an offline location tracker app

[mu22le]

Hi,
as stated in your "Creating Location-Aware Applications" terrestrial based location methods works by identifying mobile cells. I would like to build an application that can track my phone position, but I do not need position information in real time, I would just like to save enough info so that I can work out the phone position later.

In principle to do this I do not need to be connected to internet; I could just save the information on all the visible network cells and a time-stamp. Later when I connect to internet I could translate the network informations into coordinates.

The fact that I need to be connected to the internet only one time has the benefit of costing less money and draining less power.

Unfortunately the Mobile Location Framework provides no means of doing this (AFAIK); I can't get a list of visible cells nor there is a high level "network info" object that I can save and feed to the Location API later to get coordinates.

Do you know if there is a way to build this application with the current API? If not, would you consider providing an API that would make this possible, in the future?

Regards,

Emme

[petrib]

If you have a phone with a built-in GPS receiver, or an external Bluetooth GPS receiver, you can get and store your accurate location coordinates without any Internet connectivity.

[mu22le]

If you have a phone with a built-in GPS receiver, or an external Bluetooth GPS receiver, you can get and store your accurate location coordinates without any Internet connectivity.

Yes, of course, but (apart from the fact that my phone does not have a GPS) keeping the internal GPS or bluetooth on all the time would kill the phone battery.

What I would like to build is a minimal, stand-alone solution that can work on any recent symbian phone unobtrusively and does not require you to buy a new gadget.

Cheers,

Emme

[petrib]

Through published APIs, you will only be able to get the current cell ID (not neighbouring cells).

Unless you also have a database of locations of all cells (basestations) for your network operator (or when roaming on some other operator's network also their cell locations), that is pretty useless for location tracking.

In any case, if it is enough, you can try apps like these:

http://www.cellspotting.com/software/index.php

See also:

http://www.opencellid.org/

[mu22le]

Through published APIs, you will only be able to get the current cell ID (not neighbouring cells).

Unless you also have a database of locations of all cells (basestations) for your network operator (or when roaming on some other operator's network also their cell locations), that is pretty useless for location tracking.

Actually Google has a nice api to translate cell id into coordinates. But unless you have a list of all the visible cells the precision is awful (~1.5km if you only know the current cell).

In any case, if it is enough, you can try apps like these:

http://www.cellspotting.com/software/index.php

See also:

http://www.opencellid.org/

Thanks, I already knew about this resources, but unfortunately they are not what I am looking for.

Of course Nokia also has a cell id database and the Mobile Location Framework is just a very high level API to access it. What I am asking for is either an API to save the network information and query the Nokia servers later, or, as an alternative, an API to get all the available network information (cells, signal strength maybe) in clear so that I can log them (and later use whatever service I like to translate them into coordinates).

[ltomuta]

An API that can retrieve neighboring cell info might be available for partnering but only for S60 3.2 or later. As for SUPL database access API, I don't know, haven't looked into the issue. Open a support request and ask.