SOTA Goat spot notifications are live

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The long-neglected, oft-requested, headlining feature of SOTA Goat has finally returned with way more customization.

Update to v1.5.0 from the App Store to get it.

:tada: New Features

  • Push notifications (way more details below!)
  • Create a new spot from an existing alert (thanks VK1DA)

:bug: Bug Fixes

  • Fixed summit activation dates being off by one day (I think… DK7MG, please confirm)
  • Fixed crash that occurred when refreshing spots/alerts after settings changes (thanks Eric)
  • Fixed font color for map options

Push Notifications - all the details

A screenshot is worth a thousand pixels, so let’s go through it.

Main settings

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The infamous Stinky alert makes a comeback, joined by his friends Rooster and Peanut. These new audio files files were actually sent to me by Steve WG0AT back in 2013 when he requested custom sounds. Now, they are immortalized in the app forever.

You can also decide how much text to cram into each notification, and preview exactly how it will look.

Filter customization

Simulator Screen Shot - iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (3rd generation) - 2020-03-17 at 18.55.43
Simulator Screen Shot - iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (3rd generation) - 2020-03-17 at 18.55.432048×2732 283 KB

Choose to be notified of new spots on particular bands or modes. You can also filter by SOTA Association, to avoid spots from far-off geographic regions.

You can also filter by the activator callsign. Why would you want this? The beauty of the new system is that you can create multiple filters at once. For example, you might have three separate filters for:

  • HF activations in the USA
  • VHF activations in your home association
  • Any time your friend activates, anywhere

You’ll be notified if any of these conditions are met.

Many folks wanted to be notified of the initial activation spot, and also band changes, so there you go. If you want the firehose, select All Spots.

Synced across devices

You don’t need a SOTAwatch account to use this feature, but if you are logged in on multiple devices, alerts will be sent to all of them.

I’m really happy with how the new notification system has turned out. Please let me know how it’s working out for you – either in this thread, PM, @WW1X on Twitter, or via my e-mail address on the About screen.

11 Likes
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This is not yet fixed.
Example: F/AB-001
SOTA Goat shows 23.08.16 as date of the last activation
SOTAwatch3 shows 24 Aug 2016.

73, Andy

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Okay, still something I don’t understand there. What timezone is your phone set to? And do you have anything like Daylight Saving time where you live?

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It seems that the time zone is important to which my iPhone is set when I do the update of the summit database.

Normally Date & Time are “set automatically” on my iPhone which means that it derives its time from the mobile network and is currently using CET Central European Time (CET = UTC+1).
Now I deactivated “Set Automatically” and took the time zone of San Francisco, U.S.A.
This was on 19.03.20 at 07:24 local time (i.e. Munich time) = on 18.03.20 at 23:24 San Francisco time. After the update of the database the last activation date of F/AB-001 was correctly shown as 24.08.16.
When I changed the time zone back to Munich time and did a new update of the database the last activation date of F/AB-001 was afterwards again shown as 23.08.16 - which is wrong.

This was reproducible with other time zones:
Honolulu (UTC-10), New York (UTC-4), Ponta Delgado (UTC-1) -> last activation date 24.08.16
London (UTC), Munich (UTC+1), Moscow (UTC+3), Wellington (UTC+13) -> last activation 23.08.16.
So it seems to me that during the update of the summit database the time zone of the iOS device is evaluated and the last activation date from the SOTAwatch3 database is modified: If the time zone is UTC+x (x= 0 …) then the resulting date in SOTA Goat is wrong by 1 day.
In my opinion the last activation date should not be modified during the update because this is already a UTC date.

@WW1X Maybe you can reproduce this by setting the time zone of your iOS device to different time zones and afterwards updating the summits database?

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Had to wait for the App Store. Now it works! Thanks a lot.

73, Hans PB2T

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This is brilliant - I have missed stinky calling so much! New settings are super and spotting very easy! Only thing I noticed yesterday - I had to do the spots for Ian GI0AZBas he couldn’t remember his login for sotawatch! When I changed the activators call from mine to his it didn’t retain it like the previous app did. Only noticed when my callsign appeared on the spot list.

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Thanks for the thorough testing Andy. I didn’t know that a database update was the cause of this.

As you figured out, during the import the dates were saved in your local timezone (UTC+1) but then always displayed in UTC, hence showing up as “yesterday”.

Anyway, it will be fixed in the next version. Thanks again!

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Thanks for the feedback Esther; I will work on making self-spotting a smarter with regards to the activator callsign.

1 Like
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However, it seems that the date is wrong even if my time zone is UTC.
(I set the time zone to “London” and the date was wrong.)

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No rush - just love the spots coming in again!
Also is there somewhere we can send a donation for all your work??

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London is not UTC - it is GMT, and during the summer (August 24 was the activation date) it is BST which is UTC+1. :slight_smile:

There is a specific UTC timezone on iOS you can select which, confusingly enough, displays as GMT after you select it.

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Hi Rockland

Thank you very much indeed for the much appreciated SOTA Goat update.

My understanding of GMT is that it never changes and it is for most of us is the same as UTC. Here in the UK we move from GMT also known as Z (Zulu) time to BST (British Summer Time) on Sunday 29th March which is Z+1 and on Sunday 25th October we move back to GMT. These dates are only valid for this year as the changes occur on the last Sunday of the months previously mentioned.

73
Nick G4OOE

1 Like
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That is interesting and I confirm:
When I select time zone “UTC” before the update of the summit database the dates of the last activation are correct (even when I choose another time zone after the update).
When I select time zone “London” before the update the dates of the last activation are wrong.