Missing hiker found after man using computer at home pinpoints his location
nbclosangeles.com
nbclosangeles.com
“Well, by the angle of the sun he had to be in an n-mile radius of his car. In that area, there are only 4 cliffs with sufficient height to be in that photo with wildfire burn areas in between. And the plants had to be of the genus whateverae due to the shape of their spikes, and those _obviosuly_ only grow on the north face of sedimentary rocks... so it had to be X”
Sometimes you have the right person in the right place at the right time. I'm also really interested in learning more about how this person pinpointed the hiker.
If you search for "NMPZ" on YouTube, you'll see that some people have become very very good at this (!).
Even if it's Yandex (Russian) Street View, the CIA should have the resources to download them..
I understand why people get lost.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector.php?sat=G17&sec...
Though it’s a trade off! GOES has a really fast return (10-15 minutes, IIRC) but doesn’t do global and has comparatively poor spatial resolution (red at 500m per pixel, many near IR at 1km, LWIR at 2km). So you can get some data every 15 minutes, but for the city of San Francisco it’s only 10x10 pixels.
This is part of why folks like to join high-resolution data with high-temporal frequency data like GOES. Including me! (Well, I hope to get back to my side project using the Descartes Labs API to “learn” high-spatial GOES from the combo of sentinel2 and GOES).
If you do R&D you can also get API access for free or heavily discounted.
This a project backed by the EU and the European Space Agency; no scams there!
It would actually be really interesting to see a list of which apps strip metadata early on the client side vs. which retain it on their server and merely strip data from what is shared to other users...
Of course I'm totally ready to accept that most of those companies just lie and hide some of the data they gather on their users.
From the TFA: "The hiker, 46-year-old Rene Compean, sent a photo to a friend before becoming lost"
iPhone GPS Location (4s and recent)
This document will give you a step by step procedure to retrieve the GPS location of a lost person using the “Compass” tool. In order to use this tool, the iPhone owner must enable some privacy settings which may be “on” by default. If you cannot get the GPS coordinates from Compass, go to the “Troubleshooting” section.
Asking for GPS Coordinates First ask the lost person to launch the compass application on their iPhone.
If the person does not know what it is, provide them the following instruction: Put a single finger in the middle of the phone’s screen and swipe down all in one move. This will bring out the “Spotlight Search” tool.
Ask them to type “Compass”. This will bring up the “Compass” tool into view as seen below: Ask them to select the “Compass” application in order to launch it
Once launched, if the word “Calibrate” appears on the screen (as seen below), the user has to initialize the application. Let him know he needs to move and rotate the phone until calibration is done.
Once calibrated, the user should see the coordinates at the bottom of the screen. If the coordinates are not there, go to the troubleshooting section and restart this process from step 1.
Troubleshooting Be aware that only iPhone 4s and more recent are equipped with a GPS chipset. All older iPhone will not be able to provide you with GPS coordinates.
In order for the “Compass” application to provide the GPS coordinate, it needs to be authorized to communicate with the GPS component of the phone. To ensure this authorization is set, follow these steps:
Ask the person to launch their iPhone settings
From the main “Setting” page, have them select “Privacy”
From the “Privacy” section select “Location Services”.
Under the “Location Services” section, the “Location Services” setting should be “on” (or green) and the “Compass” entry should report “While Using”.
Personally I would do it with Termux and Python, but non-coders would have trouble using that.
Hell on the latest version of Android I can't even read my battery percentage without typing in some code (the latest update removed the battery % from the status bar). Everything has gone downhill.
import termux
termux.API.location()(I've always thought the terminology was a little confusing/imprecise, since I wouldn't consider these apps to be "tests", but rather simply the UI of a GPS receiver. Then again, when I hear "GPS" I think of a receiver-only, i.e. a device that just tells you your current lat/lon/etc. position, whereas I guess what most people consider a "GPS app" would more precisely be termed a "GPS navigation/map".)
I really started noticing this since starting to use F-Droid, for a lot of simple apps in the Google Play Store, you can get the same functionality, with zero ads and a much smaller bundle size in F-Droid.
For example this app from F-Droid, which shows your GPS location & coordinates, weighs in at _48KiB_! https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.borneq.heregpslocation/ (disclaimer: I have not tried the app, it was just the first result that came up from a search).
It's pretty cool to see that yes, it's perfectly possible to build lightweight Android apps; and it's really a question of what you put in the bundle.
It wouldn’t work in the case when you have cell service but no data.
Better to have an app to do it locally, I think the odds are high that when you would need something like this you probably won't have an internet connection.
If you are a bit skeptical that a web page can work offline, just go ahead and try it.
There is an icon you can save on your screen and a 'Tips' button with more information.
Finally, it turns out that if you ever need to call for help with your cell phone there are some things you should know in order to have the best chance of reaching 911 or anyone else. After reading through a whole pile of documents on the FCC website I put my findings into 4 PDF reports. The end of each report has links to the other reports.
Open PDF: https://findmesar.com/p/pdf/smart_way_call_911_with_cell_pho...
He had GPS coords in photos turned off. He sent the photo before he got lost, then his phone died, then he realized his predicament. Yeah, hikers who know WTF they are doing generally don't end up in the news like this. This is distressingly common on the 10,000+ ft peaks near Los Angeles, like these folks: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/hikers-survival-san....
All to plant an American flag on the top of a mountain. I truly hope the hiker didn’t actually lose any fingers or toes but I do hope they were made to reimburse SAR cost and fined for littering.
A non-expert climber figures a tough hike is basically like any other hike they've been on, only a little harder. They don't recognize how large the gulf is between a tough hike up a mountain and a treacherous life-or-death situation.
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands/2014978/...
Edit: There are ~20 deaths per year on Scottish mountains
As others have said, it's proprietary, and I don't want to see a private company becoming a gatekeeper to such an important function. Open standards are available. Google Maps provides Plus Codes, for example, and pretty much all Android users have that without having to install an additional app.
Now, this is only one anecdote, and maybe I just happened to get the one operator who had swallowed the what3words PR line- but at least some British emergency services are telling callers to use it.
(Not urgent enough to tie up a 999 operator, and it's faster to pull in somewhere and message, than ring and report via 101.)
They've been happy with location given by w3w.
I'm sure they would be. I'm not doubting that they'll be able to figure it out. Rather, I'm interested to know what they prefer.
If someone's coordinates don't come through automatically with the 911 call, the dispatcher or person running the search can walk them through finding their location if the person doesn't know how to do it.
First, there are still many many areas in the US where your phone will only be able to get a reliable signal to one tower, and those areas also happen to correlate well with areas that people like to go for outdoor recreation.
Second, you have to have somebody involved that knows the right specific questions to ask, and you have to have a representative at the phone company that's not a fleshy automaton. Search and rescue efforts tend to be coordinated by local law enforcement (usually sheriffs or park services), and training varies a lot. So, for practical purposes, this information is often not available.
Third, the information you get back requires some interpretation. It's not like the phone company sends back a map with a nice circle on it; you get some values back from one or more radios at one or more locations (possibly with or without orientations for the radios, and possibly that information is current and reliable or not). Then you have to plot those values, and then you have to take into account fun little quirks of physics, like the part where canyons of some kinds of rock can bounce a signal really well and cause somebody to be closer to the tower than the data would suggest. Other formations act like big reflectors.
Zero of the searches that I have been on have included helpful information from cell towers.
The iPhone 12 utilizes the GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, and BeiDou constellations. Utilizing more satellites means determining location more quickly and returns better accuracy especially in marginal environments.
Not to be confused with other technologies such as skyhook [2], which was used in iPhone 1 and other older devices to fuse radio signal strength, known wifi hotspot locations, etc as a kind of pseudo-GPS. It was only relevant for a few years.
Wikipedia [1] has a nice short explanation.
The downside is that it can take much longer to acquire a fix.
I came across that story after somebody on HN posted about the Death Valley Germans [2]. A couple of hours well-spent.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/22/magazine/voya... [2] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
Anyway, aside from that, I am perpetually in awe / fascinated by how we as human beings long to solve a puzzle, no matter how distant or unfamiliar (or insignificant) another person is to us. There are stories about townspeople keeping a stranger's death alive for decades until solving it. It's almost like a mysterious death is as important, if not more important in a collective consciousness, as lots of people dying from something that is well known or not "interesting"...
It seems more likely that he just fell down an old mine shaft or into a pit of some kind. Maybe his phone couldn't get service but because of some temporary atmospheric condition it was able to ping the tower.
Besides GPS, it sadly also needs/uses internet connection and then shows street address.
Oh and last time our car died in some small town with unpronounceable German name - once I called insurance (with roadside assistance module), operator sent me SMS, shortened URL opened up web browser and page asked for permission to get GPS access, and 10 seconds later she had exact Lat/Long on her screen.
When del.icio.us was around, after a while I wondered where the first . needed to be.
Having the site be yourlocation.com or whatsmylocation.com would be a lot better.
Another neat app is Backcountry SOS which is nice because it gathers your location and status and doesn't require an internet connection. It generates a text message you can send to 911 or anyone else.
https://www.backcountrysos.com/
Generally, you may be able to get an SMS out in an area with marginal cellphone coverage even when voice doesn't work. Turn on voice roaming for better results.
Though honestly not the most obvious or accessible thing. Most people would probably just call the emergency number directly instead of using the convoluted button combination.
"You can also add emergency contacts. After an emergency call has ended, your iPhone will alert your emergency contacts with a text message, unless you choose to cancel this option. Your iPhone sends them your current location, and, for a period of time after you enter SOS mode, it sends updates to your emergency contacts when your location changes."
Found that out when my daughter got ahold of her dozing grandmothers phone while myself and her grandfather were running errands.
For example, you can use "Share My Location" in Google maps. If your phone dies, the person you shared to can still see what your last location was. But since it's continually sharing your location the whole time, it drains the battery a lot. Strava's activity tracker has a similar feature, but I think only available while you're actively recording a GPS tracklog.
I use this with my GF, the impact on battery life is unnoticeable under normal conditions (i.e. compared to other stuff that you normally do on a phone). If you're aiming for multiple days of standby, with radios off and little screen-on time, then you'll obviously notice the drain.
You can also use the app to listen for certain Intents (like a button sequence on a smart watch) and perform the same location/sms action.
Additionally both Android and iOS support location sharing with dispatch centers and more and more jurisdictions across the country are capable of receiving that info. So, we're getting there.
https://www.blog.google/products/android/expanding-emergency...
https://rapidsos.com/our-latest/google-and-rapidsos-partner/
https://rapidsos.com/our-latest/apples-ios-12-securely-and-a...
He also found the location of the Jedi Temple last year. ;)
The person was eventually found by people in the area, and had died on a path in an open field, (sudden collapse and no chance to have used their phone to call anyone) so being out of tree cover etc. might plausibly have been found by a good clear overhead image. Probably still too small for a non-military satellite image, maybe a drone flyover.
I do often wonder what it would take for humans to actually save people Thunderbirds style. We’re getting closer and closer to ubiquitous surveillance, but when you look at the nutty putty cave incident or the Thai schoolchildren in the cave, locations were known there was just no way to blast the rock without crushing the people, and rescue or failure came down to human effort. Very little future tech would have made either rescue attempt enormously easier, would it? To get to people trapped under rock quickly you need to move or melt a lot of rock and you can’t blast or drill casually because of the risk to the people. That leaves slow or low-energy rescue which is slow and limited in what it can try.
How are today’s emergency services doing compared to a platonic ideal emergency service which can find and save anyone anywhere on earth from any trouble they are in, Superman style? Are we almost as good as it’s possible to be (but not evenly distributed), or nowhere near?
To ease her mind - I turned on family/emergency location sharing in Google Maps.
Afterward we realized it's supper convinient way to avoid those "How long before you (and one of kids that either one of us would pick up) are home?" calls.
Although starting shortly before Covid the functionality seems to have taken a nose dive. Like randomly showing one of us is in different city (e.g. Amsterdam vs Rotterdam), or now during Covid often saying "Offline, along with last known location from 1h ago (which tends to be home) and what was battery level at the time".
Actually it seems like some engineer (pre covid) though of optimizing refresh time for Google Maps location sharing based on how much it changes over some recent time.
And now combination of WFH meaning it's same place for majority of the day and that TTL being high, and literally all grocery stores we go to having no cellphone signal (I mean not even SMS can make it) putting us in edge of an edge case.
Cell Phones and SAR - Browser-based Location Apps https://wisarandgis.blogspot.com/2016/06/cell-phones-and-sar...
Reasons Why 911 Sometimes Cannot Find Cell Phones https://findmesar.com/p/pdf/reasons_why_911_cannot_find_cell...
The Smart Way To Use A Cell Phone To Contact 911 https://findmesar.com/p/pdf/smart_way_call_911_with_cell_pho...
Now with that said, there are a lot of 911 call centers that use RapidSOS or other add on technology that do get the caller's coordinates directly from the caller's phone.
Of course a person calling 911 has no way to know beforehand whether the 911 call center handling their call will be able to get their coordinates via technology. That is the reason I urge everyone to have some way to use their phone to get their coordinates and the equally important accuracy value. Use a compass app, use FindMeSAR (I am developer) or use something else. I don't care. Instead, the important point is that you use 'something instead of nothing'.
I shared problems in another comment here - TL;DR: worked seemingly good some 3+ years ago, started being flaky before covid, and seems much worse since covid.
So even if remote area was covered with cellular network, I would not rely on location sharing to show where I am not even where I was.
And although on one hand going from being at same place for hours if not days (home during covid), and then in just 10-15min reaching another place without any or with really bad cellular reception could be messing with optimizations of location sharing.
I recall few situations where both wife and I were next to each other, both phones running google maps at the moment, each hitting on refreshing/retrying getting the other ones location - and thing still showing us as currently offline.
And also related: If you've got the android app MacroDroid (and presumably Tasker and others) you can set up an SMS auto-responder that will send your GPS coords. You can make it respond to a pre-approved contact who sends a pre-approved phrase. It means you're not constantly sending out location data, but can be reached hands-free if needed. And you should be able to sneak in an SMS even when service is unreliable.
There's probably some value in a lightweight standalone app that does this alone.
But, as this poster stated (see comment tree here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065803) there is no reason to be going into wilderness in 2020 (or 2021) without a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB). You get them, of course, at a place like REI.
As another poster said "They should be considered as basic and as necessary as a life vest, seat belt, or bike helmet. You should not be backpacking on the Appalachian trail without one." See this comment tree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065435
There are also variants of PLBs (which are not as robust) called satellite communicators. The Garmin Inreach series and Zotero devices are quite popular satellite communicators.
Even when exercising outside and not in the wilderness, I carry a Garmin Inreach Mini (which works with my Garmin watch) in case of a medical emergency. I have health conditions and it virtually guarantees that emergency services gets my GPS coordinates. Of course, I take other safety precautions to avoid an emergency in the first place.
I'd probably consider a PLB if I were soloing in a remote area but I doubt if I would on the AT in general. And certainly don't have (or would consider) in routine local outside areas.
If you're experienced enough to judge the risks yourself, it's just advice. Noone requires you to take a PLB, water bottle, or buddy, but all would raise your chance of survival in an emergency.
I agree with your comment generally though. If you are experienced enough to make choices you can do so. Including doing solo activities. (Though I might draw the line at things like not taking water which are bad practices in many circumstances.)
I grew up with the ethos that you never want to be that guy who has to get rescued from the wilderness (and I still believe that). To me, having to get rescued is a mark of severe embarrassment - not only for your own failure in the outdoors but what you’ve now obligated others to risk in the rescue attempt. That means you better have skills, be hardy, and be prepared for shit and not assume you can just “eject” from your situation with an sos button.
Things change when you get your own dependent family though, and the cheapness of a locator device like an inreach make them very cheap insurance for stupid mistakes if you still want to engage in lone multi-day wilderness excursions.
I really don’t think it should change anything in risk calculation and preparedness though. If you have to use it, it still represents a complete fail for you as an outdoorsman. The downside is that their easy availability makes people more likely to engage SAR when they should just suck it up or not have gone out in the first place.
Thank you! Exactly and agreed 100%. Even when out-and-about in public in the city, I can deploy it in a few seconds (either via the device itself or my Garmin watch), in addition to calling 911 for someone in distress, so the exact GPS coordinates of the incident are shared. This ensures that no delays occur with rescue on my end.
I am big on preparing and I look needing SAR operations as a huge systemic failure. It is true that all it takes is one mistake to end up in such a situation.
As I said, I have health conditions. Backpacking for days in the wilderness (no matter how prepared or "responsible" I may be) is not possible and is unsafe in my particular situation. I can go on day hikes though, generally, without issue with adequate preparation.
For people criticizing the use of such technology: Have you called 911 before for an incident where there are not a lot of addresses/cross-streets/markings, such as at a national park? Do you realize that SAR resources are precious and extremely limited? Do you realize that SAR operations can be quite dangerous, even for the well trained and seasoned professional?
I should point out that I also spend time on the water, and I take my Garmin inReach Mini with me, in the inReach Mini Dive Case. I have it clipped to my lifejacket with a carabiner clip, which I wear at all times during water activities. It should be pointed out that the Garmin inReach Mini is useless underwater, as electrical signals cannot be transmitted through water, which is something everyone should be aware of. The same goes likewise for any PLB.
When on the water, the inReach Mini likewise works best with a smartphone (iPhone, in my case), which I keep in a dive case, also clipped to my jacket.
Thankfully, I have never had to use my Garmin inReach Mini. I don't "hope" it never happens. I plan as much as possible, to avoid a SAR situation at all costs. I also look at it as a responsible thing to have, both for myself, and also in case someone nearby is in trouble.
Depending on your condition, any additional delay of hours or days means it'll probably end up as a body recovery instead of a rescue. If it were me, I'd want get get help ASAP if I needed it. (Even if you're experienced, trained, equipped, and prepared, things can happen...)
Go over what to do (for both you and your POC) if you don't report in within a certain time after your expected return.
If you are hiking on marked trails, you don't need to go drop $200 on electronics before you should feel safe going for a walk in the woods. You don't even need hiking boots, SPF 50 wicking t-shirts, or merino wool underwear.
Hiking a marked trail isn't as risky as summiting Everest, but it's not like walking through Ikea either. PLBs are a touch pricy, but I'd at least carry a FRS radio.
Is FRS really useful for calling for help in the woods? You'd be lucky to get 1/2 mile of range, and you have to have someone nearby listening on your channel without privacy codes enabled. Do people even use FRS when hiking?
A whistle might have less range, but everyone within earshot will hear it.
A ham radio with a repeater list would likely be more useful than FRS... Or maybe GMRS, but those repeaters are less common.
You also don’t need any of the gear you mentioned, but it sure makes the walk more enjoyable :)
The "annual plans" allow you to save a little if you use your device every month of the year on a single plan. The "freedom plans" allow you to suspend your service, and let you hop between plans. You just pay for a month at a time at the plan level you select for that month.
I forget all the terms but I think a rescue is covered/cheap if I call it for myself.
Device is $350 upfront and then the subscription fee. Can’t put a price on a life (although some try).
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/outdoor/inreach-2000-rescu...
https://www.geosresponse.com/assets/pdf/GEOS-SAR-BENEFIT-TER...
People have been successfully & safely travelling the wilderness for centuries without these devices. If you have solid wilderness skills, and take appropriate precautions, there is nothing unsafe about exploring the wilderness, with or without a PLB.
Plus, you can find simple ones used... spot beacons have a pretty healthy after market
On a related note, have there been any attempts on developing AI models that can pinpoint an (approximate?) location, given a photo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_F**k_With_Cats:_Huntin...
Finding someone using intuition and suncalc.
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/03/using-the-su...
It's a very useful skill, and worth learning if you're going outdoors. But it's not as simple as looking at road maps and reading street signs.
Coincidentally, there is a great Sierra Club program in Los Angeles & Orange County that teaches off-trail navigation (among other skills)... It's called the Wilderness Travel Course, and it's great fun. I believe the Mountaineers in the PNW also teach those skills as part of their leadership program.
Playing Death Stranding comes close.
Obviously game has realtime location/map, with isometric/topographic view also available, which makes it much easier than it would be in real world - reading off a paper map and guestimating where on that map you might be.
So basically try to check map and plan the route (e.g. reach a river/canyon/house/junction and then go left) ahead, and then either don't check the map (because it shows exactly where you are), or have a screenshot of it from before you left one of drop locations.
And you can still make mistakes that throw off your navigation. In the past, I participated in a sport that involved navigating through terrain for up to 24 hours (through the night) looking for targets. The compass work was never much of an issue (more a process), but making decisions based on the terrain was - is that the third gully since we left the spur or the fourth? And issues typically compound.
Nobody appreciates the rapidity and magnitude with which this happens until they’ve experienced it. It’s a very good experience to have so you can recognize it and hopefully stop the momentum of failure.
It’s a good reason to have find my iPhone or similar location sharing tools running.