Pat McArdle: Hey, welcome to another episode of Shop Talk where today we are going to give you the top reasons why you want to learn about Ride Command. So when you hear the terms Ride Command, what does that actually mean? Well, the reality here at Polaris is when we say Ride Command, we are talking about an entire ecosystem. So that includes the 7-inch display that you might have in your vehicle, think of the apps on your phone, the web interface that you can go to, and even our latest offering with Ride Command Plus to give cellular connectivity to vehicles.
Pat McArdle: All right, so the first thing we need to talk about on Ride Command is all about GPS and mapping. The question we get from a lot of people is where does that GPS signal come from? Well, obviously there are satellites in the sky, that is the easy part. But on the machine, what do these antennas actually look like? Well, on this RZR XP, we popped off the hood, we popped off a couple screws and this is actually the box. It is labeled HF antenna for high frequency, and this is actually the GPS and the vehicle-to-vehicle group for group ride antenna built into one on this rig. Whereas other models, like the Turbo R that you see over here, actually has a GPS antenna right here. This side faces the sky, so this puck is for your GPS and then hiding under this side, you will see another kind of hockey puck looking device that is actually what is being used for that vehicle-to-vehicle group ride functionality.
Pat McArdle: All right, so now that we are in the vehicle, let us check out what this GPS screen actually looks like. So we got this thing tuned up, keyed on, and one of the first things I want to show you is everybody knows how to pair a Bluetooth, your phone to a Bluetooth device, that is easy. The one I want to show you actually is on these, which is this Bluetooth tethering on this Android device or the personal hotspot with this maximized compatibility turned on on your iOS. These things allow you to pipe internet connectivity from your display up to the cloud. That is going to enable a couple features that we will get into here quick.
Pat McArdle: So when you get in here, some things you can do, you can push the screen and pan around. That is just like your phone, you can pinch to zoom, most people are used to doing that. You have also got Zoom controls here on the side, zoom in, zoom out. If you have a group ride going, you can zoom to a group or zoom to a leader. If you tap down at the bottom right here, that will actually, tap down at the right will zoom you back to right where you are, so center your position on the map. We have got North up and Course up navigation, so some people like to watch the map rotate, some like to always have North locked up.
Pat McArdle: As we go in here, your current ride is going to track where you are. This is going to basically breadcrumb your trail as you go, so it makes it pretty easy to be able to find your way back. It gives you some info on distance, time, elevation change, that sort of thing. Add Waypoint, this is one way to do it. If you tap the button it will drop a waypoint right where you are. Tap the pencil, you can modify the name of it, if you need to, so you can make it whatever you want. In this case, we will delete it so it is not showing up. The other way to add a waypoint is if you just hold down anywhere on the map, it will drop a waypoint right where your finger is, so kind of the same way you can go in and modify as needed.
Pat McArdle: The other thing you can do is actually go into the settings menu and if you go down to Vehicle, let me back this up. So if you go down to Vehicle and then this steering wheel shortcut button, you can actually set up a short press and a long press of this Polaris star on the steering wheel. So right now we have got a short press to toggle through screens and I have got Drop Waypoint as a long press. So if I go back into the map, I am going to short press the button on the steering wheel, you are going to see it toggle through and now I am going to press the button on the steering wheel and it will actually drop a waypoint. So I do not have to take my hands off the steering wheel while I am driving around on the trail. I can drop waypoints when there are cool things, come back and rename them later, which is pretty nice.
Pat McArdle: Let us see, continuing on here, Group Ride, we will talk about in a separate section. Map layers, this is nice. So your current track and trails along with all the color coding for the various trail colors that you will see, is on this legend. Then if you want, you can turn on satellite map, so I have already got the phone paired up with Bluetooth tethering turned on and you can see now I get that full satellite view which is pretty awesome. And if I turn that one off just so you can see what land info looks like, this will actually show borders of ownership of people's properties. You can roll in and we got a couple cabins here not too far away, so some neat stuff there on map layers. But again, these two require your phone to be paired up in Bluetooth and have that Bluetooth tethering turned on.
Pat McArdle: The last one that is cool to show here is on Map Gauges. In this case, you can put something on the left and the right and you can toggle between all, you can select between these different items with the left and right arrows. So I tend to like to be able to see my fuel level a little bigger, so I am going to drop that in. Tap on the right and then in this case, I am going to drop in RPM, so you see a tack. Hit the green button at the top and then hit the done button and then you will see that those stay on the map. Even when I am moving things around, you can see they kind of go to the background, but then once the zooming things go away, they will pop back up and be front and center as you are actually driving around.
Pat McArdle: All right, so the other cool thing that a lot of people do not realize you can do is actually all about route planning. So if you pull up the Ride Command app on your phone or go to ridecommand.polaris.com on your computer, you can actually draw your track out or draw the route that you want to take out, save that to your account and then on your display here, we are actually going to go and log into our account by trying to sync up here. You will have to give me just a minute to get this typed in.
Pat McArdle: So we logged into our account through the display here. Next thing we want to do is tap the button or drag down from the top, go to All Settings and then if you go on to General item, first one at the top here is Account, and there is this option that says Sync to Account. Once we turn that on, you can see it pulled down two routes that we have saved in the cloud that were planned earlier today. The cool thing is if we go back to the GPS and map screen and we go to Rides and Places, we can actually go down and find these two routes. If you tap on one, like this Volcano to Campground, even though it is 1,300 miles away from where we are, you can actually see that whole route is pulled up here in purple. So you can get that synced right into your display, it is pretty awesome.
Pat McArdle: All right, so when you tap in the bottom on the map, you will see you got a button for Group Ride here. This is actually going to bring up a whole area like this, showing the groups you are in. In this case, I am going to go into my profile. I have got my name, I can add my phone number and pick my color, and then I can actually create a new group by tapping on this button, type in the group and tap on Create Group, that will make it show up. In this case, I am already there. I can toggle that group on and off, I can leave the group, but pretty simple way on this vehicle here.
Pat McArdle: The other neat thing is if I tap at the top right, you can see the group name and it is me and then the other vehicle that is in our group. I can actually say, hey, I am going to follow that RZR XP. So if I tap this top button, it will actually show how far I am away from them and how fast they are going, along with the heading that they are currently moving or their location versus mine.
Pat McArdle: So we are going to walk over to the other vehicle here and I am going to basically do the same thing on this one now, where I am going to go into Group Ride. In this case, I got a profile set up called RZR XP and since this is a red machine, it is red. I am going to scroll down, since we got a phone connected to this one, you will see a whole bunch of different groups in here. But you see Pat's group down at the bottom and we are going to tap that one to join that group. The cool thing is now it says we got two riders 12 feet apart from one another and when we close that down, you will actually see that both of these riders are available now in that group which is really awesome.
Pat McArdle: The other cool thing that a lot of people do not know is you can actually send messages to people in your group. So you can send them a note that says, hey, I am stopping for a photo. Once I send that, it will actually pop up on the other vehicle automatically and you can send short amount of things back and forth, which is a really cool deal. The other awesome thing about this Group Ride technology is that you can actually wait for that guy in front of you to go clear out a couple miles, get yourself out of the dust and instead of following where you can see their tail lights, you just let them go a mile or two ahead and then you can tail right behind them. Even if you have like say six, eight machines in your group, that information will actually piggyback from vehicle to vehicle so that the range gets extended by how far away any two of those units are. So even if you are spread out, 10 vehicles over 20 miles and each one is two miles apart, when you send that message it will relay between all those vehicles tip to tail. So it is some really sweet sub gigahertz frequency that we use to do that so it is not actually cell-based. These two machines are literally transmitting information from one vehicle to the other. Since we are paired up on a cell phone on both of them as well, we could actually have other friends that get their group ride on their phone, they could actually join this group as well and we could see them on the map too. Now they would have to stop, pull out their phone to be able to see us, but if you got any buddies that have not upgraded the latest machine yet, that is another option to make sure they are aware of.
Pat McArdle: All right, next up, when you are thinking cool things you can check out and do on your 7-inch Ride Command display, it is all about gauges, dynamics and audio here. So first thing, push this gauges button on the bottom left corner of the display and this will actually toggle through the different ones that you have set up, including the dynamics active suspension, which we have done a whole Shop Talk about so we will not touch too much on that. But obviously you can see steering, you can see braking, you can see throttle, and if we change these different modes, you will see all those shocks adjusting as we go.
Pat McArdle: But cool stuff on the gauge screen here is that if you hit this little settings icon on the bottom right, this will actually pop up and you can add different configurations. So I am going to add a new one, go down to that instead of having four circular dials, I am going to go with five different data dials here. If I tap over on data, I can change what is showing up. So maybe I do not want compass, maybe I do not want engine hours, but I like temp, I like trip meter, I like seeing my fuel level, maybe my ambient temp. When I hit done, now that screen is actually going to show up. So I see everything I got on the left, I can flip-flop and toggle different data on the right, but just remember this little settings icon down in the bottom right corner allows you to configure these gauges just the way you want them. So that is all about gauges. We covered quick on dynamics, again we have got a full episode all about Dynamics DV that will take you through all that.
Pat McArdle: When you think about audio, this is the next area that you have got plenty of options for. On many units, we have got factory audio, these RZRs are built in with a partner, Rockford Fosgate. Cool thing, you have got different sources, so we have got FM, AM, Weatherband. You can hook up a USB stick or connect with Bluetooth. The cool thing is if you want to make an FM station, you just hold it down, that will lock it into your favorites. As you are seeking through, you can find the next one here. We will just make sure we do not have too much sound coming out. If you hold that down, that will bring on the next one. You can also use the play and pause button on your steering wheel as a mute button. So if the audio is coming through, you can just tap on that, it will mute the audio so you do not have to worry about holding the down button all the way down. So just remember play, pause is also mute when you are listening into FM, so cool stuff there. But overall, factory audio is super easy to use through the head unit. Once you pair up your phone, tap on the source, you can go to Bluetooth, you can play all your music right through your Ride Command display.
Pat McArdle: All right, so one of the other cool things that we have got built in on most of the vehicles that come equipped with a Ride Command display are built-in reverse cameras. So I am going to shift into reverse, you will see my cord hanging out of the wall in the shop bench here. The other neat thing that you see here is that if you have an accessory front camera or some models come with it built in, if you tap the top arrow here, it will actually show what is in front of your vehicle. The neat part is the front camera is really good for slow speed, think rock crawling, loading in a trailer, that type of stuff. So good for speeds kind of less than 10 miles an hour.
Pat McArdle: The rear camera is actually nice if you have a machine that is upfitted like that RZR XP with a spare tire on the back rack and it is not so easy to see through it. The cool thing is, even if you are not in reverse and say you are looking at your gauges, you can tap the star button on the top or the hard button down here, tap on cameras and you can actually drive around with the rearview camera up on your screen and use it almost like a rearview mirror. So as long as people are riding with their lights on, it makes it really easy to see people that are behind you, even if you are kicking up some dust off your rear tires.
Pat McArdle: We get a lot of questions from people wondering about the longevity, can it withstand the elements, is this thing rated for the off-road environment? The answer is unequivocally yes. We use the same displays that you guys get on production vehicles, going through thousands and thousands of miles of testing across all of our different ATVs and side by sides to make sure they are ready to go when you get them. So we have actually stripped some of the plastic off the dash on this one so you can see the back side of what this looks like.
Pat McArdle: So on the back of this 7-inch display, you will see three connections on the top, these are the three for antennas, those are fully sealed both on this side and the devices they go into. Then we have got two bigger connectors and one smaller one. So the smaller one here on the right side, that is for the USB port. These other two are all about power, ground, signal wires and all of the audio equipment going out the speakers and apps and that kind of thing. So a lot of cool functionality, but again, fully sealed, this thing can handle the elements. If you got to wash the front of it, just do not get your pressure washer right up to the face of it, keep that a ways back. But overall, this thing is fully sealed, it is rated for the environment that it is in and it is ready to last a long time.
Pat McArdle: The other question we get from people is how do I update this thing? The key is to go to ridecommand.polaris.com, scroll to the bottom of the page, click on a couple links and download the software update. You can either grab just the display software update or you can update your maps as well. But I want to show you at least one of those. So we are going to swing the door open on this rig and on this one, if we open the driver side glove box here, you will see there is a little dust cap to pull off. You take your USB stick, plug it in there and then pretty simply put on the display, you go into the settings menu. So you can either scroll down from the top or hit this Polaris star button, go to All Settings, down to Vehicle here. Sorry, I lied, go down to General, we got to back up here, scroll down and where you see this one that says Update Software, you tap on that and then it will tell you if you have multiple files, these SWU files. This one is the newest, click on the install button once, twice and then give it a minute, it will roll through the software and it will automatically restart that display so you are ready to go with all the latest and greatest updates.
Pat McArdle: All right, so there is one more thing we got to hit on this top list of cool Ride Command features and the last one is all about Ride Command Plus. So when you add this cool little box onto a vehicle, which comes on some newer 23s and more 24s, also available as an accessory for some of the newer rigs, it is going to enable some cool stuff in your phone that you do not otherwise get through a cell connection from your vehicle up to the cloud. So we have connected up to a vehicle, it is actually on a ride right now out west and we have got a lot of cool features that you can see on this Expedition.
Pat McArdle: You can actually go in and we can see Vehicle Health, so we can see this thing is full of gas. These guys are probably on a lunch break, but the battery is charged up, they got a few hundred miles on it, ambient temp is pretty nice, this is a heck of a day for a ride right here. We can also go into a map and we can see the current ride, so where it was started, all the areas they have gone, where you are at right now. The cool thing here is that you can actually see the current time without having to start this up. This is going to happen automatically when you have that Ride Command Plus system enabled on your vehicle. Again, when you go into Rides, it automatically started tracking here, so when we go in, we see exactly where they are and you can even get some details. It tells you they have gone up and down 3,400 feet, all the way up to 12,000. This is a heck of a ride through the Rocky Mountains here going on.
Pat McArdle: One other neat thing, if you go down to More and go up to Group Ride, you can actually change from broadcasting from your phone over to the vehicle and we joined it up with Pat's group, the same one we used earlier in this episode. So when we walk back to the machine, we should be able to actually zoom to group and see this Expedition out in Colorado.
Pat McArdle: All right, so we jumped back in our Turbo R and we actually turned on this group for this other vehicle and you can see here that the Expedition Northstar Blue now shows up as being 800 miles away. If you look, we can actually zoom to the group, it will zoom our map way out and if we wind ourselves over here to Colorado, we will see the last place that unit was actually driving. So pretty cool technology here with this Ride Command Plus. I think overall, certainly an enhancement that we have not seen in the past that a lot of people are not aware of, so make sure you check that out if you have a vehicle that is equipped or if you have gone out and got that as an accessory.
Pat McArdle: All right, there is one more cool feature that we forgot to talk about on this Ride Command Plus system and that is all about location alerts. So we actually installed one on this machine right behind me and we wheeled the machine back and forth to trip a bump alert. In this case, you can see the notification popped up on our tablet here that Dune Shredder, our rig with the paddles, has been bumped. So when we open this up, we are going to see a big red warning on here. Notice that we can actually see exactly where this vehicle is located. If it was moving real time, like somebody was towing it on a trailer, we would be able to watch that while we phone into the authorities that somebody is maybe moving our vehicle that should not be.
Pat McArdle: So we have covered a ton of things today. We started out with GPS, we jumped into the group ride, talked all about the gauges and how to configure those, went into some of the audio and dynamic screens, talked about all the durability things that we have done and wrapped it up with Ride Command Plus. That is it for this episode of Shop Talk. Be sure you guys like, comment and subscribe, let us know what you want to see next!
