I've used it, it is awesome, but it is the Death Reaper of iPhone 4S batteries. Will hopefully be upgrading to the 5S soon, and am keeping fingers crossed that it doesn't kill that battery so fast. Hopefully RoadID app developers can also find a way to make the app sip the battery juice a little more conservatively.

Take care,

Brian

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Swim. Bike. Run. Repeat as necessary.
Welcome to the Church of Briantriology!

I have used it a few times for my fiancé to track me during a ride and running race.

Both times she noted it would fail to update occasionally and that it was a bit behind my actual position (when it did update). In the end it also took a substantial battery draw... Something like 50% in 90 minutes on my iphone 5....

My iphone 5 battery has seemed a little whacky lately though so take that with a grain of salt.

It was also free though, so what more can I ask for? :)

I use it on my iPhone 5 and love it (as does my spouse). My husband hasn't had any problems following my progress/location on it (and he now asks that I use it so he doesn't worry as much) and the battery life doesn't appear to be impacted, though the longest I've used the app was for just over 3.5 hours so YMMV.

If you have a Garmin 510, you can do live tracking with it and an IPhone, with the IPhone GPS turned off, saving battery life. It works pretty well. New Garmin FR620 will do the same thing but in a watch form factor (see dcrainmaker's early look at the new FR620 and 220 for more info).

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I am hoping to give Glympse a shot this weekend- looks like a similar functioning app, but available on Android (and evidently Windows Phone).

Any Glympse users out there?
https://play.google.com/...mpse.android.glympse

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Chris
http://www.crowdrise.com/bosken

Interesting timing (side tangent)... the www.clymb.com has a sale on (for 4 more days) Road ID wrist ID Sports... and I was looking to buy a couple for me and my spouse. So that would get me the engraved part... but then I am wondering about an extra ankle strap... and I was wondering...

Anyone used the "Ankle ID" as a timing chip holder?

(It seems like this is fairly robust... since my current neoprene timing chip holder is particularly floppy and I don't like it - especially for the swim).

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: beating you to T1 for over a decade, and working on beating you to T2...

Glympse works well, but you can only set a max tracking time up to 4hrs. Not a big deal most of the time, but if you want to have it for longer rides on the weekend you are sol.

I'm using the Road ID app now and so far it is working well, without the Glympse limitation.

I have the ankle ID strap and use it exclusively on the bike for comfort. It's okay but not as secure as a normal ankle chip strap. The bad is my elastic that holds the metal RoadID plate has lost everything so it's super floppy after a few years of use. Another negative is it's not "spongy" for a nice comfy tight grip. More like a normal band so it could fall off with a big swipe in the the swim portion perhaps..


I'm guessing my iPhone4 battery wouldn't hold up to a 6 hour ride with it...

Hey Slowtwitch gang. This is P.J. Rabice, marketing guy at Road ID. Wanted to weigh in on our App and address some of your comments, concerns and questions.


Regarding battery life: we have done a good amount of testing and also made some modifications to limit the battery suck when using the app. For example, when running the App on a 4.5hr bike ride we saw about a 65% loss of battery life. Additionally, we ran our App alongside MapMyRide and along Strava (separately) on a ~3hr ride.....so 2 GPS apps running at once...and saw only a 50% loss of battery life.


Important Note: Having been integrally involved in the dev't of the App i think its worth pointing out that when you are running any fitness/GPS App it is critical to a) turn off your wifi, b) turn off bluetooth, and c) close any non-critical apps. The first two are the most impt. With wifi and bluetooth ON while running/riding, your phone is in a constant search mode, trying to find wifi or bluetooth. Ever been on a long flight and forgot put your phone on airplane mode only to find it nearly drained of battery upon landing? That's b/c it was searching for a cell signal during your flight.


Lastly, while we are very excited about the launch of this free App we know it is not 100% perfect and likely never will be. Few apps are perfect, especially those reliant on GPS, which can be flaky. With that said, we are continually monitoring feedback and working to improve it. An iOS 7 update is coming next week. So give it a whirl (it's free) and let us know what you like or don't like about it. And aside from the GPS tracking it also has a custom lock screen creator.

Hope that helps. I will be monitoring this thread if anyone has any additional questions.


--pj

I like the lock screen part the best actually - makes it easy to identify the phone and who it belongs to. It just isn't optimized for i0S-7. The dimensions of the photo it creates do not match with the 5c screen.
I will try the wifi trick next time I run - battery does drain low with use. I don't know what it looks like on the recipient's end.
Also, one thing that would be nice would be a "done with workout, all good" type message. I can say I'm starting, but there's no confirmation that I've stopped.
Thanks!

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Vale!
Tracy T
http://www.thelencoaching.com
Some light reading::: http://www.tracythelen.blogspot.com

Thanks, PJ! Any comments on the durability / stoutness of the ankle strap as a timing chip strap? (Not that it matters now anyway - i just ordered 3 roadID bands and 3 backup straps yesterday!)...

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: beating you to T1 for over a decade, and working on beating you to T2...

Tracy- our iOS 7 update will fix your lock screen problem. In the meantime, a minor fix to your LS images (won't make it perfect) is to go into Settings>General>Accessibility. Find "Reduce Motion" and turn it ON. This will make your image look better. You will need to move/scale the image a bit to be sure your emerg contact #s show. Its a band-aid fix until the update occurs.

As for your "done with workout, all good", its on the list for a future update. Thanks for the feedback.

--pj

TriSliceRS- "stoutness"?? haha. Love that. I would say it is quite stout and will handle all you can throw at it. It was meant to be timing chip compatible and used in triathlons too. It's neoprene for easy drying and comfort. Slowtwitch King, Jordan Rapp, wore it in Kona last weekend.

With that said, if you ever have a problem with it (breaks, etc) just call or email us and we'll take care of you. However, we cannot be held responsible if you don't PR in your next race. But, if you do, then it's most likely due to the Ankle strap.

Check out the Ankle ID video we made on it: https://www.youtube.com/...ed&v=gq_16_foLkQ

For a couple of seasons (to include my one-and-done IM), I used my ankle strap RoadID as my timing-strip strap too. No problems at all - worked flawlessly.

Based on discussions with EMT and other first-responder folks, I've since started using the dog-tag version of RoadID instead, but I keep my old ankle-strap version in my bag as a backup.

Cheers, Chris

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Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball

Great news... Thanks RoadID and Hydro!

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Proud member of FISHTWITCH: beating you to T1 for over a decade, and working on beating you to T2...

Are there any plans for an Android app? No love for the android tri guys?

Who has been using this app for Android? How is it working? Impact on battery life? Compared to Glympse?

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I used it for a few months until Garmin enabled autostart for Live tracking in the 920xt. I liked it, and I really liked the ability to notify my contacts in the event that I'm stopped for a long (configurable) time. There were a few occasions where I stopped for one reason or another, and I got a call from my wife asking if things were ok. They always were...but, there was some comfort in knowing that help could be on the way rather quickly, if something was actually wrong.

I never noticed major battery drain, but the longest rides I did during that time were 3 hours. I never ran out of battery or got close enough to be worried. But, I also wasn't specifically monitoring it as a data point...so, I can't give any numbers.

At this point, though, I've switched to Garmin Livetracking simply because its one less thing to remember to do. My wife and dad both tend to follow along in real-time via the web...so, with the higher update rate of Livetrack they notice when I stop moving, anyway.

-tch

Interesting. I do not have a garmin like this, just my phone.

So, what is the update frequency for Live tracking, vs roadid? I know glympse is very frequent

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Looks like RoadID only does updates once a minute. Pretty long. Glympse, when a person is watching, is 5 to 10 second. Big difference.
Now, I might try using both at once. I do like the RoadID feature that if I stop for 5 minutes, it will send a message to people.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Garmin Livetracking updates every second---so, basically real-time. As such an extra text message alert probably has less value....but, I'd still like to have one.

From memory, RoadID attempts an update once per minute, but dropped samples can result in several minutes between updates, if cell service is spotty at the time of the attempt. This happened to me on a couple of occasions. But, with the extra safety of the text message alert for situations where you've actually stopped moving the dropped samples don't matter that much.

The only reason I like the text message of RoadID is my wife or family will not be watching these updates often. So to know that they can just do their life,
take a look if they want, but know if it stops for 5 minutes, it will text them without them having to watch is huge.

I am going to try running them both at once and see what happens. 1 second updates if way more than an overkill, it would be distracting watching. 5 to 10 seconds is perfect. That is what I used for the MyAthlete product. Any more than this drove folks nuts trying to watch.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep