Safety signals - Strava Beacon or Garmin LiveTrack?

I do most of my outdoor rides solo, and for a while I’ve had my Garmin Edge paired with my iPhone set to send both Garmin LiveTrack and Strava Beacon to my wife (whether she’s actually paying attention? That’s another topic!). Occurs to me I probably only need one. Anyone have thoughts on which is better? I like that Beacon is delivered as a text, rather than email with LiveTrack. Of course I have to pay for Strava Premium (what do they call it now?) to use Beacon.

I use garmin live track.

The email is perfect for us but it can also post to twitter or to a facebook set of contacts.

Issue with strava (or other phone apps for me) is I cant trust the phone not to kill the process (may be a known issue with my one+).

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Good point on Twitter/FB contact options. I’ll have to look at those. Actually makes me wonder - you can send emails as text messages with a certain formulation of phonenumber@carrier. Maybe I actually can get the Garmin notes into my wife’s texts???

Also, on your phone app point, aren’t they both reliant on a phone app? If my iOS Garmin Connect app isn’t actually paired with the Edge during the ride then I get no LiveTrack, no?

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You are right on the phone point but for some reason garmin connect is rock solid and does not close while anything else I try (glympse and all it’s competitors) close at random. Strava also warns me that my device is likely to close at random if I try to start an activity in the app.

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If you and your wife have an iPhone, you can also share your current position with the „Friends” app. It’s built into iOS. It doesn’t feature an impact alarm but from what I have read, a lot of Garmin users turn it off due to false alarms.

So if you don’t need the alarm, you can use what comes for free from Apple.

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WhatsApp and Telegram now also support live location sharing for no cost obviously. I don’t know if the Strava Beacon and Garmin LiveTrack offer any extra features apart from current location. But maybe these two are a very easy and accessible alternatives.

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At least for me, I tried Garmin LiveTrack and it ate my iPhone 6S & Garmin 820 batteries so that in about an hour both were at about 50% charge. So for me, it was completely useless.

My wife uses the built-in Apple Find My Friend feature, which doesn’t eat my iPhone battery.

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I set up Garmin Livetrack long ago so that automatically gets used on every ride but it does not perform consistently for me. My wife and I share our locations with Find My Friends on the iPhone and that has actually ended up being really useful for much more than cycling since we both tend to have our phones with us no matter what activities we are doing so that has become the de facto tracking app in our house.

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Good points about Find My Friends. I’d forgotten about that.

You can just share your location using google maps.

Google Maps also supports location sharing if you have some destination put into navigate. Once you start your trip it will share your location until you arrive at your destination, regardless of how much you may deviate from the route (I think). Haven’t really ever tested this on bike, but used it traveling lots of times. Of course no incident detection alarm either, but at least people can see your location. Can share through email and text I think. Others may have to have Google Maps app to see though, I’m not sure.

I use the Wahoo companion app with my Bolt and I love it. They get an email and text whenever I start a ride without me having to remember to do so, and the entire time they see my breadcrumb trail, stats (current and average for ride), and when I’ve stopped.

Oh, and I like that it’s free - given that you have a compatible Wahoo device.

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Those are also some of the pluses of LiveTrack and Beacon (minus the fee) - it happens automatically whenever you ride, sends your recipient a reminder each time, and has your full track and stats.

The Bolt also shows where you are going, if you are riding a Route.

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Ooo, didn’t know this. Thanks!!

With Google maps, you set up permanent until revoked sharing with specific people. The location sharing option in the menu let’s you find a specific person by tapping their I’d image in a list. I’ve found it isn’t always up to the minute and sometimes gets a little lost. Describing Android version so iOS may vary.

I use this to check my son’s location because he always forget to text safe arrival when bike commuting.

So does my wife. I have a Wahoo BOLT and the tracking feature leaves much to be desired.

I cannot get mine to work correctly. Maybe I should contact Wahoo’s customer service… :thinking:

With the Bolt and tracking…make sure you open the companion app before your ride.

No issues if you do this prior to your ride.

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Thanks. I didn’t know WhatsApp had that now.