Tracking

A Nomad feature, seen in Sensa Radar

Tracking is recorded by the Nomad system in your van, and it is included with it at no extra cost. You look at what it records in the mySensa portal and in Sensa Radar, which is why it is described alongside them here.

It is not part of Radar on its own, and Radar Premium does not include it: a Premium subscription with no Nomad van has nothing to record. See what Premium does unlock.

Tracking records where your Nomad van has been, so you can look back at your journeys on a map. It also lets you share where the van is now with a friend or relative, and it is what FollowMe publishes a trip from. It comes with your Nomad van at no extra cost, and it is off until you turn it on.

In development

Tracking is built but has not yet been released to vans in the field. This page describes how it works so you know what to expect.

What it records

While Tracking is on, your van notes its position roughly once a minute while it is moving, along with the time. Nothing is recorded while the van is parked, apart from an occasional position so a journey can be shown to have finished where it actually finished.

Positions are grouped into journeys automatically. A gap of about half an hour starts a new one, so a day of driving with a long lunch stop becomes two journeys rather than one. Very short shuffles, like moving a few metres around a car park, are discarded rather than cluttering your list.

If your van loses signal

Recording does not need a connection. Your van writes every position to itself first and sends them on afterwards, so a drive through a valley with no signal is recorded just as completely as one through a city. They go up in batches once you are back in range, and you do not have to do anything to make it happen.

Your van holds roughly three days of driving. Past that it starts dropping the oldest positions to make room for the newest, on the reasoning that if something has to go, the start of a long-ago journey matters less than where you are now.

Three things follow from this that are worth knowing:

• Nothing is recorded twice. Positions stay in the van until we have confirmed we hold them, so a van that loses power partway through sending simply sends them again. You still get one clean journey.
• Journeys appear in mySensa only once the van has uploaded them. A trip through a dead zone will not show up until you are back in range. Nothing has been lost, it is still in the vehicle.
• Turning the switch off pauses rather than discards. Positions already recorded stay in the van, and go up if you switch Tracking back on later. To be rid of them, delete them, which is a separate and deliberate act.

There is more on what does and does not work without a connection in Working offline.

Turning it on

Tracking is a single switch on your van's Sensa screens, on the Settings, then Vehicle tab. Turn it on and your van starts recording; turn it off and it stops.

Turning the switch on is how you agree to Tracking. While it is off, your van records nothing and sends us nothing, so nothing happens until you choose to switch it on. There is no separate agreement to give in the Radar app.

Everyone in the van is recorded

This is worth saying plainly. Tracking records the vehicle, so everyone travelling in it is recorded, not just the person who turned it on. We have no way to ask your passengers.

Please tell the people who travel with you. While Tracking is recording, the van shows an indicator so it is not happening invisibly.

Seeing your journeys

Your journeys appear in the mySensa portal, the online area for your Sensa account, on the Tracking tab. You will see whether Tracking is currently on, a list of journeys with the date, the time, and the distance, and you can choose one to draw it on the map.

Where the van is now appears separately, as a small map on your mySensa home page and on your vehicle's page. It shows the last position your van reported, and it says how long ago that was if the van has been quiet for a while. It is drawn only while Tracking is switched on, because a map is a claim about right now: if you switched Tracking off an hour ago and then drove two hundred miles, a map would show you confidently in the wrong county. Your journeys stay on the list either way, because a dated journey makes no such claim.

Only your household can see your journeys. Nobody else has access to them, and our own staff cannot look at them.

How long we keep it

You choose. The options are one year, two years, three years, or forever, and it is two years unless you change it. Anything older than the period you choose is deleted automatically.

Forever is a real option if you want your whole travelling life on a map. We do not make it the default, because keeping a detailed record of a vehicle's movements indefinitely is a bigger thing than it sounds, and it should be something you chose rather than something that happened to you.

Getting your journeys out

You can export everything at any time, as either:

• GPX, which almost every mapping and walking app can open. This is the one to pick if you are not sure.
• GeoJSON, if you want to do something more technical with it.

Exports are the full detail, not the simplified version drawn on the map.

Deleting your journeys

You can:

• Delete a single journey.
• Delete all your journeys, leaving Tracking switched on for future trips.
• Delete everything and stop. Turning the switch off stops the van recording, and you can then erase every position and journey we hold for your van. We tell you exactly how many we deleted.

Deleting is real deletion, not hiding. We cannot get it back for you afterwards, so export first if you might want a copy. Exporting and deleting your journeys always work, because getting your data out and deleting it are your rights.

Location sharing

Location sharing lets somebody see where your van is right now, on a map, without a Sensa account. It is there for the reason you would expect: if something goes wrong, a friend or a relative can find you. It is free, like Tracking itself, and it works only while Tracking is switched on.

It is a live position, not a delayed one. A delayed answer to "where are they now" is not an answer, so the safeguards are elsewhere: a code, an expiry, and a Stop button you can reach from your phone.

Creating a link

You create a link in the mySensa portal, on the Tracking tab, with Share my location. You do it from your phone rather than from the van, because the person you are sharing with is not in the vehicle: sending them a link means using the phone that already has their number.

You choose four things:

• Who is it for. A name, so you can tell your links apart later. "Mum", say. Only you see it.
• What the vehicle is called. This is the one thing on the form the other person reads, so it is worth a moment's thought: the name that suits the family is not always the name to hand a garage. Leave it blank and Radar falls back to the van's own name.
• For how long. One hour, eight hours, 24 hours, or until you turn it off. Eight hours unless you change it.
• How precise. Exact, about 1 km, or about 10 km. Exact is the usual answer, because this exists so somebody can find you. The rougher options are for "the family can see roughly where we are" without giving away the doorstep.

You then get a link and a 6-digit code. Send link hands the link to your phone's usual sharing options, or copies it, and Copy code copies the code.

Send the link and the code separately. A single message containing both is all anyone needs to see where you are, and forwarding it passes on everything. Sending them by two different routes is what makes the code worth having.

The code is shown once and we cannot show it to you again. We store it scrambled, so nobody at Sensa can read it either. If you lose it, stop the link and make a new one, which takes a few seconds.

If your van has never recorded a position, there is nothing to share yet. Turn Tracking on in the van, let it report once, and try again.

What the other person sees

They open the link on any phone or computer, type in the 6-digit code, and get a map with your van on it and a line saying how recently it reported: "Updated just now", "Updated 4 minutes ago". If you chose a rough precision it says so, for example "approximate to 1 km".

They do not need a Sensa account, they are not asked to make one, and they see nothing else about you: no journeys, no history, no saved places, just where the vehicle is.

While somebody is watching, your van reports its position more often than usual, so the map keeps up as you drive.

If they get the code wrong five times, the link locks for 15 minutes.

Keeping a share, so the code is only needed once

Opening a shared link needs no account and never will. What is tedious is the second look, where they have to find the message with the code in it all over again.

So once the map is on screen, the page offers to save it. Saving needs a Sensa account, and it is free to make one. You do not need a Nomad van to keep a share somebody has sent you, only to send one.

Once saved, the vehicle appears in Radar under More, then Saved shares, and on the Saved shares tab in Settings, which is where saving lands you. It also appears as a pin on their map alongside everything else they are looking at, so a glance is a glance rather than a hunt through old messages.

Saving grants nothing extra. It is only reachable by somebody who already had the link and the code, and what changes is that the permission is attached to their account instead of to a link that can be forwarded. They can Remove anything they have saved, and a share that has ended stays on their list saying so rather than quietly disappearing, which would just look like a fault.

Who has saved your link

On the Tracking tab in mySensa, each of your live links names the people who have saved it, with a Remove beside each one. Removing somebody stops that person without touching anybody else the link was sent to, which before was only possible by stopping the link for everyone.

We email you the first time somebody saves one of your links, because somebody keeping hold of where your vehicle is is worth knowing about.

Viewers who never signed in are still only counted, not named. Somebody who saved a share chose to be known; somebody who just opened a link did not.

When there is nothing to show

The page says so plainly rather than looking broken.

• Out of signal or parked somewhere remote: it shows your last known position, clearly marked as the last known one and how old it is. In an emergency, where you were three hours ago is the most useful thing anyone has.
• Tracking switched off: sharing stops. Off means your van sends us nothing, so it would be wrong to keep showing a position after you have used the switch.
• Link stopped or expired: it says the link has ended, and they can ask you for a new one.

Stopping a link

Your live links appear on the Tracking tab in mySensa, each with a Stop button. Stopping takes effect within about half a minute on the other person's screen, wherever they are and whether or not they still have the page open.

Turning the Tracking switch off in the van stops every share too, and it is the off switch to reach for in the vehicle: no phone, no typing. It pauses rather than cancels, though. A link that has not expired starts working again if you turn Tracking back on, so use Stop if you want it finished with.

Each link also shows how many times it has been opened and when it was last opened. That is the one signal that tells you a link has been passed on further than you intended. We count the openings; we do not record anything about the people doing the opening.

Things worth knowing

• Anyone who has the link and the code can see where you are until the link expires or you stop it. Treat them like a key, and keep an eye on how often the link has been opened.
• The page is not indexed by search engines, and the secret part of the link is built so that your browser never sends it to a web server, so it cannot end up in logs or in a link preview in a group chat.
• Everyone in the van is being shared, not just you, in the same way Tracking records everyone. Say so before you send a link.
• This is about where you are, not where you have been. To share a trip you are making with people you invite, a few days behind rather than live, see FollowMe.