Discussion: About your live tracking; h...
in: Jagge; Jagge > 2008-03-04
Mar 4, 2008 5:20 PM
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About your live tracking; how does that work? What type of equipment are you using?
Mar 4, 2008 10:16 PM
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Mar 5, 2008 5:52 AM
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We use very simple and basic setup:
1. bluetooth GPS. These are pretty cheap and some of us already had these for car navigation.
2. Nokia cell phone with symbian s60 operating system.
I have been trying an other alternavive too, Nokia cell phone with internal integrated GPS (no bluetooth gps needed).
I wrote a little little program (simple Python script) for the phone for connectiong to GPS over bluetooth, receiving data from it and sending it to web server.
And at server we have enhanged route gadget for saving the data and vieving it.
There is nothing special in this all. It might work with other brands than Nokia too if you can run python on them, but code must be tweaked a bit, there is some s60 spesific code used here.
About data transfer to server - One hour of tracking costs about 5-10 cents here if we use prices of prepaid sim cards here. But most of us have different deal: certain amount of data is included to the monthly fee, and it it does not get over that it will cost nothing.
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The idea was not buying 10 x fancy equipment setup and doing tracking with those. We haven't bought almost any equipment for this, people already have this kind of phones and bluetooth GPS units. Some have bought bluetooth GPSs, but those new kinds with standalone logging capability, so they do traditonal off line orienteering/running tracking with it too, and they bought it mainly for it - not for this live thing.
When we have those events no one prepares unists and hands them over to runner at start. Anyone who likes to be tracked gets equipment by himself (borrows from little sister or steals from work ;) and installs the software. And at start they just turn it on by themselves. This is why everyone has different setup, different phone, OS version. And have different kind of problems and I try to fix them bit by bit so finally we would get a nice simple system for DIY live O tracking.
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StoraMoo, if you can get your hands on Nokia cell phone with s60 OS and BT gps and you like to try, I can send you something, it's pretty easy to install and use. Crash test dummies are always needed.
1. bluetooth GPS. These are pretty cheap and some of us already had these for car navigation.
2. Nokia cell phone with symbian s60 operating system.
I have been trying an other alternavive too, Nokia cell phone with internal integrated GPS (no bluetooth gps needed).
I wrote a little little program (simple Python script) for the phone for connectiong to GPS over bluetooth, receiving data from it and sending it to web server.
And at server we have enhanged route gadget for saving the data and vieving it.
There is nothing special in this all. It might work with other brands than Nokia too if you can run python on them, but code must be tweaked a bit, there is some s60 spesific code used here.
About data transfer to server - One hour of tracking costs about 5-10 cents here if we use prices of prepaid sim cards here. But most of us have different deal: certain amount of data is included to the monthly fee, and it it does not get over that it will cost nothing.
---
The idea was not buying 10 x fancy equipment setup and doing tracking with those. We haven't bought almost any equipment for this, people already have this kind of phones and bluetooth GPS units. Some have bought bluetooth GPSs, but those new kinds with standalone logging capability, so they do traditonal off line orienteering/running tracking with it too, and they bought it mainly for it - not for this live thing.
When we have those events no one prepares unists and hands them over to runner at start. Anyone who likes to be tracked gets equipment by himself (borrows from little sister or steals from work ;) and installs the software. And at start they just turn it on by themselves. This is why everyone has different setup, different phone, OS version. And have different kind of problems and I try to fix them bit by bit so finally we would get a nice simple system for DIY live O tracking.
---
StoraMoo, if you can get your hands on Nokia cell phone with s60 OS and BT gps and you like to try, I can send you something, it's pretty easy to install and use. Crash test dummies are always needed.
This discussion thread is closed.