spidertracks – Hardware S1
Spider Tracks ltd
117a the square palmerston north
new zealand 4441
[email protected] www.spidertracks.com
P + 64 6 353 3395
March 2013. This manual was correct at time of printing. Please contact
[email protected] if you have any issues with these instructions.
Button Board
The button board information is divided into two parts: hardware and website.
Hardware
The button board has two buttons, Mark and Monitor.
Mark Button
The Mark button will place a mark on your map that can be interpreted as you choose. The
message that appears in the bubble is customisable on the website (please see the website
section).
The Mark button can also be pressed up to six times, with each number of presses
producing different coloured marks on the map, and different messages. Examples might
be: Landed, Ops Normal, I’m coming home, etc. All of these messages are set up on the
website by the user.
Once the Mark button has been pressed, the blue LED above the button will flash until the
message has been sent.
Monitoring – Normal Mode (Radius LED off)
In this mode, the Spider will behave as normal when it is powered up. For example, if the
unit is set up on distance only to send points at 3 km, it will send every three km (as a
normal Spider would).
If the Monitor button is pressed, the unit will switch to Monitoring mode. In this mode the
update rate will change to 2 minutes, and the website will actively monitor the incoming
messages. If more than two messages don’t arrive at the website within a certain time
frame, the website will generate an alert.
When an alert is generated the user defined cell phones and email addresses will receive
messages informing them that this alert has been generated.
When the aircraft arrives at its destination, the pilot will push the Monitor button to
terminate the flight, and no alerts will be sent. (Ops Normal). It is important to remember to
terminate flights once the aircraft has reached its destination and before powering down,
otherwise alerts will be sent out. In the event that the units is powered down without
stopping the monitoring function, the unit can be powered up again and monitoring can then
be cancelled – this will stop the sending of alerts.
When the Monitor button is pressed, the LED will flash red until the unit receives
confirmation from the website that monitoring is active/inactive. The LED will be on while
monitoring is active, and off while it is inactive.
Monitoring – Radius Mode (Radius LED on)
The second feature of Monitoring is the radius mode. To activate radius mode, press and
hold the Monitor button for 2 seconds. The orange Radius LED will light up.
In this mode, Monitoring will be active as soon as the Spider is turned on. When the pilot
reaches his ‘job’, he presses the Monitor button. This pauses the monitoring, and sets up a
geofence radius (set on the website by the user, default is 10 km). While the aircraft is within
this radius, the unit does not send any points. If the aircraft leaves this radius the unit will
turn monitoring back on automatically.
The pilot can also reactivate monitoring by pressing the Monitor button. Again, the pilot will
have to press the Monitor button when he lands at his destination to terminate the
monitoring.
Alert (Panic) Function
In an emergency the pilot can press both buttons at the same time to generate an alert. This
will cause the Spider to send out points at a high update rate, and the website to
automatically notify the list of cell phones and email addresses that the alert button has
been pressed.
All three LEDs will flash until the website has confirmed that the alert messages have been
sent. The LEDs will then light up solid, and the unit will have to be repowered to reset for
normal operation.
