RouteTracker - Distribution - Sales - Community

RouteTracker 
is a fully integrated Distribution Information System (DIS) that helps to streamline your distribution tasks.  It provides up to the minute, paperless distribution lists for delivery drivers, sales and other Staff.  Drivers can share feedback to the system through sharing on the Google sheet distribution list.

It is comprised of 3 elements;

1. Shareable, secure distribution list that is hosted on the Cloud using Google Sheets
2. Integrated and dynamic mapping for visualizing & understanding your distribution
3. Dynamic Mobile mapping app (iOS and Android) that allows for efficient, accurate and paperless delivery

The system is extremely flexible including;

• The distribution list is a standard spreadsheet format using Google's free & open source application, Sheets.

• The list is secure and can only be accessed by people who are Shared the document
• Shared Users can have different access privileges (edit, view only etc)
• The list is a simple spreadsheet that can be filtered, sorted and otherwise manipulated however the User sees fit
• Each item on the list is geocoded with it's exact latitude & longitude location so that it can be located on the maps and app 

• Dynamic maps are beautiful representations of the data on the list that can be used for many purposes including;
• Drivers distribution maps including display of multiple different magazines for each route  
  
• Sales presentation maps for Advertising
• City zipcode distribution for purposes of defining demographics
• Advertiser maps
• Specialty purpose maps for websites & blogs - Local Dining Guide
• Maps are dynamically linked to the list such that changes made to the list automatically update the map
• Maps are simple HTML web page format and can be integrated into websites in many simple ways

• The app is a full featured iOS Android app with all the simple great features and gestures that people love in apps
•  

• The app can upload the distribution list at any time, and also works without connection to the web
• Each item can be displayed in a group or singly on a map including the User's location
• Directions to the stop can be accessed
• Each location is also displayed in a table view that can be sorted, filtered and searched
• Each location has it's own detail page with all of the data contained on the sheet
• A simple web based version of the app is available for Android devices

 We provide these 3 things integrated into a single product we call RouteTracker and provide this to our Customers as a subscription service.  The service is a standard Software as a Service (SaaS) product.  Pricing is based on the size of your distribution network.

Brew Cruz Map

Here's the beginning of a themed map (linked to a Google sheet);

WhirlyGlobe view objects

Here are a few screenshots of the various objects in Maply-WhirlyGlobe (beautiful stuff!);

MaplyMarker                    MaplyBillboard           MaplyScreenMarker

             

MaplyScreenMarker - 2D, anchored to a MaplyCoordinate point (lat, long), CGSize 100, 100
MaplyMarker - 3D, anchored to a MaplyCoordinate point (lat, long), size is % of Globe = 1.0
MaplyBillboard - A whole 'nudder thing

Feed your images into an NSArray, then add [theViewC addScreenMarkers:theMarkers desc:nil]; and your in!

Here's the resultant Globe with geolocated pics.

RaceTracker QuickStart Guide

Here is a (not so) brief brief set of instructions & snapshots detailing how to build your individual track with MotionX, send it to us for assembly into the race, and finally how to view the race within Google Earth.  Here is a link to the raceTrack for the 2014 EYC Double Angle (4 boats).

Build your boats track with MotionX
MotionX  is a great navigation app for iPhones and it's built locally!  Great general all purpose navigation app.  We've used it for years to track our hiking, sailing, flying and other adventures.  MotionX will generate a very detailed and accurate GPS track of the trip, which can then be emailed to us to assemble into a file that has all of the boats joined together.  The resulting file (.KMZ) will then be made available to people for viewing on Google Earth (or Google Maps) as described below.  Here's how we do it;

Typical Track

Menu Screen

Start Stop Save 

1. Open up MotionX, and navigate to the map or menu via the orange buttons at the bottom of the screen
2. The arrow will center the map view on your location.  Basic navigation is via button or finger pinch/swipes.
3. Goto the Menu screen and Press Record Track button in upper right side
4. The Record Track screen gives you the ability to Start, Pause, Resume, Reset and Save the track as you like.  Because the GPS chip is a power hog you show probably start the track just before the race start.
5. The Track Recorder also scrolls down to display speed, distance and other nice parameters
6. When the Race is finished Press the Pause button and the Press Save to share the track
7. The next screen asks if you would like to share the track.  Press Share this Track
8. Fill out the Boat name and comment fields and send to my email - CPLamb@Pacbell.net
9. We will then assemble all the boats together and resend you all a joined file (.KMZ) for the whole race.  This file can be viewed in Google Earth as described below.

Share to Others

Send to CPLamb

Viewing the race within Google Earth
The attached file is a zip file (.KMZ) with all the files required to view the race.  It is a collection of all of the individual boat tracks and some other stuff.  The file can be opened up directly by Google Earth.  Here's a quickstart;

1. Open the attached DoubleAngle0901.KMZ file in Google Earth 
   
2. Go to the bottom of the directory window on the upper left side of the program
3. And select the filename (SCYC11152013RaceTracker) and open the folder to see all the related files
4. Click on the small folder button on the lower right of the Places screen to open the playback tool
5. The playback tool is in the lower left corner of the view screen.  It has forward and fast forward  controls that you can use to view the track.
6.  

Loading the Race Track into MotionX
<DANGER - This track is for fun ONLY do not depend on it for actual navigation>
The DAR marks & race legs have been assembled into a file that can be preloaded into your MotionX app.  The file name is DoubleAngle2014Course.GPX. Here's how to load it into MotionX;

1. email the file to yourself.
2. Open the file on your iPhone by pressing the file icon
3. Select the Open in MotionX-GPS
4. Select the green Import button at the top of the screen
5. Goto the Map & the buoy marks and race legs should be displayed

If there any questions feel free to contact me;

Chris Lamb

831-234-9927

CPLamb@Pacbell.net

Working with Dynamic Maps using Google Maps & Spreadsheets

This is a quick start guide to building & adding data to a Google Map created with GPS Visualizer.  Heres how to do it, quickly, with further info & details below.

1. Open the Distribution List spreadsheet in Google docs.
2. Open Google Maps in another window.
3. Size both so you can work easily with Copy <cmd>c and Paste <cmd>v between the windows
4. Copy <cmd>c the business name on the spreadsheet and Paste <cmd>v it into the search ield on the Google Map
5. Find the right business ( you may have to add in the city field to get the right item) and paste it into the Street field on the spreadsheet
6. Repeat steps 4 - 5 until you're done

---Easy Peasey---

Now for some other gory details, please refer to these previous posts;
creating-maps-with-gpsvisualizer
dynamic-linking-of-map-spreadsheet

For locations that DON'T resolve with GPS Visualizers  routine - You can hover over the location on Google maps and the latitude longitude values are displayed.  They can then be manually entered on the spreadsheet.
Google API key -  AIzaSyCOUBN9LPQ0lSMByTWE1JtmAAx35eo2CYs
Bing API key - (use this to geocode big lists)
Am9Z9PSFoZ6sRVh7x5H7SIAFGI1LTJxR7LU-qK4WaJo18DnYoGIk9ORF98_VLDRz
Mapquest API key -  MIUAvSGuQS27RAYgQX4KRrBAOiDKVOHH

Example of the dynamic link URL (note the gid at the end) - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yhmKwXDLn40oZTBzPOTja09V8z3x1kVwQNR1qI8Ie3U/view#gid=293688314

Turn-by-Turn Routing for your app

The following method takes the User's location and the destination's location and sends them to the iPhone's native Maps app for their Turn-by-Turn routing.  Most excellent!!

Looks like this:

The method:

- (IBAction)turnByRouting:(UIBarButtonItem *)sender {
    NSLog(@"Opens the native Map app's turn-by-turn navigation");

//business location
    // test location
    // CLLocationCoordinate2D coords = CLLocationCoordinate2DMake(37.0469,-122.0308);

// Gets the coordinates from the single pinsArray object
    NSString *latitude = [[self.pinsArray objectAtIndex:0] objectForKey:@"latitude"];
    NSString *longitude = [[self.pinsArray objectAtIndex:0] objectForKey:@"longitude"];
    CLLocationCoordinate2D coords = CLLocationCoordinate2DMake([latitude
          doubleValue], [longitude doubleValue]);
      
    MKPlacemark *place = [[MKPlacemark alloc] initWithCoordinate:coords addressDictionary:nil];
    MKMapItem *mapItem = [[MKMapItem alloc]initWithPlacemark:place];
  
//current location
    MKMapItem *mapItem2 = [MKMapItem mapItemForCurrentLocation];
      
    NSArray *mapItems = @[mapItem, mapItem2];
      
    NSDictionary *options = @{
        MKLaunchOptionsDirectionsModeKey:MKLaunchOptionsDirectionsModeDriving,
        MKLaunchOptionsMapTypeKey:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:MKMapTypeStandard],
        MKLaunchOptionsShowsTrafficKey:@YES
    };      
    [MKMapItem openMapsWithItems:mapItems launchOptions:options];
}