Are location based alerts accurate?

[hdsalinas]

I created a couple of location based alerts just to try out this new feature in IOS5.

I set up an alert to trigger when I had dropped my kid at school and the other one when I have arrived at work

Well the first alarm when off while I was still 6 or 7 blocks away from the school.

yesterday I set it to alert me when leaving work but it did not go off until I was a good block away from the building. However this morning was right on, it rang as I was parking in front of our building.

Does it work with actual gps coordinates or with the street address information provided by google maps?

 

[BLee17]

Yeah still think they are ironing out the kinks. Some of my messages worked, others didn't.

 

[Jay42]

From what I understand, it uses a combination of cell towers and wifi access points (skyhook) to get your general location. This avoids heavy use of the GPS all the time to monitor your location, which kills battery life. Could be that the algorithm (the reliance on cell triangulation) needs to be tweaked to get this to function correctly without killing your battery.

 

[globalist]

Does it work with actual gps coordinates or with the street address information provided by google maps?

I'm afraid it's the latter.

 

[thewitt]

The Geo fence is set based on whatever information you give it, however if you are expecting it to go off in less than 100m or so after you leave someplace you will be disappointed.

Here's why...

I'm at the Mall. I set a reminder to tell me to pick up milk when I leave the mall. How big IS the mall. Reminders doesn't know. I don't want to be reminded when I walk from Sears to Penneys, I want to be reminded when I drive out of the parking lot..

That's the conundrum that Reminders faces. When did you actually leave...

 

[ladytonya]

I was playing with it yesterday just to try it out, set up a reminder to tell me to do actual homework instead of playing on Facebook when I went to Barnes & Noble and it was funny because the reminder went off as I sat down on the chair to boot up my laptop after getting my latte in the cafe. It was perfect timing! Probably completely coincidental that it happened as perfectly as it did, but still pretty cool. I plan on using this a LOT!

 

[born4sky]

how do you set up location based reminders?

 

[hdsalinas]

I really like the idea of location based reminders I think there should be more options.

You should be able specify a perimeter, perhaps 50, 100 or 150 meters. So when you leave/enter that area, it would know where it is.

Or use wifi networks. For instance, as soon as it connects to my home or office network it should know where I am, without the use of GPS or other calculations... that simple.

This way you could save locations (like stores, coffee shops, supermarkets, offices, etc) based on their wifi network name. This would be great in places like a mall where a GPS signal would be impossible to get.

This has great potential for future applications. For example, your mac knows how much ink your printer has, and if you are running low on black ink, it could tell your iPhone to remind you to get ink for your printer when you walk into an office depot.... or batteries for my iMacs keyboard.

The problem with the street info from google maps, is that in my case, our office is next to a long straight road, and the only address info that google has for our office is the street name/number. So in theory any point along that road is our office.

just a few thoughts...

 

[globalist]

I really like the idea of location based reminders I think there should be more options.

You should be able specify a perimeter, perhaps 50, 100 or 150 meters. So when you leave/enter that area, it would know where it is.

Or use wifi networks. For instance, as soon as it connects to my home or office network it should know where I am, without the use of GPS or other calculations... that simple.

This way you could save locations (like stores, coffee shops, supermarkets, offices, etc) based on their wifi network name. This would be great in places like a mall where a GPS signal would be impossible to get.

This has great potential for future applications. For example, your mac knows how much ink your printer has, and if you are running low on black ink, it could tell your iPhone to remind you to get ink for your printer when you walk into an office depot.... or batteries for my iMacs keyboard.

The problem with the street info from google maps, is that in my case, our office is next to a long straight road, and the only address info that google has for our office is the street name/number. So in theory any point along that road is our office.

just a few thoughts...

Exactly my thoughts!

 

[gentlefury]

I set a reminder for when I arrived at home and actually forgot about it...I pulled up to the driveway and my phone started beeping...made me laugh.

 

[lewys]

i have used it around 10 times and 9 times it has been accurate and alerted me in the right place even when not giving an actual address and just selecting a big lake or a roundabout.

the one time it didn't work it never went off even when i went past there twice