motion sensor. The minimum service plan price has increased to $149.99 per year, but it now includes a basic tracking plan (every 10 seconds for 24 hours). Unlimited and extreme tracking plans are available for an extra fee.
While you can’t type a message on the fly like you can with the new DeLorme inReach SE, there are several message types available — an OK message, a custom message you set up ahead of time, and a help message to let friends and family know you’re in need of assistance. And if worse comes to worse, you can always hit the panic SOS button and call out search and rescue.
The SPOT Gen3 should be starting to ship any day now.
About Rich Owings
We’ve been excited to be testing some SPOT3’s over at trackleaders.com. Put one on Tour Divide winner Mike Hall and most recently on Colorado Trail Race winner Jefe Branham. Over the course of the ~4 day non-stop race he logged over a 80% successful transmission rate. Here is his data:
http://trackleaders.com/ctr13i.php?name=Jefe_Branham
That includes the brief times he took a nap, so it would actually be a littler higher. Durability and battery life have been good so far. Improvements over the SPOT2, for sure.
We’re stoked about the motion chip that allows people to turn their SPOT on at the start of their multi-day trip and then not have to reset it every 24 hours. Makes for more compelling racing. The 2.5 and 5 minute tracking are awesome too.
One correction – you listed 10 second tracking as the default plan, but the default is actually 10 *minute* tracking, with more expensive plans giving 5 and 2.5 minute tracking.
Thanks for the post!
I should note that Jefe was tracking at 5 min tracking, and that the Colorado Trail has pretty thick tree coverage and some deep, deep canyons. We were impressed by the performance.
Does anyone know if when using a Spot I can overlay a gpx track onto the shared page so that others can see where I intend to go and whether I am on track or not? For example if I am riding the Colorado Trail, can I overlay that track onto the shared page (basically like what Trackleaders displays)? I asked Spot and they seemed confused by my question. I think the answer is no, you cannot, but thought I’d ask here to make sure.
I’m 99% sure you can’t, but you may want to ask SPOT support.