• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

  • Beginning April 1st, and running through April 30th, there is a new 2024 BMW MOA Election discussion area within The Club section of the forum. Within this forum area is also a sticky post that provides the ground rules for participating in the Election forum area. Also, the candidates statements are provided. Please read before joining the conversation, because the rules are very specific to maintain civility.

    The Election forum is here: Election Forum

2017 R1200RT Navigator VI Tracker App Question

mxsx337

Member
The Navigator VI comes with the Tracker App installed. To use it you have to have "Smartphone Link" on your smart phone (in my case a Samsung Galaxy S20). After pairing the Nav. VI with the phone you activate the Tracker App and "Invite" whom ever you want to track you for an amount of time you specify in the app. Everything works according to the instructions, but when I send the "invite" the Nav. VI screen presents the message: " A server error occurred. Try again later." I tried again later more than a dozen times (Yeah, I know, Einstein's theory...) and finally called Garmin. The tech at Garmin worked on the problem with me, gave up, put me on hold a minute, came back and said: "The guys said it's a known problem and it's being worked on -- we'll let you know when it's fixed." I'm a little skeptical about that response because it seems to me that a Garmin App not being able to communicate with a Garmin Server should be a pretty easy code fix; If it's a "known problem" it should be fixed already. So my question for the forum is: Does anyone use this app successfully? Has anyone tried to use the app and do you get the same error message? If anyone is curious as to why I want to use the app, It's because I'm 84 years old and when I head out across the country my "significant other" is always worried sick (no background history with motorcycles and doesn't understand my passion). We used a similar Garmin app six years ago when I had my Harley Ultra Limited and she loved it. The only downside to using the app is it drains the phone battery pretty quickly, but we've now solved that problem. It's not hard to set everything up -- install "Smartphone Link" on your cell phone, pair with the Navigator, invite someone (email) from the Tracker App and let me know if it works!
 
As I recall, my Zumo 590 (or maybe the 595?) had that app. It worked maybe once in ten tries, over a six month period, before I quit wasting my time with it. Constant server issues have been a "known problem" since at least 2017.

I would not trust it. There should be an app for your phone that would let your wife track it, and you.
(But don't tell my wife.):whistle
 
My recommendation would be BubblerGPS app on the Android phone then set up an account at https://new.spotwalla.com. Spotwalla allows near real-time tracking accessible from their website, allows trip tracks to be saved and shared, and more. There is a small use-based fee for Spotwalla, but I normally deposit $25 into my account there every riding season and have yet to use up my balance. It’s worth some exploration by the OP.

Best,
DeVern
 
Back
Top