By launching this Free App the National Sea Rescue Institute is responding to a need in the paddling and small craft community. We are giving family and friends of people going out on South African waters another safety measure that they can use to be safe.
“Safetrx is an international product with a solid reputation,” says NSRI CEO Dr Cleeve Robertson.
“It has been successfully used in other countries around the globe and we are excited to announce the launch of RSA SafeTrx. It is another tool that paddlers and small craft users can add to their safety equipment, which will help to take the search out of Search and Rescue,” said Dr Robertson.
The RSA SafeTrx App monitors a boats journey and alerts emergency contacts, who are nominated by the user (family and friends), should they fail to return to shore on time.
RSA SafeTrx allows you to plan your journey on your smartphone. Directly from your smartphone you can enter your journey details and know that your journey is being tracked. Should you not return by the time given, your ‘emergency contact’ will be alerted via SMS and advised to alert the Maritime Rescue Co-Ordination Centre (MRCC).
The ‘emergency contact’ should firstly check that there is in fact a problem (and its not just an issue of forgetting to close the journey). If the trip is overdue without an explanation the ‘emergency contact’ should contact the MRCC which will activate the closest NSRI station.
Where an ‘emergency contact’ calls the MRCC concerning an overdue trip, they will have access to your location and SafeTrx trip data through a secure SafeTrx server. Since the RSA SafeTrx app periodically sends your location data back to Safetrx servers, the NSRI’s crew can be given your last known position.
The RSA SafeTrx app logs position reports every kilometre (or every 5 minutes if stationary). The app also monitors the Smartphone’s battery in real time and adapts to declining battery levels. If the battery level falls below 30%, the location transmission interval is adjusted from 1Km to 2Km to save battery power. There is also a failsafe to ensure that if the battery level falls to 10%, SafeTrx suspends in order to preserve battery power for emergency calls.
In terms of a breadcrumb trail, the app includes an in-app map to view your trip progress and your current location on that track. Just tap on the map button on the Trip Progress screen.
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