[Updated 2012-06-18] Added link to plugin.
I wrote a plugin that retrieves and stores GPS data from the Spot Messenger service and displays the route on a Google map based on start and end dates and device ID entered into a shortcode. Maybe I’ll release to the WordPress community if it works the way I hope it does.
For now you can download the packages here.
Here’s the plugin using the Google Maps API v2:
[findmespotmap start=”2010-04-04 19:00:00″ end=”2010-04-05 23:59:59″ id=”0-8062822″]
And here’s the same map using the Google Maps API v3. It features current weather and Google Street View as well:
[findmespotmap v=3 start=”2010-04-04 19:00:00″ end=”2010-04-05 23:59:59″ id=”0-8062822″ wx=station sv=yes]
Comments
49 responses to “New WordPress Plugin for Spot Messenger”
This handy-dandy little gadget just let everyone know that we did a quick run to REI in Reno. Last minute accoutrements included small pouch travel bag for camera gear, update gear for the Spot Messenger GPS tracker, and some high density trail bars for our overnight flight to Dublin.
WOW! I think that everybody that reads this should make up an interesting use for this tracking service. I think that it would work great for reality show TV. Give each contestant one of these and track their progress together.
@Western Slope Head — It’s a pretty nifty service. Expensive, tho. The tracking sends a message to a satellite every 10 minutes, so near-real-time doesn’t work so well.
I’ve just written an extension for the plugin that reads kml and kmz files from Google Earth, and displays the map.
The more I use the Google Maps API, the more I like it.
This looks cool. I’m testing out a few things and we happen to have a team climbing Denali right now with a Spot. Do you have the plugin released or can I get it to beta test for you?
@IntegralGIS – We’ve been out of town doing boring, non-adventure stuff, so I’m a little late getting back. Sure, I’d be more than happy to send the plugin along. I’ve sent you a private email.
Great Plug-in. Have you released it yet? Any way I can get a copy of your beta if not and help with debug? I use SPOT for motorcycle trips and blog while riding – this would be a great feature.
@jimmyv – I’ve sent you a private email. I’d be happy to let you beta-test the plugin. The more people that hammer on it, the better.
Hi
This looks very very nice!!!
Is there any chance, that you’ll let me beta-test the plugin as well? I’m about to start a circumnavigation and would really like to have my SPOT track record shown on my site.
Wow… Circumnavigation?! I’m envious! 🙂
I’d love to have another beta-tester. I’ll be sending you an email with the plugin and the instructions. Thanks for offering to help out!
Hi! The plugin looks great. I was about to start writing one but I came upon yours and I’d rather not reinvent the wheel.. Any update if you’re going to release it or not?
I too am traveling around the world (on a motorcycle) and would like to use my spot tracks to provide a tracklog on my wordpress site.
I’m can also help with testing or development as well
Hi Dave-
Thanks for your interest! I’m still planning on releasing it publicly, but three are still some kinks to work out. For example, if there are more than 100 or so locations, some browsers timeout the script. Currently, I’m working on adding a bit of code that stores the current weather in the DB so that viewers can have a historical record of what the weather was doing while you were on-location. I’ll send you a private email with the download details.
Nice work, it looks a lot cleaner than the current WordPress plugin. I am looking to track 5000 – 7000 mile motorcycle charity rides, so if you would like another beta tester I am, sign me up☺
I’d be totally happy if you’d release this plugin. I’m planning a trip from The Netherlands to Africa (The Gambia) on a motorcycle with a team in Dakar style. We’d love to have a live tracker on our site by then.
I’d be happy to test a bit too. I have the tracker, and I’m planning to do some testing anyway.
This is what i am looking for. I am running Ubuntu, tried 3 different browsers, but the plugin shows nothing. Would like to beta test!
Hi,
great plug-in – have you released it to WordPress Community?
I’m retracing a historic Inuit voyage up the coast of Labrador, Canada, this summer and it would great for people to be able to follow my boat.
Hi There Nevada Man,
I was wondering on how your development of this plugin is progressing and whether you would allow me to test it for you? I am just now setting up a Soaring / Gliding blog for my brother, who recently acquired a SPOT, and it would be wonderful to be able to look at his SPOT tracks on his blog.
Muchas gracias, great work!
Damjan
Hi,
My wife and I are gearing up for an overland circumnavigation and would love to embed a Spot map like this in our site. Would you be so kind as to allow us to beta test it for you as well?
Thanks!
This looks like a great plugin! My friend and I are getting ready to bicycle across the US and I’de be interested in using it on our site. I couldn’t find an official release of it, could I beta test it as well? Thanks in advance!
Hi!
I am very interested in this plugin for my expedition to mustagh ata next week.
pls can you handle me out your plugin. i am looking forward hearing from you!
nice greetings from austria
bernhard
Hi! Looks like a great plugin! We’ve been looking for a plugin like this for a while, as we currently are on a one-year trip around the Atlantic ocean. Is it possible to get a copy of the beta to try it out?
Paul
I would very much appreciate this plugin. I’ve spent way too much time messing with my blog and not enough time hiking. Now that Spot has discontinued FireEagle, I need another option. Any chance I can get a copy?
I’m looking to add my spot to my wordpress.com blog as well and am wondering if you have published your work yet?
Looks like a great plugin. Judging from the samples you’ve posted it looks like we travel in similar circles. I grew up in South Lake and just moved away a few years ago.
I’m heading down to Central America in the next couple of weeks and wanted to see if I could use your plugin for my trip. Let me know.
I would very much appreciate your plugin. I’m trying to embed a Spot tracker on my website. Primarily to track bike racers. I would be happy to help beta and provide you with feedback.
Thanks Scott
I’m embarking on a 6,000 mile motorcycle journey through the American Northwest in May/June 2012. I’d love to incorporate this plugin into my site (vs. using the SPOT tracking/Google Map site). Please let me know if I can get a copy to incorporate. Thanks!
Hi there, hey did you ever do anything with this plugin? I have a mate who does some rpetty serious missioning in back country , I’d like to publish his Spots in real time on my wordpress site. Please can you get in touch and let me know how this is going.
cheers
Richard Harcourt
Hi, nice plugin! That’s exactly what I’m looking for. Could you send me the required source files to install it in my wordpress? That would be great 😀
Thx
I would very also appreciate your plugin. I like it and its exactly that what I’m looking for.
Thx,
Reto
I am wanting to have a spot track for an east coast bicycle ride (Bal Harbor to Key West) and would like to not have to thru the Spot website to get a tracking map.
Any chance I could get a copy of your plugin? I am only semi-php literate so it would not be easy for me.
Thanks,
ed
Thanks to all who have expressed interest in this plugin. Obviously, I have been remiss in addressing the individual requests for the plugin, so I have finally edited the post to add the link to the plugin packages.
Hello,
This is a very very usefull plugins! I plan to do a 365days world tour with my SPOT 2 and this is exactly what I looking for.
Just to know, is it possible to customize the view? For exemple change the font use to precise the weather.
Another question, if I use my SPOT for every 10 minutes… I will have 52000+ position to add in my website… what is the limitation at this time?
Regards and again : nice job!!
Sounds like a fun trip! I didn’t add a way to customize the view. If you know javascript, you can dive into the code to change the layout. The problem with the number of points is that there is a performance cost for each map point. After a certain number of points, the browser throws a “script time exceeded” error and stops. The number of points on each map is about 125-150 depending on which browser. This corresponds with a day or two worth of travel. The less information you have for each point, the more points you can have. It’s a tradeoff. Eventually, yes, I will work on that issue, but for now you have to break the map route into segments. For example, I write a blog post every day or two, and enter the map shortcode for that time frame, eventually covering the entire trip.
Thank for your response!!
Question : on the findmespot, only 1 month is store. So after this delay you loose your data. Is the script store our map point in a Database or in a XML file? More generally : how is working the script?
Yes, the data is permanently stored in the WP database so the points aren’t lost. There’s a PHP page that converts the data in the database into a temporary XML file that is passed to Google. If you’re handy with Javascript, you can edit the script to suit your needs. The script is commented, although not as much as I should have.
Hi again!!
I still working on my website and with the integration of my Spot device and I have a (simple) request but I don’t know how proceed.
Goal : I want to have on my home page à small map with only the current location. I will also use my position to indicate the weather of the city where I am.
So, I need to have the current position in an individual text file.
Question : Is it possible to add this feature in the next release to allow to have the last position in an text/xml file store in the plugin directory ?
It will be very very great !!
Thanks in advance.
Best regards
Hello!
I installed your plugin but it doesn’t work unfotunately.
I copied the code on my wordpresspage but the world map keeps blanc.
Any idea where to look for the error?
If you use Firefox, the Firebug plugin can be very helpful, since the error console and events tab can give you clues where the problem lies. If you can give me an error message, I can help figure it out. Also, which version of the plugin did you install? Perhaps try a different version to see if it works instead.
Thanks for the plugin! Just what I’m looking for.
I can not seem to get the points to display in the correct time zone. WordPress is set correctly and on my Spot shared page they show up correctly. Do you have any tips on where to look?
Thanks
Is there a way to overlay the kml map on my Spot tracks rather than a seperate map? It would be great if one could see where I am on a predefined route.
Hi (some)guy !
Many thanks for your very great plugin! It’s very useful.
I have just a small problem : at each update, a new point is added even if it’s the same location. On findmespot site I have only one point, but I my own website a lot (I have to delete manually). Have you an idea to resolve the problem?
My findmespot page : http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0lvqGc461KWP86CDVVupczrRpYPI35U4j
My website : http://www.kimitchstrip.com/gps/
Best regards!
Hey there,
I am getting this error when trying to load my maps.
XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://hike4hope.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-findmespot/xml.php?s=2010-01-01+15%3A00%3A00&e=2015-01-01+15%3A00%3A00&id=0-8307258. Origin http://www.hike4hope.org is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
What’s going on?!
For anyone getting a Access-Control-Allow-Origin error a simple edit to the .htaccess file in the root directory will fix the problem. Simply add this line of code:
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin *
Here is what my .htaccess file looks like:
# BEGIN WordPress
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin *
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
Some Guy-
Can you tell me where the location data is stored? I’d like to be able to edit out some points.
Thanks,
Trevor
Is there a way to provide the distance traveled / pace between waypoints? I am no coder but I would love that functionality.
I have found that using the plugin on a third party site outside of wordpress will not automatically update the map.
I am trying to get the update to happen automatically as a cron job on my server, but can’t seem to get it to work.
Any idea on which .php scripts I should be running server side?
Some Guy, you out there?
Solved the problem of the third party map not updating.
You just need to add a cron job through your hosting control panel.
This is the cron job that runs once an hour for me
wget http://yourwebsite.com/index.php >/dev/null 2>&1
index.php being the root of your wordpress site so that the map will update as if someone has viewed your wordpress.
Works great!!
I have added the line to my .htaccess file as mentioned in previous comments, however my page still does not show any tracking points. They appear on my findmespot page, but not my wordpress page. All I get is a world map from google without the points. Is there something else that needs to be done?
Hi,
I’m getting the same issues as you Travelnutz.
I have been using this plug-in for a long time and it has worked great – love it.
But since May 6, 2013 SPOT has changed their API for the xml stream that this add-in relied on. I now get an error message indicating on line 237, the function fsockopen in findmespot.php. I’ved tried updating the variables with the new ones that SPOT changed, but no luck so far as I’m just a hack in programming.
Anyone else getting this issue? Anyone else get it resolved? Hate to lose this addin.
I would like to add this tracking gadget to my site but am technology challenged. Are there some instructions as to how to add to my wordpress blog?
Thanks.
Looks like a great tool