Live Tracking – oziTarget

Next level team work

oziTarget live tracking gives you the ability to track and share key flight data between other balloons and your ground crew.

Your team may be you and your ground crew, a pair of pilots working together or it could be the full National team at a World Championship. The choice is yours.

Less interruptions, more options

When is the one time your team mates want to ask you on the radio what direction you have got? What altitude are you at? It is never the best time is the polite answer. Live Tracking reduces the radio chatter as you can simply watch what your team mate(s) are doing without having to ask them and more importantly, they won’t be asking you.

The possibilities are endless. It is a powerful tool for team managers as they can easily understand what is happening in the air and give much better assistance where needed. Even the drive out to an individual launch site is easier when you know where everyone is.

One registration, two computers

The Live Tracking subscription extends your oziTarget licence for use on two computers at the same time so you can share your information with the ground crew.

If you have Oziexplorer set up on the ground crews computer then simply install oziTarget with the same registration file, go to settings > Tracking and select Crew.

In the oziTarget settings you can set the computerlive tracking gives you the ability to track and share key flight data between other balloons and your ground crew.

NOTE: it is critical that your Tracking ID is only used with one Pilot and one Crew.

If two or more computers are uploading as the Pilot (or Crew) then the multiple data points will get mixed together making it useless.

Security and privacy

All of your data is encrypted with a key that you control and can change at any time. Your key is only stored locally in your copy of oziTarget and is never sent to our servers.

To share your data you will give both your Tracking ID and your Key to your team mates. With both the ID and Key entered into their Tracking tool they will be able to download and decrypt your live data.

At any time, you can change your key code which changes the encryption so that only people you have shared the new key with will have access to your data.

Data will only be held on our servers for a limited time as the intent is for live tracking only.

Sending data

Receiving data

An internet connection is required for each device sending or receiving data. Each subscription includes a unique tracking ID that is attached to your ozitarget registraion.

The main oziTarget application will upload the following data to a server

Position
Speed
Bearing

If you are navigating to a waypoint then it will also upload

Waypoint Name
Waypoint location
Your DTG
Your Bearing to the waypoint
Your ETE to the waypoint

Finally your flight winds data is also uploaded as it is generated so it is available to your team.

The crew computer only uploads position data

The tracking app is included in v1.5.1.5 and above and will be in the Tools Menu.

In the tracking tool you enter the tracking ID’s for all of the pilots in your group or team.

The tracking tool will then request the latest data for each ID at the interval specified.

You can select the pilot from the list you want to see data for at the top of the form.

You then have the option of drawing their track and position on the map as well as drawing the waypoint they are navigating to.

The crew position can also be automatically drawn on your map if they are uploading tracking data.5

Set up and options

Open the settings tab with the gear icon to edit your tracking list and the individual settings. NOTE: tracking will be paused when this is opened. It can be restarted with the toggle at the top right or will restart when the window is closed again. Close the settings tab using the same settings button.

To change or add to the tracking list click EDIT and the other buttons will become active. Add and delete rows are pretty obvious. The tracking list can be exported and saved for import on other computers.

PID – Tracking ID
Name – your nickname for this person, only seen by you.
Crew – Used to identify crew other than your own. ie: you may have your windreader team tracking so you know where they are when they are taking readings.
Get – Receive data for this person if available.
Draw – Draw the track file for this person when you are watching them.
Width – The track line width when drawn.
List – List this person in the quick selection list.

Track – The track colour is set here.
BG – The background colour for the position dot and name.
FG – The outside edge colour of the position dot and text colour for the name.
Size – The size of the position dot.
Get (sec) – sets the data retrieval period. The data fields are updated as soon as new data is received. 2 seconds is the default but depending on your connection or computer you may want to increase this.
Draw (sec) – sets the refresh period for drawing the data on the map. The shorter this period is the more work OziExplorer will be doing to keep up. 5 or more seconds gives a reasonable visual update on the map.
Length (Km) is the length of the projected track line.
Width – the width of the projected track line
Colour – the colour of the projected track line
Track Crew – Toggles retrieval of your crew data as linked by your Tracking ID and registration.
Dot Size – The crew position dot size on the map.
Dot Colour – the crew position dot colour.