Live tracking

We offer each par­tic­i­pant live track­ing dur­ing the event by run­ning a free app pro­vided by our spon­sors Xarepo AB and IT4U Swe­den AB. This means that the au­di­ence and friends back home can see where you and all other par­tic­i­pants are on the course live, di­rectly here on the web.

As participant you make the event both easier to survey and more enjoyable to follow if you choose to participate in live track. Therefore we of course want as many as possible of the participants to join.

Instruction video

The in­struc­tion video below (in Swedish) de­scribes every­thing you need to know to use live­track in the event. The text on this page also con­tains the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion and is avail­able in Eng­lish.

The live track app

The app is called Xarepo Live Tracker and can be down­loaded now today for An­droid and Apple phones:

• Xarepo Live Tracker for An­droid
• Xarepo Live Tracker for iOS

The app uses the mo­bile phone’s GPS to con­tin­u­ously track your lo­ca­tion, which is sent to a server about every ten sec­onds so it can be dis­played on a map. It’s generic, ie you can use it for any­thing you want, for ex­am­ple if you’re on a long train­ing ac­tiv­ity and want to share your po­si­tion with your friends. Nei­ther reg­is­tra­tion nor user ac­count is re­quired, and to look at the map there’s no need for an app. You just share a unique link that any­one can open in a web browser. So you can try the app today on your next work­out if you want.

In ad­di­tion to every­day use, by scan­ning a QR code the app can be set for an event, which is how it will be used for Stor­uman Gravel. Track­ing and tim­ing are then au­to­mat­i­cally ac­ti­vated when the event starts, and all par­tic­i­pants using the app are shown on the same map that au­di­ence and of­fi­cials can watch. The app is also pro­grammed with the phone num­ber to the event leader so you can call if you have any prob­lems dur­ing the event.

You get the QR code when you get the num­ber tag / bib. All you need to do is in­stall the app, scan the QR code (with the app), enter your bib num­ber and put the mo­bile in your pocket (in­side a plas­tic bag if it can’t with­stand mois­ture). The app takes care of it­self. So there’s no need to pre­pare in any way ex­cept to have the mo­bile charged of course and an ac­tive sub­scrip­tion so that the app can con­nect to the server via in­ter­net.

There’s no re­quire­ment to use the app, but if you can do that it’s some­thing the au­di­ence and of­fi­cials will ap­pre­ci­ate.

If you have an ex­otic op­er­a­tor the cov­er­age may not be suf­fi­cient for the po­si­tion to be re­ported across the en­tire course, but as soon as you get within cov­er­age, your po­si­tion and track is up­dated.

If you are an or­ga­nizer and want to use the app for your event, con­tact us and we can tell you more.

Information for Android users

Important for Android users: many An­droid phones have ag­gres­sive battery-​saving fea­tures that kill apps from in­de­pen­dent third-​party de­vel­op­ers when they run in the back­ground. It has been a known prob­lem for a long time among de­vel­op­ers who make apps with live track­ing abil­ity, but un­for­tu­nately only the phone man­u­fac­tur­ers can solve the prob­lem. For­tu­nately, the sit­u­a­tion has im­proved with the very lat­est phones, but some mod­els are still tricky.

This means that in order for Xarepo Live Tracker to be able to run con­tin­u­ously in the back­ground and re­port your po­si­tion through­out the event on your par­tic­u­lar phone, you may need to change some of the phone’s settings.

The web­site “Don’t kill my app” de­scribes how to set up dif­fer­ent phone mod­els so that back­ground apps can work for a longer pe­riod of time. It’s often the case that you need to add the app to a so-​called “white list” which ex­cludes it from the bat­tery sav­ing func­tion. Try to get help from an ex­pe­ri­enced phone user if you need it.

Of course, it’s pos­si­ble to in­stall Xarepo Live Tracker today and test it on your own in ad­vance to see that it works on your phone. If the app is killed while run­ning in the back­ground, an error mes­sage (“App killed while track­ing”, see image) is dis­played the next time you open the app. To make sure it works, start track­ing and leave it in the back­ground (with­out look­ing at the app) for a cou­ple of hours, test it on the next long train­ing ses­sion, for ex­am­ple. If you turn on the screen and look at the app reg­u­larly, the phone can keep it alive longer be­cause it seems like you are using it ac­tively, some­thing you do not do when you are doing the event, of course. At the event, the app should run in the back­ground for maybe sev­eral hours with­out touch­ing the phone at all, and it’s in these use cases that some phones kill the app and then of course the track­ing stops.