Ski Tracks Help

Welcome to Ski Tracks - Recording your day on the mountain. Thank you for supporting Ski Tracks. We have a dedicated support email address at the bottom of this document. If you experience any difficulties please contact us.

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Recording a Track
  3. Taking Photographs
  4. Saving a Track
  5. Deleting a Track
  6. Renaming a Track
  7. Sharing a Track
  8. Importing a Track/Tracks
  9. Application Settings.
  10. Troubleshooting
Introduction

Ski Tracks has been specifically designed to make it simple to track your day on the mountain whether you are a Skier or Snowboarder. Ski Tracks has the following features:

Ski Tracks is an advanced location tracking application and has taken many years to develop. It was designed to provide skiers and snowboarders a simple way to track and review their day on the mountain. However, although we have developed sophisticated filtering and mathematical alogorithms to calculate your days statistics, we rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS) to get a location and this system can sometimes produce errors. It is for this reason that you should not rely on the location for safety reasons.

This application is designed to be used for recording your day on the mountain, most of the time it should be in a pocket - Never Ski with the phone in your hand or in a way that may injure other mountain users. Ski Responsibly.

Once you finish your day take your phone out, stop the track recording and save your track.

Recording a Track

The first thing you will want to do when you get to your mountain start point is to press the "START" button in the top bar of the Tracking view. When you press the "START" button several things will happen:

Ski Tracks will not record low quality location information and it may take a number of minutes on some phones to get a valid location - this is normal.

The GPS indicator in the status bar at the top of your screen lets you know if it has a fix or not. If its solid, it has a fix.

Place your phone in your pocket - we suggest that an inside jacket pocket that has no metal obstructions is best as it will keep the phone warmer and increase battery life.

From time to time you can get your phone out and check your ski stats. If you press the Profile button you can see your altitude profile and speed.

Once you have finished simply press the "PAUSE" button and select the "SAVE option when it presents itself. Note: once you save your track you can not alter or record more data.

Battery Life

While every care has been taken to improve the performance of this application, GPS and Location Services require more power. Whilst we can't test every phone on the android market we haven't yet found a phone that can't track a 9 hour day without dying. Some phones we have test have even finished a days tracking with 80% or more battery!

Taking Photographs

Taking photographs is done by pressing the CAMERA button in the top action bar whilst in the Tracking view - if this button is disabled then the phone does not have a valid location fix - wait a few minutes until the phone has a valid location fix.

Photographs are added to tracks as they are taken, however if you delete a track or clear the current track the photograph will remain in the Photo's view.

To delete a photo go to the Photo view and select the photo.

If you tap the photo once its being viewed, you will be presented with a toolbar with 2 options.

  1. Share - You can share your photo by making it available in your phone's Photo Gallery, or you can send it to a specified email address.
  2. Delete - Delete the photograph. Warning: this is final and you can not get the photo back. However, if you share the photograph to your phone's Photo Gallery beforehand, it will be available in the Photo Gallery, but not in Ski Tracks.
Saving a Track

When you have finished make sure you save the track by pressing the "PAUSE" button first (if you are still recording) followed by the SAVE button. Your track can now be found in the History view.

If you have already paused the track, you can press the "SAVE" button located in the action bar (only available if previously paused)

Deleting a Track

Once you have Saved a track, you may want to delete it from your History. To do so, navigate to the History List where all your past tracks are shown. Once there hold your finger on the track and you will be presented with two options: View and Delete. Remember, once you delete a track it is gone for good.

If you want to remove a recording track without saving it, pause the track and select "Clear". If it is already paused just select the icon which looks like an "X" and confirm.

Renaming a Track

You may want to modify your tracks name along with its activity, weather conditions, snow conditions and give it a rating out of 5. You can do this by selecting the icon which represents your activity in the top right of the Tracking view (Skiiing,Snowboarding,XC Skiing, Snowmobiling).

You can also edit the tracks details by doing the same when viewing it in the History.

Sharing a Track

Once you have saved your track you may share your track with friends. There are a number of ways to share your track:

  1. Email - You can email 3 different file formats to your friends or your main computers. (for more information about file types see below).
  2. Export to External Storage - You can export your files to your external storage card. There are different ways to get these files from your phone. Some phones allow you to mount your drive to your computer via USB. There are also applications downloadable from Google Play that allow you access to your files.
  3. Publish on Facebook - By selecting Facebook you can share the track stats, track profile and all photographs. These are added to a Ski Tracks album and appear on your wall as a new set of photographs and have captions already added.

File Types: (for Email and Exporting to SD Card only)

KMZ - Use this format for sharing and previewing the track in 3D on Google Earth or other KMZ/KML views. This is best for showing your friends.

GPX - Use this format for transferring to other web services or GPS devices.

SKIZ - Our native file format that can be used between other Ski Tracks users on other phones - both on Android & iPhone.

Importing a Track/Tracks

There are two different ways to import SKIZ files into Ski Tracks.

Via Email Attachment

  1. Open the email that contains the SKIZ file attachment on your device.
  2. Select the option to open this file (May say preview/view/download). Sometimes you may have to find the downloads folder on your phone to import it. Usually in Settings > Storage
  3. If you get given the option of which application to use to open it, select Ski Tracks.
  4. If you do not get given the option then there are still some things to try. You can either try downloading the file some other way and open the skiz file from where it is saved or even use a different email application. Or you can try importing via file transfer as described below.
  5. Ski Tracks will now process this track and when finished, you can find it in the history section of Ski Tracks.

Via File Transfer - You can use file transfer when your device is connected to your computer to import multiple SKIZ files at a time.

  1. Connect your device to your computer so that its storage area is accessible (the method for doing so varies between device. On most devices if you swipe downwards from the top of the screen and select the notification telling you "you're device is connected by USB", it will notify you on how to transfer files to your device)
  2. Once connected, navigate to the directory - SkiTracks/Tracks/SKIZ-Import
  3. Find any SKIZ file you would like to import onto your device and copy them in to this directory.
  4. Before opening Ski Tracks, be sure to remove your device from your computer by ejecting and removing the USB cable.
  5. When you're device is unmounted from your computer (remove the usb cable to be sure), open Ski Tracks. The application will then begin importing your tracks.
  6. When finished you can navigate to the history section of Ski Tracks and find your track.
Settings

There are two separate sections for settings.

Defaults

Located in here are your default settings for your Ski Tracks application.

  1. Activity - All newly created tracks are created with this activity.
  2. Units - Changes all displays to metric or imperial.
  3. Monitor Battery - This should normally be On. This application monitors the battery and will automatically turn off recording. You may also set the battery warning level.

Sharing

This is where the social preferences are located.

  1. Email - This is the default email for the export of photographs or tracks.
  2. Copy Us - Include us when emailing any tracks to others.
p>Tools

This is where Ski Tracks Tools are located.

  1. Track Recovery - This is for when you lose a track (without deleting it), or you think your track may be corrupted. You usually only need this after you have contacted the developer and they have requested you use this feature.
Troubleshooting

Ski Tracks - Not recording track?

First of all is Ski Tracks in record mode? The duration counter should be increasing and there should be a PAUSE button displayed in the top bar

Does the GPS have a fix on you? Make sure you are outside with a clear view of sky. GPS does not work in doors.

Different phones take varying times to get a fix. Please be patient.

Once the phone has a fix you should see a solid GPS status icon in the top status bar.

If for some reason your phone won't get a fix (some devices struggle due to the GPS hardware), there are a few things you can try.

Ski Tracks - GPS Location Services are not enabled in Settings. What does this mean?

You may have the GPS Services disabled. This option is located in the Settings. Without GPS being enabled, Ski Tracks will be unable to record your location.

You need to run the Settings application on your phone and find where the Location settings are. They vary between device but it could be in "Location & Security" or "Location Services". Make sure the GPS option is set to Enabled (again the wording varies between device).

Now Ski Tracks should work.

Ski Tracks - You say you can record for a whole day but my phone dies before that!

We have tested 3 separate devices, all of which survived 9 hours of snowboarding with at least 40% of their battery left. Sony Xperia U > 60%. Samsung Galaxy Ace > 65%. Samsung Galaxy S3 > 40%. This was with the device being started at the start of the day, checked now and then for the Profile Display and map features as well as a few photographs, kept running whilst having stops and saved at the end of the day.

Ski Track Accuracy

How accurate is Ski Tracks?

Each version of Ski Tracks we try to improve both the GPS processing, ski algorithms and filtering techniques. We also calibrate our software for different phone types to improve the final results. The processing, algorithms and filtering systems provide a degree of accuracy that works best for mountain users. Generally for mountain users Ski Tracks provides accurate results given GPS and the environmental factors that the phone is working in. Generally most Ski data is accurate to around 5-10%. Plots and graphs use filtering techniques to improve the user experience so these can vary in accuracy over the plot but generally altitude is 5-10% and speed is 10-15%. These figures are based on our test data and cannot not be guaranteed as many other factors can cause accuracy issues. For more information please checkout the user guide available on our web site.

For more information please download the User Guide from our website.

Ski Track Troubleshooting and Manual

If you have any difficulties or problems please do not hesitate to contact Core Coders with our dedicated Android Ski Tracks support email:

skitracks-android@corecoders.com