"Emergency" button to show your lat/long coordinates in decimal degrees

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johngo

• July 27, 2017 20:05

Imagine you are a lost/injured hiker. You decide you need a rescue, and you have cell coverage. You open Gaia GPS, press the emergency button, and on your screen you see:

- Your latitude longitude coordinates in decimal degrees printed out in huge 30 point font

- A "+/- xx meters" showing you the rough accuracy of you were displayed position

- An option to text these coordinates and a message to someone

You send a text to your friend at home, they contact 911, and 911 sends out a rescue team to get you.

Yes, if you are an experienced user you can figure out your decimal degree coordinates in other ways, but for users who novices with the app, This could be a large and obvious way to get immediate help. 

I use a great free navigation app for mountain biking called trailforks, and it has this feature. I also have a standalone app called "UTM position mailer" that does this, which I think now cost $2. I think this would be a nice addition to Gaia, that might someday literally save a life.

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  capndave

  • July 28, 2017 17:53

  Assume that if you can text you are on cell network.

  iPhone you can text your location in 2 seconds.  Not sure about Android.

   

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  johngo

  • July 28, 2017 20:25

  Capndave, yes, you are on cell network. Lots of iPhone users people do not know how to share their location with someone. Lots of iPhone users do not know that the compass shows your latitude longitude coordinates, provided location services are turned on for the compass. It doesn't show it in decimal degree format, but it's better than nothing.

  Why not make it as easy as possible for someone who is perhaps lost / injured / stressed out to share their coordinates with someone?

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  capndave

  • July 28, 2017 21:47

  Fair enough - I was definitely thinking in terms of somebody who knew how to text their position.

  I suppose anything that helps a user get out of a distress situation has my vote.

  So ... +1 for your emergency coordinates feature.

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  garet1962

  • August 31, 2017 00:50

  In addition to the effectiveness of displaying on the screen during an emergency call (which I wholeheartedly support) I would like to be able to copy decimal lat/long to the clipboard so I can text a friend my location as well as record information in another database program. If there's a way to do this on Android then I haven't found it. I have another simple GPS program that can copy lat/long to the clipboard, but would like to be able to do it from Gaia. 

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