Performance tracker
Gaia Community,
Below is a feature idea that I emailed Gaia recently. They have encouraged me to post the concept here.
Hello Gaia GPS! Are you familiar with the Strava cycling performance tracking app? In case you are not, I encourage you to check them out at www.strava.com. To be completely honest, I have never used the Strava app. And, the reason for that is because I am an avid motorcycle rider and racer. Strava tends to cater to the sports involving human-powered movement. Once an internal combustion engine is involved in a sport, the Strava support is non-existent. Please see the Strava community new feature idea thread at the following url: https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/208835587-Strava-for-Adventure-Motorcycle-and-Moto-X-Communities?page=1#comments
I am an avid supporter of Gaia GPS. I encourage everyone I know to use your app whenever hiking, motorcycling, off-roading, bicycling, mountain biking, etc. I would be more than happy to become a premium Gaia member if you were to offer a performance tracking module that caters to all competitive mobility sports, including motorized and non-motorized. Let's leave the elitist human-powered elements behind and offer a performance tracker for anyone with a passion for competition, be it competition on foot, bicycle, horse, wing-suit, paraglider, motorcycle, quad, side-by-side, buggy, sports car, etc.
I've recently taken up riding a Peloton bike and really enjoy the ability to see my own statistics as well as how I compare to others that have taken, or are taking, the classes that I enjoy. Similarly, if I were to ride my motorcycle on an established trail where others have logged their trips and where I could compare my performance either to my last trip on that trail, or to other's on the same trail, I would find great value in this.
Please review the Strava community new feature idea that I linked to above. I hope that you will decide that this is a viable option that Gaia can offer.
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This is an interesting idea and I can appreciate why it could be attractive. As a user of many trails/tracks/roads via many types of travel (hike, run, bike, 4x4, and expedition truck) I would be reluctant to encourage motorized vehicles to compete for fastest segments on publicly accessed backroads, tracks and trails. It seems a means of encouraging potentially unsafe speeds that could increase accidents between users - I'm trying to get a fastest segment in my Ford 4x4 Expedition going east to west on a particular BLM track while you're doing the same on your Husky 610TE going west to east. We meet on a blind curve and one of us requests a medical evacuation via InReach.
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That is an excellent point. I've been in plenty of head-on situations. One of which ended my weekend of riding as my body and my bike were both damaged beyond continued immediate use. However, there are plenty of trails in OHV parks as well as motocross tracks which are designated for only one direction of travel and it is these locations, especially, where a feature of this nature would be useful. Furthermore, almost all of the mountain biking I've done is on multi-use trails where hikers and equestrians, for example, are frequently encountered. Yet, Strava-like performance tracking is available for the mountain biking crowd on these very same trails. Granted, we don't want to encourage "racing" in uncontrolled trail situations for the sake of safety. I guess, then, that I'm torn over this issue for the general populace. However, for me, I intend to devise some way to track my performance on trails that I frequent while maintaining some semblance of personal accountability and if Gaia chooses not to provide the functionality that I desire, then I will be forced to find it elsewhere.
Thank you, snell, for your input. It is greatly appreciated.
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Hello Tom:
Thanks for the prompt reply. Are you familiar with "Ride With GPS" (RWGPS)? It might help. While designed for bicycles, I use it for hiking, driving, road and dirt bicycling, and packrafting! It tracks your path, records heart rate, speed, elevation, etc. Basically it's just like Stravia without the segments feature. Thus you can track your training and compare you to you and to your "friends", but there is no general comparison to other users. It might be a good compromise - promoting training records, but perhaps not "racing" where racing could be harmful.
If you decide to try it, here are couple of tricks I use to keep my various activities separated. I set up separate "Gear" for each activity. Thus I have two bicycles and three cars entered as "devices". I also have "Hiking/Backpacking", and "Packrafting" as devices. When I record an activity I assign the corresponding "device." That allows me to look at totals and other stats per device.
Usually, I record and activity on Gaia and RWGPS simultaneously. I use the RWGPS record for the training and Gaia for the mapping/recording of tracks.
There are different levels of membership with the RWGPS. I use the premium level, but I'm not sure it is necessary for the features addressed above. If you explore it and would like further suggestions on it's optimization let me know.
Howard
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This seems out of scope to me. The reason I am responding here is I think Gaia currently has too much feature creep already. They have a lot of features which do not work correctly already and I would not like to see them add more features which would dilute their resources further. Especially since this is a pretty far from their core capabilities.
What I think is a better idea is for Gaia GPS to provide an application program interface (API) to access data. Simple tasks such as aggregate import/export tracks and or waypoints doesn't exist and people have suggested a programming API might be the solution.
The success of Facebook was partially due to the way Facebook allowed apps to access the data which made the site more interesting and featured.
I think providing an API or allowing users to join a partner site which hosts the kind of features you want is a much better solution than trying to have Gaia support everything natively.
Finally, I exclusively use Gaia for hiking (read as walking), I am very much opposed to racing, for example mountain bikes, on single track trails. I routinely encounter mountain bike riders on single track trails riding too fast and out of control and have nearly been hit many times. I hike without ear phones partially so I can be very attentive and step to the side to be out of the way as soon as I hear them. I get that people ride up to the top of the hill so they can speed down these beautiful hills. But they are the largest threat to me on the trail.
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Gaia Needs an API! If I could export my Mountain bike rides, trail runs, hikes, etc, I would be able to stop recording using two different apps. Upvote this issue if you want an API! https://help.gaiagps.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115006615847-Public-API-for-Automated-Uploading-of-Waypoint-Data-to-gaia-com
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