How MeiliGPS Tracking Works for DofE, Expeditions, Ski Schools and Families

MeiliGPS combines a small, screen-free GPS tracker with an SOS button, the MeiliGPS App for iOS and Android, and a web portal for your laptop. The person carrying the tracker doesn’t need a phone. There’s no pairing and nothing to set up in the field.

The app shows each tracker’s location and recent route on detailed 1:25,000 outdoor maps, including Ordnance Survey mapping in Great Britain.

If someone presses SOS, the alert comes straight to you and your team in the app, so you can respond, hand it to a colleague or escalate it.

• Up to 14 days’ battery
• IPX5 rated against rain and spray
• Works from −20°C to +60°C
  
  

Each MeiliGPS tracker works out its own position using GPS satellites. It then sends that position to our secure, UK-hosted cloud, and on to the MeiliGPS App and web portal.

To do this it uses LPWA (Low Power Wide Area), a low-power network technology built for trackers. It reaches further than a phone and often stays connected where a phone has lost signal.

We’ve tested it from the Alps to the Arctic Circle and the Rocky Mountains: in France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Finnish Lapland, Hokkaido, Lake Louise and Banff, New Zealand, and across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

The result? You can follow a tracker on a New Zealand ski slope from your phone in London.

No tracker connects everywhere. In deep valleys or very remote areas there may be no connection at all, so plan your route, check-ins and supervision with that in mind.

Leaders, schools and parents use MeiliGPS to keep track of groups and individuals in the outdoors:

• Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expeditions 
• Scouts, Guides, Brownies, Cadets and CCF 
• Ski schools and school ski trips 
• Schools and school trip organisers
• Outdoor education and mountain bike centres
• Families on outdoor holidays 

Whoever you are, the question is the same: how do you share each tracker’s location safely with the right people, and no one else? That’s what the Sharing Centre is for.

The Sharing Centre lets you share your trackers with the people who need to see them, and nobody else. That might be DofE supervisors and assessors, parent helpers, ski instructors or family members.

Setting up a Sharing Session takes a few minutes:

1. Give the session a name and start and end dates. You can also attach a route, such as a DofE practice route.
2. Choose the trackers to share. You can give each one a name and colour just for this session, such as “DofE Group A”.
3. Add each viewer by name and mobile number, and choose whether they’re included in SOS escalation.
4. The viewer gets a text asking them to download the free MeiliGPS App. When they log in with that mobile number, they see the trackers and route you’ve shared. They don’t need an airtime plan of their own.

Every session ends automatically on its end date, so location sharing doesn’t carry on after a trip or expedition. You can revoke access earlier if you need to, and the Sharing Centre keeps a record of who had access.

We built the Sharing Centre with safeguarding children in mind. There are no public links, and every viewer is a named person you’ve chosen.

Every MeiliGPS tracker has an SOS button. If someone needs help, they hold it for ten seconds, and the tracker vibrates once to show the alert has been sent.

Your team sees the alert as a notification in the MeiliGPS App, whether the app is open or not. If nobody acknowledges it, the alert escalates to a text message and then an automated phone call. It goes to everyone you’ve included in SOS escalation, and keeps going until someone responds.

When a team member acknowledges the alert, the tracker vibrates three times, so the person who pressed it knows their team has it.

If you need the emergency services, you can share the tracker’s location with them from your phone.

The alert goes to people who know your group, such as supervisors, instructors or parents, not to a call centre. There’s no charge for accidental alerts.

A tracker is one part of your supervision plan, never the only one. Keep your usual check-ins and emergency procedures in place.

Most everyday tracking apps use Google or Apple Maps. They’re built for roads and towns, so they show little of the terrain your group is actually crossing.

The MeiliGPS App includes detailed outdoor mapping at no extra cost: Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 maps in Great Britain, and outdoor maps worldwide. You see the same contours, paths and field boundaries your group uses on paper.

Abroad, the maps show ski runs and lifts, hiking trails, mountain bike tracks and mountain refuges. That makes them just as useful on a school ski trip as on a DofE expedition.

Download the area before you set off, and the map works without phone signal. You can still see your own position and the last position received from each tracker, so you can navigate to a group in the hills.

Getting started takes a few minutes:

1. Buy your trackers. Each MeiliGPS tracker is £95, and you own it outright.
2. Choose an airtime plan. After checkout, you’ll set up a Global Airtime Plan for each tracker: £7.99 a month while it’s in use, or pay annually for £70 per annum per tracker (£5.83 per month).
3. Pause between trips. When a tracker isn’t needed, pause its plan for £1 a month, then switch it back on for the next trip. You can cancel at any time.

There are no contracts and no activation fees, and you’re never charged for an accidental SOS alert.

Need more trackers or plans later? Add them through Customer Login in the main menu.

Buying for a school, Scout group or organisation? You can pay by invoice or direct debit at checkout.