Track anything for $40?
Desire: I’d like to be able to track physical things—myself, backpacks, other people’s cars. Don’t ask me why. I’m mischievous. I’d like the solution to be low-cost enough that it isn’t painful to toss the tracker in a car and expect to never get it back.
Background: I’ve looked into the pre-built systems used for tracking fleet trucks and cars. They come with a cell-connection and GPS. They would be perfect if they didn’t cost a lot of money and weren’t both clunky and large. I’ve also looked into building something starting from a stand-alone bluetooth GPS receiver—but that already puts me up past the $50 mark, and it still has no way of phoning home.
Solution: The solution is pretty simple. A low-cost tracking system needs a cell-connection and a GPS. Some pay-as-you-go cell-phones come with a GPS, or at least cell-tower triangulation. If we can just get some software onto the thing to power it up every 30 minutes, spin up the GPS, take a reading, send an SMS with the location, and power down again, we’d be done. I’m not sure whether it’s possible to load new software onto pre-paid phones, but I’d be interested to find out.
There are are already some companies selling a phone which does something similar (for tracking your children—i.e., spying) for around $160 dollars.
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Arthur
Where I live (Switzerland) it’s no problem to get a phone (pre-paid or not) with the ability to load additional software. The easiest way would probably be a Java capable phone where you would have to check whether the API for GPS access is available. The S60 models also offer you to install self written software (with some annoying self-signing hoops) in some strange variation of C++. The $40 price tag could be a problem though, I haven’t seen phones with GPS that cheap (price plans with periodic payments where you’ll end up with much higher costs not included).
Japh
I’ve been wanting exactly this for quite some time. If you do ever manage to work out a solution, and implement it, please post! :)
Fowl
$40 is very little for a phone with GPS, although they are GPS chips are very cheap (in volume u can get all the needed positioning electronics on one chip for less then USD10), GPS as a feature on a phone is still reletavley highend and is normally paired with a fastish proc and gfx ability for maps, etc.
You also have to take into account data/network access charges.
Almost all phone’s I have seen have the ability to load java software (even if some “hacking” is required).
Nubeblog
Cell tower triangulation is the best solution to track things. GPS devices needs an antenna with direct visibility with the satellite. You will probably need direct access to Symbian with C++ to manage the GSM modem.
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I cmmeond all our American friends for their concerns about, and actions on behalf of “Buying American” as much as possible. (Anyone who has tried to eliminate off-shore stuff from their carts lately will find it almost impossible.) Many of us have the same concerns here in Canada. We are a much smaller player than the US in most manufacturing markets. Nevertheless, and despite a general lack of awareness of this in the US, we have historically been America’s largest trading partner. We buy from you; you buy from us . . . So when you decide to “Buy American”, you might want to consider making a mutiually-favourable exception and include some “Buy Canadian” in there too. It is, and has been, in both our interests for many, many years. And, we’ll do the same for you . . . A Proud CanadianP.S. Go Canuks!
Brett
I run marathons with my iPhone, and have yet to see a good implementation of the software you describe. I’d love to “push” my GPS coordinates to a GMap so that friends & family all over the world (OK, just the US) could follow along while I run. To speak to Nubeblog’s response; I’ve found that the cell triangulation on iPhone 2.5 can be amazingly accurate — but only in some areas. Did I mention that I live in the middle of the desert? (PHX, AZ)
Dan
http://www.mologogo.com/
Dave
If you have a S60 Nokia phone, you can install software that will track your position and share it. Have a look at Nokia’s “Mobile Web Server” (basically Apache running on your phone), which you can write plugins in Python for. Also, Nokia’s Sports Tracker can track your position over time and share it with friends online.
I doubt you’ll get a contract-free phone with GPS for less than $150 for a couple of years though.
Another thing to note: turning a cell on and off every 30 minutes will probably use more power than leaving it on in standby all the time.
Justin Dolske
Sparkfun sells a few relevant items…
* A mostly complete system, but costs $450 ($360 if you buy more than 100! :-) — http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8289
* A barebones board for $150 (GPS, cell, battey not included).
Joel "Jaykul" Bennett
You can get a GPS-enabled Boost (prepay) Motorola i425t from BestBuy for $30 (including a $5 credit) http://bit.ly/1Rgqcd and use Mogologo (mentioned above) or a free trial account of this stuff http://www.geocities.com/prestonsystems/mytracking
The GPS in these isn’t that great, but I think you’ll get a location way more often than every 30 minutes ;-)
Daniel Einspanjer
A while back, I wanted something that I could put on our cat to track it when it went outside and my wife’s keys, and also attach to my child “just in case” when we were at the mall or a playground. I quote just in case because I tend to focus on playing with my child rather than just turning her loose, but still. :)
Anyway, I came across loc8tor.com which made little watch battery powered short/medium range directional tracking tags. This was exactly what I wanted. They can even be put into an active tracking mode that will alert the hand held tracker if the tag goes outside a predefined range.
The company has since come out with a slicker version for $80. http://www.loc8tor.com/product_information.asp?pid=96&cid=18
I just mention it because it is slightly correlated. I know it is no cellular radio with GPS, and it is also double the price range you are talking about. Still, one more interesting piece of tech and it works quite well. Just make sure that you attach it to your cat’s collar in such a way that the cat can’t dip it in her water bowl on a regular basis. :)
Kai Hendry
New-ish Japanese phones offer a service like imadoco for a couple of dollars a month to track stuff.
alain
Aza,
The problem is neither the hardware nor the phone. The issue is the network. So the nifty app may work for one but not scale. Networks have a fair use limit which prevents anyone for making too many requests on their network. That means sms, phone calls etc. Operators will shut you down if you bypass their estimated top user range. Sad but it was necessary to prevent fraud. A number of clever people had found real cheap ways to call in the past…
Leslie
I tried a couple of the tracking solutions mentioned in this thread (Mologogo and MyTracking). Forget Mologogo…very unstable and LOTS of reboots. MyTracking is actualy very good: super stable, free, and nice map page with geofences and stuff:
http://www.geocities.com/prestonsystems/mytracking
It was free but you need to email the developer for an account (a bit of a pain). The amazing thing is the cost. Boost Mobile i425 costs $30 at Target and the only recurring cost is $10 every 3 months to keep the account alive.
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Eric
I am sure you could snag an old android phone off craigslist for a decent price along with a car charger you could hardwire to a 12v source with an inline fuse. Then for the gps tracking portion there are some open source projects you could have adapted to your needs using a hire-a-coder type site or scour your local meetup groups. Sending a text message may be difficult without someone there to press the send button though it may still be do-able. You might be better off with having it update a database with its current location and a timestamp, even battery charge level if it will be running on battery power.
If you will be recovering the device you could use an app like mytracks, which is made by Google. Set it to only ping the gps once every 2 minutes or so and you could save some battery life. It is a pretty well made app, but again you’d have to recover the device to pull the information.
Sadly I don’t see a time stamp on your post so I cannot see how old it is to take a guess at whether this is still something you are wanting to do.
Rich
I too am interested in tracking something inexpensively. I have someone harrassing my daughter and she got a restraining order but the guy still trashes her things and there is no proof he was at her place. Can someone help me with a suggestion of what I can put under his car to track his cars whereabouts. It needs to have long battery life to throw a signal but doesn’t need all the extra things like car speed, recorded history, etc
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