How to "ping" a cell phone to get the GPS location?
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I have a customer who has a fleet of service vehicles that he sometimes need to know the location of. While there are a number of products that will allow him to do this it price is so hight that he can not afford any of them. He has provided each service person with a GPS enabled Blackberry cell phone and we would like to use the cells phones to provide the locations of the service trucks. Does anyone know how get a cell phone to report its position by activating the GPS from a remote application? Thanks for any ideas, Gregg
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I have a customer who has a fleet of service vehicles that he sometimes need to know the location of. While there are a number of products that will allow him to do this it price is so hight that he can not afford any of them. He has provided each service person with a GPS enabled Blackberry cell phone and we would like to use the cells phones to provide the locations of the service trucks. Does anyone know how get a cell phone to report its position by activating the GPS from a remote application? Thanks for any ideas, Gregg
You may want to try to use a push type mechanism that would have the BB's "call home" with the GPS info. There are some GPS APIs that you may find by looking around here: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/[^] http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/javaappdev/pushapi.jsp[^] http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/livelink.exe?func=ll&objId=800332&objAction=browse&sort=name[^] http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/livelink.exe?func=ll&objId=800703&objAction=browse&sort=name[^] I'll see if I can provide more information on this tomorrow. Regards, Rene Pilon
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You may want to try to use a push type mechanism that would have the BB's "call home" with the GPS info. There are some GPS APIs that you may find by looking around here: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/[^] http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/javaappdev/pushapi.jsp[^] http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/livelink.exe?func=ll&objId=800332&objAction=browse&sort=name[^] http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/livelink.exe?func=ll&objId=800703&objAction=browse&sort=name[^] I'll see if I can provide more information on this tomorrow. Regards, Rene Pilon
Have a look at this document: http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/livelink.exe/fetch/2000/8067/645045/8655/8656/1271077/BlackBerry_Java_Development_Environment_Development_Guide.pdf?nodeid=1271319[^] On page 201 - Locating BlackBerry devices using GPS information - To let your application obtain the geographical coordinates, latitude and longitude, of a BlackBerry® device, use the Location API (javax.microedition.location). Depending on the location method you use, the application might also retrieve the speed, orientation, and course information of a BlackBerry device. This should give you a good start. Regards, Rene Pilon
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Have a look at this document: http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/livelink.exe/fetch/2000/8067/645045/8655/8656/1271077/BlackBerry_Java_Development_Environment_Development_Guide.pdf?nodeid=1271319[^] On page 201 - Locating BlackBerry devices using GPS information - To let your application obtain the geographical coordinates, latitude and longitude, of a BlackBerry® device, use the Location API (javax.microedition.location). Depending on the location method you use, the application might also retrieve the speed, orientation, and course information of a BlackBerry device. This should give you a good start. Regards, Rene Pilon
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I have a customer who has a fleet of service vehicles that he sometimes need to know the location of. While there are a number of products that will allow him to do this it price is so hight that he can not afford any of them. He has provided each service person with a GPS enabled Blackberry cell phone and we would like to use the cells phones to provide the locations of the service trucks. Does anyone know how get a cell phone to report its position by activating the GPS from a remote application? Thanks for any ideas, Gregg
I know one of our mobile providers have this kind of service. It does not use GPS, but it will tell you what the nearest 'tower' the phone is. Mainly focused for parents looking for their kids.
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I have a customer who has a fleet of service vehicles that he sometimes need to know the location of. While there are a number of products that will allow him to do this it price is so hight that he can not afford any of them. He has provided each service person with a GPS enabled Blackberry cell phone and we would like to use the cells phones to provide the locations of the service trucks. Does anyone know how get a cell phone to report its position by activating the GPS from a remote application? Thanks for any ideas, Gregg
gregg.drennan@pb.com wrote:
Does anyone know how get a cell phone to report its position by activating the GPS from a remote application?
Why would they need to do this? Have each driver do it, or have each driver bring the device into the office for someone else to do it. It sounds as though your customer is trying to be sneaky about it (i.e., spying). That's a sure-fire way of employing resentful drivers. Simply tell the drivers that their devices are GPS-enabled and that they will be used for periodical gathering of statistics (e.g, how long it takes to get from A to B).
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch
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gregg.drennan@pb.com wrote:
Does anyone know how get a cell phone to report its position by activating the GPS from a remote application?
Why would they need to do this? Have each driver do it, or have each driver bring the device into the office for someone else to do it. It sounds as though your customer is trying to be sneaky about it (i.e., spying). That's a sure-fire way of employing resentful drivers. Simply tell the drivers that their devices are GPS-enabled and that they will be used for periodical gathering of statistics (e.g, how long it takes to get from A to B).
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch
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There is a very good reason to do this - it gives shipments high visibility as to where a current shipment is en-route via on demand querying. Basically realtime reporting which allows ETAs / projections et al. Nothing "sneaky" about it.... Rene.
Rene Pilon wrote:
it gives shipments high visibility as to where a current shipment is en-route via on demand querying. Basically realtime reporting which allows ETAs / projections et al.
I'm all too familiar with this. I was part of a project back in the early 90s that employed satellites and mobile transmitters in the big trucks for tracking locations, speed, etc.
Rene Pilon wrote:
Nothing "sneaky" about it....
The OP made it sound as though his customer wanted to enable the GPS feature on the phones from a remote location (and without the user of the phone knowing it).
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch
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gregg.drennan@pb.com wrote:
Does anyone know how get a cell phone to report its position by activating the GPS from a remote application?
Why would they need to do this? Have each driver do it, or have each driver bring the device into the office for someone else to do it. It sounds as though your customer is trying to be sneaky about it (i.e., spying). That's a sure-fire way of employing resentful drivers. Simply tell the drivers that their devices are GPS-enabled and that they will be used for periodical gathering of statistics (e.g, how long it takes to get from A to B).
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch
This customer owns a small twelve vehicle ambulance service in a rural town here in Arizona. He has purchased GPS-enabled cell phones for each of the units (1 - iPhone on AT&T, 1 - Google G1 plus a few Blackberries on T-Mobile and the remaining are Blackberries still on Sprint). The idea is, when an emergency call comes in he would like to display a Google map to the dispatcher showing the location of the emergency and all of the in-service, non-dispatched ambulances so it will be easy for her to see where each unit is and to be able to dispatch the closest one. Currently she has to make a radio call and have each unit respond with their location and then in her head figure out which one to dispatch. The owner and I are both aware of the commercial products that do exactly this but the cost of getting one of these is prohibitive. The thought was if there was some way to have the cell phones in the units respond to us when we needed the units location we could use them plus Google maps to get the functionality he needs without a significant starting cost. I know this is possible as there are services available to keep track of where your kids are based on their cell phone GPS. I'm doing this project pro-bono as a service to this community as they have been hit hard by the down turn in the economy. If anyone knows how we might be able to get the phones to report back their location when we "ping" or somehow let them know we need the unit's location, or can point us to information how we can do this, we would really appreciate the help. Thanks, Gregg
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This customer owns a small twelve vehicle ambulance service in a rural town here in Arizona. He has purchased GPS-enabled cell phones for each of the units (1 - iPhone on AT&T, 1 - Google G1 plus a few Blackberries on T-Mobile and the remaining are Blackberries still on Sprint). The idea is, when an emergency call comes in he would like to display a Google map to the dispatcher showing the location of the emergency and all of the in-service, non-dispatched ambulances so it will be easy for her to see where each unit is and to be able to dispatch the closest one. Currently she has to make a radio call and have each unit respond with their location and then in her head figure out which one to dispatch. The owner and I are both aware of the commercial products that do exactly this but the cost of getting one of these is prohibitive. The thought was if there was some way to have the cell phones in the units respond to us when we needed the units location we could use them plus Google maps to get the functionality he needs without a significant starting cost. I know this is possible as there are services available to keep track of where your kids are based on their cell phone GPS. I'm doing this project pro-bono as a service to this community as they have been hit hard by the down turn in the economy. If anyone knows how we might be able to get the phones to report back their location when we "ping" or somehow let them know we need the unit's location, or can point us to information how we can do this, we would really appreciate the help. Thanks, Gregg
gregg.drennan@pb.com wrote:
I know this is possible as there are services available..
Are they Web-based or phone-based? Is this of any value to you?
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"The brick walls are there for a reason...to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." - Randy Pausch