Features
Spontaneous or Planned
Your Bikes
Riding Buddies
Trip Lists
Milestones & More
Moto Trip Now!
Go Get It!
Built for
Android and iOS
Using MotoTripNow
The Home Screen
The home screen is your access point to all the app’s basic features – managing your bike(s), your riding buddies, planning your trips, and starting and stopping them.
- The center blue launch pad area titled Planned Trips always includes a “Spontaneous” option at the top of the list, followed by your planned, uncompleted trips.
- Tapping once on any of the trips in the Planned Trips list will present you with the yellow Start Trip screen. If you choose the “Spontaneous” trip, you can simply enter the trip’s title and go. Your actual start date and time will be recorded for you.
- Simply press the Start button to launch your trip. You will then be presented with the green Trip Underway screen. This screen will routinely update itself showing you the amount of time you’ve been underway.
- The Finish button terminates your trip, records your trip’s end date and time, and removes the trip from your list of planned trips.
- You’ll also notice the Moto Now button on the Trip Underway screen. This is the heart of the app and is described in detail under the Moto Now tab.
Your Bike(s)
Tapping the Bikes button on the home screen presents a list of your bikes grouped by bikes you own and ones you’ve rented. You can add a new bike using the “+” button or tap on any bike in the list to view detailed information about the bike including…
- Model. Record pertinent information about your bike model including license plate number and registration expiration.
- Service. Manage your service information including tire pressures, last oil change, and last inspection.
- Insurance. Your insurance coverage, phone contact information, policy number and expiration date.
- Roadside. Your roadside assistance service and contact information.
You will notice that the expiration dates for the different services notify you if they are current, expired or within 30 days of expiring. This helps you keep your bikes ready for your next trip. Also, when you assign a bike to a trip you’ll see the status of the bike’s services. The Trip Detail tab highlights this.
Your Riding Buddies
Tapping the Buddies button on the home screen presents a list of your riding buddies grouped by active buddies and archived. This is also a quick way to get in touch with a fellow rider by phone or email.
Add a new buddy using the “+” button. Tap on the right arrow in the list to view and manage your buddy’s contact information.
You can also remove someone from the list by swiping them to the left to expose the Trash button. If you have buddies you’re not riding with anymore, you can also simply archive them which moves them to the bottom of your buddies list instead of deleting them.
Trips Screens
Use the Trips button on the home screen to manage, plan, edit and review your trips.
Trip Lists
Your trips are organized into “Planned,” “Completed,” and “Favorite” trips. You can scroll through them. You can add a trip using the “+” button and tapping on any trip will allow you to view and edit all the trip’s details.
And if you need to delete a trip, simply swipe left to expose the Trash button.
P.S. “State” is intentionally misspelled. See the next tab Trip – Detail that covers editing the trip.
Detail & Editing
The top right hand side of the Trip Detail screen includes Share and an Edit (pencil) buttons.
The Share button allows you to email your trip, its details, notes, and milestones or to post them to facebook.
Tapping the Edit button will toggle the trip screen mode between Edit and Save. In edit mode you can enter your trip name and you can designate a trip as a favorite by tapping the Star icon. It will turn blue to designate this as a favorite trip. Tap it again to remove favored status.
Planned Dates & Times are entered by tapping the each which will bring up a date or time pick list.
You can always enter the Actual Dates and Times on this screen, although the actual start date and time will be automatically populated when you start a trip (from the home screen). Likewise, the actual end date and time will be automatically populated when you finish a trip using the Finish button on the home screen.
Buddies & Bikes
The Buddies button displays a list of your riding buddies. You can select one or multiple riding buddies for any given trip (or none). Tapping on a buddy will highlight the buddy and automatically save this buddy as part of your trip. Tapping on a highlighted buddy will deselect her.
The Bike button allows you to select one bike per trip. Once selected your bike choice is highlighted and automatically saved. It’s status (registration, inspection, etc.) is displayed in the status area at the top of the screen. Tapping a highlighted bike will de-select the bike and remove it from your trip. In this example you can see that you may want to renew the bike’s registration and road assistance service. The first has expired, the second will expire in less than a month. Or do you want to take the other bike?
Trip Milestones
Milestones help you plan and document your trip. There are two ways to create milestones – manually or by importing a Google Map KML file using its map id.
Manual milestones can be created at any time. You can create them before your trip to help you plan your route or you can create milestones any time during your trip.
If you prefer you can use Google Maps to plan your trip’s milestones (where you’ll start, places you’ll eat, stops you want to make, or sights you want to see). The maps you create and share as “public” have a map id you can copy and paste into this app which will then download and import each milestones. You can also enter a map id someone else has created as long as they has made their map “public.”
Below, you’ll see how to import and share milestones, how to plan a trip with Google Maps, and finally how to add notes and photos to your milestones.
Import and Share Milestones
If you want to plan your trip’s starting and destination points and milestones in-between, then Google maps is a great way to do just that (the next section Using Google Maps Milestones will discuss this in more detail).
When you create your Google map it is assigned a map id. The Moto Trip Now app can use this id to automatically import all the milestones and assign them to your trip.
The Add (“+”) button presents you with the option to import milestones from a Google map or to add them manually. If you choose Google maps you can locate your map’s id and copy and paste it into the Google Trip Map ID field and tap the Save button.
Here’s a sample map id you can use:
1V-i1LRiK-ZIAfIHg3qYtkZvThn4
Once imported you will be returned to the list of trip milestones. Tapping on any of the milestones allows you to edit it and swiping the milestone to the left exposes a button to delete the milestone.
As soon as you have at least one milestone a Map button appears allowing you to view a map of your milestones.
Using Google Maps Milestones
I’m not going to cover how to create your own Google map, because Google already covers this and it would mean constantly revising the instructions whenever they update their service.
You want to find the “My Maps” link (1), to see a list of your maps (2). Next, choose the map you will import/share (3). “ADK Bike Trip” in this example.
The important bits…
The titles and description text you give your map markers in Google maps will be used by the Moto Trip Now app when you import the map.
You can also order your markers if you add an Order field to your Google map markers. This is optional, but the app will also import this field if it’s present. The order field is used by the app to present your milestones in the order you want to achieve them.
To add an order field to your milestones, make sure you are viewing your map in “original” mode (if you see “Open original map” then you are not viewing your map in “original” mode – and you should click that link so you are!).
Next to the layer name (“Untitled layer” in the example screenshot) click once on the three vertical dots menu and choose the Open Data Table item (4). You will see “name” and “description” entries for each map marker. Click once on the triangle next to the “name” column and choose insert column before (5). Title the column “Order” and then enter numbers for each map marker to order them (6). This is also a really easy way to update your marker titles and descriptions in a single place.
Done.
Now, to share your new moto trip…
While viewing your trip map in “original” mode, click on the Share link and copy the link that appears in the pop-up window (7). Also, make sure that under Who has accessthat you see “Public on the web”. If you don’t set your map to public, you won’t be able to share or import the milestones. If you need to change the setting, then select the Change… link.
Finally, the only portion of the “share” link you need is the map id. Do not paste the entire link into the app. It won’t work! So, in our example, the whole link is:
“https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zio5xqF0-Wgs.kBr4Cz77OGEs&usp=sharing”
The map id portion of it is just: zio5xqF0-Wgs.kBr4Cz77OGEs (the portion after “mid=” and before “&usp”). This is the id to enter in the app and share with your riding buddies.
Documenting Milestones
Regardless of whether you’ve imported your milestones from Google maps or created them manually, you can update them.
Tapping on a milestone in the trip’s milestone list allows you to access the milestone’s detail, record the date and time achieved, view and record notes specific to the milestone, add photos to the milestone, and to share your milestone.
To edit any of the milestone’s attributes, simply tap on the blue labels (“Title:”, “About”, etc.). When you are on a trip and have stopped at a specific milestone you can record the milestone’s latitude and longitude and the date and time you arrived by tapping the GPS and Achieved labels.
You can manually enter the achieved date and time if you like or pressing the Now button sets them for you.
Notes:
Record personal notes or experiences about the milestone. Press the Edit button to enter your notes, then the Savebutton when done.
Photos:
The “+” button will allow you to add photos to the milestone that you’ve captured using your smartphone’s camera app. Tapping on any photo thumbnail in the list will enlarge the photo. Tap, hold, and swipe will scroll the photo. Note – pinch and zoom does not work at this time. Tapping the enlarged photo (and not holding) will return you to the thumbnail photo list. You can always remove a photo from the list by swiping it to the left to expose the Trash button (note: trashing a photo simply removes it from your milestone. It does not delete it from your phone!)
Share:
The Share button lets you create an email or facebook post with all the details about the specific milestone including the notes you’ve entered and photos you’ve attached to it. This is different from the Share button on the trip screens, which will share your complete trip detail and all the trip’s milestones.
Moto Now
(1) Moto Now:
This button is gives you access to everything you need once your trip is underway. Tap this button to get to all the “Now” screens (Milestones, Location, Weather, and Emergency).
(2) Milestones List:
This is where you’ll find your achieved and outstanding milestones. Outstanding are shown in green. Achieved are white and sorted to the bottom of the milestone list. If you added an “Order” field to each of the milestones in your Google map, then the next milestone you’re riding toward will be at the top of the list. Each milestone also includes the approximate distance from your current location (note: this is a straight-line calculation!)
Swipe any milestone to the left to expose the Attain button. Tapping this button will mark this milestone as “Achieved” and record the current date and time for the milestone. Swipe back to the right to hide the button. And, yes, you could also delete the milestone if you decide not to include it in your ride.
(3) Milestones Detail:
To manually enter the date and time you attained a milestone, tap the milestone. This will also allow you to view location details, edit milestone notes and attach photos to the milestone. These screens are documented under the Trip – Milestones tab, then press Documenting Milestones.
(4) Location:
The Location button displays your trip map highlighting your current location and trip milestones. Green bikes (milestone markers) are outstanding, gray bikes are achieved.
(5) Weather:
The weather forecast for each outstanding milestone will be displayed immediately below the weather for your current location. The weather forecast is for today and three days in the future.
(6) Emergency:
(a) If you recorded roadside assistance and insurance contact info for the bike you’ve assigned to your trip, then it is shown on the “Emergency” tab (hopefully, these won’t be needed!)
(b) If you have not assigned a bike to your trip, then this screen will be empty. However, you can always return to the app’s Home screen and use the Bikesbutton to look up your emergency info.
