FollowMe
FollowMe publishes the journeys your Nomad van records, and it is included with it at no extra cost. You author a trip in the mySensa portal, and the people you send it to look at it in Sensa Radar.
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 publish. The people following you need neither a van nor a subscription. See what Premium does unlock.
FollowMe lets you share a trip with the people you choose while you are still on it. You give the trip a name, send them a link, and they get a map of where you have been, with your notes and photos pinned along it.
It comes with your Nomad van at no extra cost, and it is built on Tracking, so Tracking has to be switched on in the van for a trip to collect anything.
FollowMe 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 is, and what it is not
It is deliberately behind. A trip is published at least a day late, and you choose how far behind. It also stops short of the van in distance, so it never says where you are right now. If what you want is a live position, that is location sharing, which is a different thing with a code and an expiry on it.
Nobody stumbles across it. There is no public page, nothing to search for, and no way for a stranger to ask to follow. Somebody gets in because you sent them a link, and you can take that away again.
Somebody follows one trip, not your van. Letting a neighbour watch your fortnight in France does not let them see every drive you have made since you bought the van. Each trip is shared separately.
Starting a trip
Trips live in the mySensa portal, the online area for your Sensa account, under Control, then Tracking, then FollowMe. You do this on your phone rather than on the van's screen, because it is where the camera and the keyboard are.
Choose Start a trip and you set five things:
- What shall we call it. "France 2026", say. Your followers see this name.
- How far behind, in days. One, two, three, or seven. There is no "live" option, on purpose: publishing where the van is right now to a standing audience is a different and much bigger thing than sharing it with one person for an afternoon.
- How precise. Exact, nearest 1 km, or nearest 5 km. This blurs each position.
- How close can they see. Off, 1 km, 2 km, 5 km, or 10 km, and 5 km unless you change it. It is not the same question as precision, and there is more on it below.
- Hide the area around home. This uses the place you have saved as Home in Radar. The published route stops short of it and starts again on the other side, rather than drawing a straight line across your street. It only says your home is hidden when it genuinely is, so if you have never saved a Home in Radar it will tell you so instead of promising something it cannot do.
Your trip runs until you end it. While it is running, everything Tracking records inside that window becomes part of it once it is old enough to publish.
The Tracking switch in the van is still the master switch. A trip started while Tracking is off collects nothing at all, and your followers see an empty map.
Why "how close can they see" exists
Being a day behind protects you while you are moving. It protects nothing at all once you have stopped, because a car park you were in yesterday is the car park you are in today: wait long enough and the delay hands over your current spot, while still looking as though it is working.
So the route also stops a set distance short of wherever the van is now. Nothing inside that circle is published, however old it is and however anyone asks for it.
Both rules apply and the tighter one wins. The cost is worth knowing: a line that stops short does tell a follower you have stopped somewhere inside that circle. That is a real thing to give away, and it is a much smaller one than the exact pitch.
How followers see you
To start with, a trip is published with no author at all. Your followers see its name and nothing about you.
If you would like to be named, set a travelling name and a photograph on the FollowMe page, under How followers see you. Both are optional and either works on its own.
This is deliberately separate from your Sensa account, and it is never filled in from it. The name on your account is the name on your card, and the photo there was chosen for a settings page. A trip's link can travel further than the people you sent it to, and "Bertha and crew" is a perfectly reasonable thing to be out there instead.
You set it once for the household rather than once per trip, so changing it later reaches every trip you have already published.
Letting people follow
There are two ways in, and you can use both on the same trip.
One link you can send to everybody
Choose Create a link and you get a single web address for that trip. Send it to a group chat, a family mailing list, or whoever you like.
Anybody holding the link can look, with no account. Making somebody sign up to see a photograph of a castle is friction with nothing behind it, and it is the same bargain location sharing already makes: the link is the key, and switching it off is your control.
Underneath the map, the page offers signing in as an upgrade rather than a toll gate. Somebody who signs in with a free Sensa account can save the trip to their own list, be told when there is something new, and appears to you by name so you can remove them on their own.
You have three controls over the link:
- Turn link off stops anybody new using it, and leaves the people already following exactly where they were. Turn link on starts the same address working again, so it is a pause rather than a change.
- New link replaces the address. The old one stops working for anybody who has not used it yet. It does not remove anybody already following, which is a separate and more deliberate action.
- Removing somebody sticks. A person you have taken off cannot get back in through the link, even though it is still going round. Their link simply stops working, and it does not tell them the trip is still there.
Inviting one person at a time
Open the trip and choose who is following. You give an email address and a name just for you ("Mum"), and Radar emails the invitation and gives you the link as well, to pass on however you like.
An invitation works once. Whoever opens it signs in with a Sensa account, and from then on only that account can use it. So a forwarded invitation is worth a single use, and you can see by name who took it.
The list of followers tells you where each one has got to: invited but not opened yet, or following, with when they last looked. Remove takes somebody off, and they lose access straight away.
We do not email you when somebody starts following. A location share goes to one person, so we tell you about that; a trip link goes to a mailing list, and an email for each person would be a flood you had caused yourself. The follower list on the trip is where to look.
Notes and photos along the way
On the trip in mySensa there is a box saying What is happening here?. Type what you want to say, add up to 10 photos per post, and press Post. The camera button opens the camera, because this is meant to be done at the spot.
- A post is pinned where you are when you write it. If your phone cannot say where that is, Radar puts it on the van's own track at that time instead, and if it cannot do that either the post still appears with no pin.
- Posts wait for the same delay as the route. A note written this afternoon appears when the rest of that afternoon does. A photo whose post has not yet cleared the delay is not shown either, because handing over the picture while withholding the pin gives away exactly the same thing.
- If you are near home and you have chosen to hide it, the post keeps its words and loses its pin.
- You can delete a post, which takes its photos with it.
Showing today's stop tonight
Waiting out the clock is not always what you want. If you have just written about somewhere and you would like people to see it now, press Catch up to my latest post on the trip.
That pushes the route forward to wherever your newest post is, so your followers see everything up to the thing you have just told them about. It is anchored on your post rather than on the time, which means it says "you may see up to where I told you about" and never "you may see where I am".
How close can they see still applies. Pressing this while parked is exactly the case that setting exists for, so nothing within that distance of the van is published however you ask. The route never goes backwards either: once something is visible, it stays visible.
What your followers see
Your followers do not need a Nomad van, or a Premium subscription, or anything else. Somebody who opened your link sees the trip straight away. Somebody who signed in with a free Sensa account finds it again later in Radar under More, then Journeys you follow.
The page shows the route so far, your posts pinned along it, your travelling name and photograph if you have set them, and a line saying the route is shown up to a particular time, with a plain explanation that it is deliberately behind. That matters: a route that stops two days back looks exactly like a van that has broken down, and we would rather nobody rang up worried.
Before the first part of the route is old enough to publish, the page says so and tells them when to check back, rather than showing a blank map.
Where an area has been left off, the route has a gap in it. Followers are told there is a gap and nothing more: they are not told what was hidden, how far behind they are being kept, or how precise the positions are, because telling them a gap is a house rather than lost signal would give away the thing the gap exists to hide.
Email when there is something new is a tick box on the trip page itself, one per trip, and it is on to start with for anybody signed in. The email says only the name of the trip and that there is something new: no position, no place name, not even the words of the post, because everything else is behind their own sign-in and an inbox is not. Several posts in an afternoon make one email, not eight. Turning it off stops the emails and nothing else, so they can still look whenever they like.
Your followers never see where the van is now, your other trips, your saved places, or anything else about your account.
Ending, withdrawing and deleting
These are three different things:
- End trip says it is over. The route stops growing, and it stays where your followers can see it.
- Withdraw takes it away from your followers without destroying it. Publish again puts it back.
- Delete trip destroys the trip, its invitations, its link, and every post and photo on it, for everyone.
Deleting a trip does not touch your own Tracking history. The positions it was drawn from are still yours, and they outlive any trip made from them. Erasing those is a separate thing on the Tracking page.
Worth knowing
- Everyone in the van is published, not just you, in the same way Tracking records everyone. Please tell the people travelling with you before you send a link.
- The van screen has no FollowMe on it. The van records, and everything else happens on your phone.
- A link can be forwarded. Anybody holding it can look until you turn it off or replace it, so treat it the way you would treat any address you put in a group chat. Signing in is what turns somebody into a named follower you can remove on their own.