My wish is to have an app that allows you to log your current location to a website so that people can see where you are. I want to use it while walking long distance marches. I'm walking the four days marches in Nijmegen in the netherlands. It's four times 50km and i want my location to be visible to my friends so that they know when i'm at a certain point on the route. That way it's easy for them to meet me while walking.

I know that you can do something simular with google but i also want to be able to log the complete route. An example can be found here: http://www.robvonk.com/wandelen/4d2008/15-juli-dag-1/ (at the bottom). This one was made with a gps logger and i had to put it on the web after i was finished. With a 'live tracker' the route will be plotted while walking.

Wanted features:
- Let people enter custom url for logging points
- Use tags for lattitude, longitude, timestamp
- Support http and https
- User controlled logging interval
- Low cpu usage

I created a server part for the logging in php. You can log a point by calling this url: The timestamp is optional but because the gps time is very accurate, i'd like to be able to have the exact time.

You can define tracks with begintime and endtime so that points will be 'assigned' to a track. The track can be shown in Google maps.

My plan is to 'open source' the server part and add some more features like the ability to add a 'planned route'.

Now what i need to get this working is an app that calls the url at a customizable interval with as low as possible CPU usage. A daemon that can be started/stopped/controled from a gui would be nice but just a gui would be fine too. My guess is that it's easy to add to one of the gps tracker apps thats already is availible.

Regards,

Rob

Since I'm a noob at using the dbus features of the N900 I can only speculate a little.

If there is a dbus service that lets you ask the activated GPS about your current position, a very simple Python hack would be enough and it could be driven by cron.

If, on the other hand, starting the GPS, waiting for it to get a signal and then ask for its position is needed, it turns a bit more complicated.

If the GPS isn't available over the dbus, it turns much more complicated, I'd guess. Then the application will have to know how to do all the things above including asking the GPS about its position in some native way.

So, perhaps start by examining the ways one can talk to the GPS on the device?

erm, ignoring all the flashy functionality - there is no reason why an app can't sit there updating the website part every x seconds with the latest co-ords ... that should be pretty easy.

I suppose the separation is, what do you want the app on the device to do, and what will the website do

(Edit - will be battery hungry!!)

Hi Rob,


have a look here: http://wiki.maemo.org/PyMaemo/Using_Location_API I used this for my small Wardriving script. If you need help, let me know.

Wim

I'd say the example given on that page is enough to get a working prototype in no time. Just add a button to stop it, pick a better interval and add the reporting to the web page as soon as a change-signal is received.

But I have to say that it comes across a s tad limiting to only allow those set intervals.

The app on the device can be faily simple. Just call the url with longitude and lattitude on an interval. The server just logs the points and another page/script on the server gets all logged points and makes them availible in Google maps. The server part works already.

And yes. it will drain the battery. I'll bring a large powerpack with me as 50km will take me 11 hours including rest stops at least.

That looks nice/doable indeed. Thats something to look at. Will be my first steps with Python though.

Thanks all,

Rob

I'm also searching for smthg like that / thinking of development

An attempt could be OpenGTS - seems to be bandwith-efficient

http://opengts.sourceforge.net/

dont know if it can run on n900, have not figured out gpsd on n900 yet

a lil experiment of my was using python to derive gps-coordinates and show it in a simple map-website on my n900 (yes i've played around with lighthttp, very funny)

if u want to make it opensource and maybe wont use google you should have a look at openstreetmap

OpenGTS looks nice but is probably a little too big for me. My current server is quite simple. It generates kml files for displaying the route so those probably can be used with openstreetmap too.

You should check this out:

http://www.georss.org/Main_Page

Making a georss-based tracker should even be possible with a shellscript...I know there's a way to get plaintext coordinates from the command line.

could this one work on N900 ?

http://www.getjar.com/mobile/17139/positme/

?