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I'm looking for a simple application that will run in the background, and send the current GSM/UTMS cell-id to a web server on a periodic basis (via HTTP GET).
Basically a program like cellGPS (http://www.vikinggames.hu/product.php?id=11) but for Windows Mobile. I don't really care about GPS info, since that just sucks power (and doesn't work indoors).
What I'm trying to do here is enable my home automation system to know where I am, without sucking my phone's battery to death (especially since GPS won't work indoors). GSM/UTMS cell-id is 'close enough' for me.
The application would just hit a webserver on my home machine with the current cell-id (http://webserver.com/receiver.php?cellid=4233-23) on a definable period. My own app on my webserver would record that data into a database. I can then go back and use that data to let my home auto system know "hey, Justin's almost home, turn on the HVAC, lights, etc".
It needs to be able to run in the background, no annoying icons on the screen, and start up on phone reset.
I figure since it's just sending the cell-id (which is always available), it would be rather efficient and not use much battery power (especially since I usually leave Activesync on "instant" so the data connection is usually up anyway).
Other extensions to this would let my server update twitter/facebook/etc with "Justin's at ... home/work/etc now.".
Any ideas?
wow this would be a great aplication
Two programs come to mind.... Comm Mgr Pro and rk-Location Switch.
I have not really played with these two programs much, but they do Cell tower based switching and might include some of the other features you require (but I do have to admit that they do not have all the features you want).
Dale Lane posted some c# code to programmatically get the cellID of the current tower.
The rest is pretty simple - a place to enter the url and then periodically issue HTTP GET requests.
I guess I could try to cook up something when I have some time.
Well I went and coded a sample app anyway. It just reads the current tower info at the specified interval. Is this the information that you require?
Just extract the zip to the device and run the .exe.
Note: It requires .NET Compact Framework 2.0
this sounds pretty cool. remember that cellid information is good for triangulating to about 1000 meters. you can get "justin's on his way home, turn on the AC" but probably not "justin's in the shower, begin youtube upload"
newb5000 said:
Well I went and coded a sample app anyway. It just reads the current tower info at the specified interval. Is this the information that you require?
Just extract the zip to the device and run the .exe.
Note: It requires .NET Compact Framework 2.0
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Works great! even though this topic was supposed to be on logging it to a web database, I am not too keen on that since data charges are expensive. I would be more interested in an internal database where I can simply attach a "friendly name", say the location of the site (ie. corner of main and first st.) to some cell sites (or a group of sites) in the internal database. Similar to what nicetrack used to do on previous WM versions. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=320055
newb5000 said:
Well I went and coded a sample app anyway. It just reads the current tower info at the specified interval. Is this the information that you require?
Just extract the zip to the device and run the .exe.
Note: It requires .NET Compact Framework 2.0
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will check as soon as I get my Kaiser back -- I managed to shatter the screen over the weekend. doh. This sounds EXACTLY like what I'm looking for.
Someone else mentioned data charges, which I don't care about, since I'm on unlimited data (AT&T won't even sell the things without the unlimited data plan now).
Actually, I still have my older TyTN somewhere. Let me dig it up and give this a try.
jasonchan said:
Works great! even though this topic was supposed to be on logging it to a web database, I am not too keen on that since data charges are expensive. I would be more interested in an internal database where I can simply attach a "friendly name", say the location of the site (ie. corner of main and first st.) to some cell sites (or a group of sites) in the internal database. Similar to what nicetrack used to do on previous WM versions. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=320055
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's a program that sort of does this now, called Trackme -- but it only does GPS as far as I know. Adding DB code would probably add a whole lot of complexity (and CPU power).
I'm sure it's doable, though, but I would hope it wouldn't be in this app. I have enough crap running in the background eating precious CPU cycles.
I wish I had a Windows machine to do development on. I'm Mac/Linux only, and don't have access to Visual Studio anymore.. I wrote an app to do this for the iPhone, but it can't run in the background due to SDK limitations. It's annoying that Microsoft hasn't made the WinMo SDK work on other platforms (although I guess Apple is doing that with the iPhone, so I don't have much room to talk).
The "goal" of this desired application is to be as lightweight as possible and offload all processing to a real computer. My phone doesn't need to do all of the work.
I can't imagine this would use much bandwidth, anyway. Even if you updated every five minutes, that's far less than 50kb per day, assuming a 64 byte URL + all HTTP and TCP headers. It'd add up to around 1.5 megabytes a month. I'd bet it'd be closer to 800-900kb/month. That's nothing compared to email/etc traffic. I would hope EU/etc carriers aren't so bad that 1.5mb a month would put you over a limit...
jasonchan said:
Works great! even though this topic was supposed to be on logging it to a web database, I am not too keen on that since data charges are expensive. I would be more interested in an internal database where I can simply attach a "friendly name", say the location of the site (ie. corner of main and first st.) to some cell sites (or a group of sites) in the internal database. Similar to what nicetrack used to do on previous WM versions. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=320055
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tested it yesterday when driving home from work. Tower changes were very frequent during my drive home. But lets say that a HTTP GET request (depending on the length of the URL) is on average 100 bytes. Lets say in a day you switch towers 200 times. That would result in just under 20 kilobytes of data usage in a day. I actually calculated this for myself because I also initially thought that one would get a large bill at the end of the month for data usage, but it would seem that this isn't the case.
One could also limit the web requests to only "bookmarked" Cell IDs.
I like the idea of the original poster even though I cannot see how I could use it personally, since I do not have a home automation system.
Regarding more friendly names - I remember that I had set it up on one of my first phones to receive cell broadcast messages from the towers which included the tower friendly name. Haven't tried since, though.
The data that is made available in Windows Mobile is the following:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa921533.aspx
Don't see any friendly names of towers though
I thought of adding a "bookmark" button so that one can bookmark the current Cell ID (and possibly assign a friendly name) but this would be very awkward while driving (and the frequent tower changes).
Google has a database with Cell IDs and uses them in Google Maps but good luck getting a copy of their database
norelidd said:
this sounds pretty cool. remember that cellid information is good for triangulating to about 1000 meters. you can get "justin's on his way home, turn on the AC" but probably not "justin's in the shower, begin youtube upload"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hah!
I only need 1000 meter resolution. GPS is definitely more accurate, but it would kill the battery in 6 hours flat.
Maybe when the third generation of GPS sats start going up in a few years, GPS receivers will use less power (since the sats will be much more powerful and supposedly will reach inside most buildings).. but that's 2015 at the earliest. Who knows what HTC/etc will come out with by then.
jmat said:
I will check as soon as I get my Kaiser back -- I managed to shatter the screen over the weekend. doh. This sounds EXACTLY like what I'm looking for.
Someone else mentioned data charges, which I don't care about, since I'm on unlimited data (AT&T won't even sell the things without the unlimited data plan now).
Actually, I still have my older TyTN somewhere. Let me dig it up and give this a try.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only saw your post after I posted mine.
There aren't any web requests yet though, I just wanted to confirm that I was on the right track (through you testing it ). I'm willing to give it a bash because I'll learn something through the process.
Some questions arise:
Should the app dial a connection automatically, or just not send out requests if there is no active connection?
Still need to figure out how to get it to run in the background properly
I'm wondering how it should function if the phone is in standby
newb5000 said:
I tested it yesterday when driving home from work. Tower changes were very frequent during my drive home. But lets say that a HTTP GET request (depending on the length of the URL) is on average 100 bytes. Lets say in a day you switch towers 200 times. That would result in just under 20 kilobytes of data usage in a day. I actually calculated this for myself because I also initially thought that one would get a large bill at the end of the month for data usage, but it would seem that this isn't the case.
One could also limit the web requests to only "bookmarked" Cell IDs.
I like the idea of the original poster even though I cannot see how I could use it personally, since I do not have a home automation system.
Regarding more friendly names - I remember that I had set it up on one of my first phones to receive cell broadcast messages from the towers which included the tower friendly name. Haven't tried since, though.
The data that is made available in Windows Mobile is the following:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa921533.aspx
Don't see any friendly names of towers though
I thought of adding a "bookmark" button so that one can bookmark the current Cell ID (and possibly assign a friendly name) but this would be very awkward while driving (and the frequent tower changes).
Google has a database with Cell IDs and uses them in Google Maps but good luck getting a copy of their database
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tower switching will happen quite fast in big populated areas. That's why I was just going for every few minutes and not "as the tower changes".
It's too bad the towers don't "advertise" their GPS coordinates along with the other tower data. It seems like that would have been really easy to stick in the UMTS standard.
I'm surprised Google hasn't open sourced that database, or at least made an API library for it. Afterall, their users are the ones who discovered it all, not them -- Google Maps just records GPS coordinates + cell IDs and uploads them when you run the Google Maps location. I've seen that app upload several hundred kb during some runs.
Going back to the 'post on switch' thing. That might be a neat option -- to send a GET on every tower switch.. I'm going back and forth in my head on if that's a good idea or not. It'd be interesting to see how that hits battery life, though. (Since I have ActiveSync with "always push" enabled, I bet it doesn't make much of a difference).
First beta
Hi guys,
Apologies for the delay - I've been terribly busy.
I managed to create the app so it's ready for testing.
Attached is the cab file. The app consists of two components - the configuration utility and the service. The service is responsible for making the web requests and is launched at startup. You can use the configuration utility to adjust the settings as well as monitor what the service is doing.
The service will automatically dial your data connection when a web update is necessary, but it can also work via WiFi - although I don't see why you would use it via WiFi. It also supports websites that require Windows Authentication (Kerberos or NTLM should work, but do test it).
I think the app should be pretty self explanatory, but please do post if you have any questions or experience any problems.
FIY - the last error (if there is one) is stored in a log file located in:
Program Files\CellID Updater\cidlog.txt
Hope you like it!
EDIT: An update is available on the next page. I'm leaving this attachment as is just for reference purposes, but you should download the one on the next page.
CommMgrPro is creating a very big database automatically with operatorID-Cell/LAC-GPS coords sent (automatically) by the users (they can track their movements in realtime with googlemaps). Obviously GPS coords are only sent by GPS enabled devices. You can change the URL where the data is posted (HTTP GET) to point your site and I can give you a free license. Currently 3000 cells registed with gps coords and growing as the users moves....
Dani
newb5000 said:
Hi guys,
Apologies for the delay - I've been terribly busy.
I managed to create the app so it's ready for testing.
Attached is the cab file. The app consists of two components - the configuration utility and the service. The service is responsible for making the web requests and is launched at startup. You can use the configuration utility to adjust the settings as well as monitor what the service is doing.
The service will automatically dial your data connection when a web update is necessary, but it can also work via WiFi - although I don't see why you would use it via WiFi. It also supports websites that require Windows Authentication (Kerberos or NTLM should work, but do test it).
I think the app should be pretty self explanatory, but please do post if you have any questions or experience any problems.
FIY - the last error (if there is one) is stored in a log file located in:
Program Files\CellID Updater\cidlog.txt
Hope you like it!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey all - my first post.
I must say, it's outstandingly honorable that you share your skills with us. So good.. (haven't installed the tool yet, hope it's no virus or tv-on/off-switcher)
One question @jmat: How do you process the cellid once it is http'd to your server? Is there a webservice that maps cell-ids to gps?
Frouk
frouk said:
I must say, it's outstandingly honorable that you share your skills with us. So good.. (haven't installed the tool yet, hope it's no virus or tv-on/off-switcher)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks and no, it's not a virus / trojan / <insert something bad here>
One thing I forgot to mention is that if the device goes into standby, the service will be "paused". Then, when the device comes out of standby, the service will resume where it left off. I'm not sure whether this is acceptable behaviour for the app, but I considered the alternative - preventing the device from going into standby will drain the battery very quickly. So you would choose when the service should send out updates by taking your device out of standby.
Another thing: you can configure how often the service checks for a new tower and whether it should send out an update if the tower is different or the same since the last check.
I'm still wondering how I can put this app to good use, personally. I don't have a home automation system and I don't need to be tracked by anyone at home. Any ideas on what other uses this app could have?
newb5000 said:
Thanks and no, it's not a virus / trojan / <insert something bad here>
One thing I forgot to mention is that if the device goes into standby, the service will be "paused". Then, when the device comes out of standby, the service will resume where it left off. I'm not sure whether this is acceptable behaviour for the app, but I considered the alternative - preventing the device from going into standby will drain the battery very quickly. So you would choose when the service should send out updates by taking your device out of standby.
Another thing: you can configure how often the service checks for a new tower and whether it should send out an update if the tower is different or the same since the last check.
I'm still wondering how I can put this app to good use, personally. I don't have a home automation system and I don't need to be tracked by anyone at home. Any ideas on what other uses this app could have?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The configuration is just perfect - that way one can decide when to update just by letting the device go to sleep or not. Another thing: am I right that this app will never be as accurate as Google maps "my location"? It uses triangular approximation with more than one cell-id, right? I experienced it to be very accurate, even being on the train it exactly locates my position, amazing.
I personally intend to use such kind of app for reality/virtuality games where website visitors can track something or someone on the web and then go outside into the real world and do something or meet someone.
But jmats' idea is also amazing.
Cell name
Years ago I had Ericsson R320 (BTW great phone). It showed cell name e.g. "city centre" on the screen besides op name. I dug up my eric from the closet and this option still works. It would be great to have this as a today plugin Do you know something like that?
Handy Use of App
newb5000 said:
I'm still wondering how I can put this app to good use, personally. I don't have a home automation system and I don't need to be tracked by anyone at home. Any ideas on what other uses this app could have?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you could mount a web server in your home pc (pretty simple) and track your device if it gets lost or stolen... It would be nice to recover your $700dlls phone right.
I have been searching all overr and I'm yet to see am amswer for my question? So I've cdcided to post it on the best site for htc phones. is there a way aside from the app, Pinpoint to show where you are? I mean like what I want to do is have google maps app be able to save my location and adress using the gps and allow me to save it to a contact so that this way next time I want to get to my aunts house for example I can just go to her info click adress and voila. It has a route sshowing me the route.
A strange sense of deja vu washed over me reading this, I was thinking exactly the same thing a few hours ago.
Being able to save GPS information for contacts would be something of great importance considering the devices capabilities, apps like AndNav2 could then use contact GPS co-ordinates for quick navigation, the same could be said of google maps and other applications that use GPS information.
Ageless Stranger said:
Being able to save GPS information for contacts would be something of great importance considering the devices capabilities, apps like AndNav2 could then use contact GPS co-ordinates for quick navigation, the same could be said of google maps and other applications that use GPS information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't you just save an address to the contact and then click on get directions? Or does the location have no street address?
Well yeaah that too. I was thinking of that but the thing is, my cousins house doesn't show up through maps. But it tells me the coordinates using GPS and yeeah it can still give me directions like that. Soo yeah, its sort of a half and half.
For locations without street addresses, you can still map them using lat/long coordinates. Just enter the coordinates into the address field as x,y. For example, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave would be entered as 38.89767967065576, -77.03656196594238
The My Maps Editor application might be of some use too. Basically it lets you display and edit custom maps (which means overlaid graphics on actual google maps) on the G1. Since these overlays are static, it won't route you from an arbitrary location. However if you want to see a hiking path from say a fixed street address out to a lake in the middle of the woods, this could help.
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/12/your-maps-in-your-hands-for-holidays.html
jashsu said:
Can't you just save an address to the contact and then click on get directions? Or does the location have no street address?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AndNav2 uses OpenStreetMap for it's navigation and metadata retrieval, and currently the UK post code search is limited to a few post codes (Zip codes). Most of my contacts won't show up. It will get better in time.....
Thanks Jashsu. Really, Like That really does help and is a very good substittue for an app. But yet another, question, Is It just my phone or Is it Google Maps, THat has a bug, When i know im home and i just want to mess around and activate gps and see my location. And it shows me some where 20 blocks away, lol i hate that!!!!
Elloco305 said:
Thanks Jashsu. Really, Like That really does help and is a very good substittue for an app. But yet another, question, Is It just my phone or Is it Google Maps, THat has a bug, When i know im home and i just want to mess around and activate gps and see my location. And it shows me some where 20 blocks away, lol i hate that!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it's a google maps issue, which really screws with me when tryin to use Locale. i had a situation set to put my phone on silent if it is between 2 am and 12 pm AND i am at home, but since it thinks i'm about 1/4 mi away it hasn't worked yet.
tubaking182 said:
it's a google maps issue, which really screws with me when tryin to use Locale. i had a situation set to put my phone on silent if it is between 2 am and 12 pm AND i am at home, but since it thinks i'm about 1/4 mi away it hasn't worked yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The more powered off the gps is when you attempt to access it (and also the worse your direct view of the sky is) then the longer it will take to get a good gps lock. If you habitually turn the gps function off (or you have a program that automatically does it) then every time you turn the gps on, it has to perform a cold start. This means it will take between one and five minutes to get a bead, depending on the number of satellites your phone can see at the time.
If you use gps often then don't turn it off. The amount of power saved by fully unpowering the chipset is not worth the amount of power it consumes fully cold starting every time you need it (not to mention the time wasted waiting for it to get a bead).
If you used the gps function and then left the gps-using application or put the phone into standby, the gps chipset remains in standby. The next time you access the gps, it will be considered a warm start and will take between 1-30 seconds, depending on various factors.
its called GPS TASKS.
basically, using a software like google earth, igo8 or w/e, you get coordinates of where you want to do something. Like buy chicken when you get to walmart.(i like chicken).
then you set up the task and give it the gps coords. and it basically turns on the gps once every ___ minutes(the user can set it). and you know that the gps can give you an approx loction(within ___ meters almost instantly - maybe 3000m), and so it compares that to the coords. when you get closer to the coords, it then checks wit more accuracy(MEANING MORE TIME), until you are within ____ meters(or coords are close enough), then it alerts you.
I am no programmer, so i cannot acheive this milestone in PDAs. I was just wondering if anyone was interested in attempting this.
A very interesting idea
Hi!
I think an application like that would be most appretiated. Being constatly on the move doing my job I have several tasks on my calendar that are linked with a specific location but I can only give it a time to remind me to do the task, if that same task could be linked with the GPS data it could give me an alert signaling that I'm near to the location I've determined for that same task!
Is there any application available that is able to do this?
Regards
vmcacador said:
Hi!
I think an application like that would be most appretiated. Being constatly on the move doing my job I have several tasks on my calendar that are linked with a specific location but I can only give it a time to remind me to do the task, if that same task could be linked with the GPS data it could give me an alert signaling that I'm near to the location I've determined for that same task!
Is there any application available that is able to do this?
Regards
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. i searched everywhere, but i could not find anything like this.
I dont know of a free solution, but these are out there
Edit: The location features only seem to be for Iphone/Blackberry users, Danmitt!!!
I've only tried the free versions of these services, and you have to pay to get the location aware features, but you might look at these:
Reqall Pro has this
http://www.reqall.com/about/put_me_on_the_map
Remember the Milk Pro has this:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/
I hope this helps.
Criss
reqall pro is the exact same thing i was thinking of, but it doesnt support windows mobile, but if it was possible to port it to WM, it would be perfect
Have you looked into G-Profile? Not sure if it will initialize the GPS, but it does have some cell tower location based functions.
Has anyone yet found a fix for the issue of the weather not displaying for certain uk cities, I have searched the forum but no answer found
You can find the weather in the app sometimes for my city but other times you get no data found
If you successfully configure the weather app the widget never picks up the correct details. and after a couple of minutes the app itself no longer remembers the details you previously correctly configured and it displayed
sometimes you will get a temperature but no cloud images etc
Any ideas anyone
cheers
Brother is on Sprint and was wanting to add his city as well. The nearest stock city is 90 miles away.
I know how to add them on my Sprint TP2 courtesy of xda but haven't had the opportunity to discover Android just yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
hohnan said:
Brother is on Sprint and was wanting to add his city as well. The nearest stock city is 90 miles away.
I know how to add them on my Sprint TP2 courtesy of xda but haven't had the opportunity to discover Android just yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is option "my location" on the top of the list of cities which opens map view where you can select almost what ever location you want.
After much research
found that
To have it set to current city causes an issue when there are multiple phone masts in your area changing between masts in a close area causes the update to fail
Solution to remove all pre-configured cities, remove current location and add a permenant location for your location, I found that unless you city was top of the list it would fail as well
New user and I've figured out some stuff but I'm still learning. Tried Glance and am currently using Canvas but one thing I can't seem to get is the weather. It differs on every app I use and is seldom the same as what is showing on my phone. I'd like to get an accurate weather forecast! How do I do that? Are there apps that do weather that I can use outside the 'stock' ones. I have an analog face I'd like to keep but without the weather I'm not so sure.
OK. Seriously? Is there an embargo on answering weather questions? Some taboo I'm not aware of? Cuz I can't get an answer to save my life! Anywhere!
Weather will differ on every app because of several variables:
The apps may be using different sources for weather (e.g. Yahoo, Google, AccuWeather, Weather Channel, etc.) Each service has slightly different data. Even on your phone if you install different weather apps, they will seldom agree 100%.
The refresh period may be set to a long time (e.g. 2-3 hours) to prevent battery drain, and hence you will not get up-to-date information. Some watch apps give you ability to configure this, while others use a hard-coded interval.
Some apps allow you to specify a Zip code, or latitude/longitude coordinates, but most simply use your phone's approximate location to retrieve local weather data. Your location will be inaccurate most of the time, since the apps usually avoid using GPS to once again avoid draining the phone's battery, and instead use cell/WiFi triangulation. This is why sometimes you may even be getting weather data for a different city.
Weather in general is not an exact science, so an "accurate forecast" is a pipe dream.
Chahk said:
Weather will differ on every app because of several variables:
The apps may be using different sources for weather (e.g. Yahoo, Google, AccuWeather, Weather Channel, etc.) Each service has slightly different data. Even on your phone if you install different weather apps, they will seldom agree 100%.
The refresh period may be set to a long time (e.g. 2-3 hours) to prevent battery drain, and hence you will not get up-to-date information. Some watch apps give you ability to configure this, while others use a hard-coded interval.
Some apps allow you to specify a Zip code, or latitude/longitude coordinates, but most simply use your phone's approximate location to retrieve local weather data. Your location will be inaccurate most of the time, since the apps usually avoid using GPS to once again avoid draining the phone's battery, and instead use cell/WiFi triangulation. This is why sometimes you may even be getting weather data for a different city.
Weather in general is not an exact science, so an "accurate forecast" is a pipe dream.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Understand that. The apps I'm using all use one of two weather programs (Yahoo or OPenweather), you can set the refresh interval (I use one hour). You can choose My Location but I think that's not working the way it should. You can also put in geo coordinates but I'm trying to not get locked into a fixed location if I can. And if you use geo's they are only going to go to the nearest reporting node. I don't want accurate as much as consistent. Where I work is always 5 degrees hotter than where I live. It's also possible the app doesn't work as well as it should.
Absent of any suggestions I guess this will be "the annoyance" for me. Everyone's gotta have one!