Good and cheap Car Fleet Alarm system
- posted by: adopilot on 2010-07-31
- tagged:
gps, alarm, gps-tracking
- score: 1
Any recommendation for Car GPS tracking security device.
What I will love to avoid is monthly fee for Server.
I just want to be able to find coordinates of my vehicle by 3G if it is posibile if not by SMS.
Answer 958
You could do this with an android phone and the Tasker app. It can be configured to periodically enable GPS to get the current location then send that location as an SMS or HTTP update. Of course this means you need a functioning phone in each vehicle but you would probably want that anyway. The phone need not be that advanced, it would just need to be running a recent version of Android and have GPS. The Tasker app only costs a few dollars.
Update: Here is a set of Tasker profiles that allow for an intermittent update of the handset's location. It needs two profiles because currently Tasker doesn't have a "get location fix" type call, so this can be achieved instead by activating a location-based profile.
Note that this profile works for me, but I'm quite new to Tasker so it may not be the optimal approach. If anyone knows a better way to do any part of it then please comment on this answer.
The first profile is location based and gets the GPS fix. The second profile is timer based and activates the first, then waits for a while before posting the details.
To create the first profile open Tasker and:
- At the main menu select New->Location, then Done.
- At the Name Context dialog, enter Location, then press OK*.
- At the Task Edit screen, select the + icon, then Variable then Variable Set.
- In the Variable Set screen, set Name=**%LOC_TIMESTAMP** and To to %DATE, then press Done.
- Press Done again to return to the main Tasker screen.
- We actually want the LOC_TIMESTAMPto be set when the profile exits, so tap on the Variable Set ... item on the right and select Move To Exit to make it an exit event.
- We don't want this profile to be active, so tap on the Location flag, then in the Context Options dialog, select Profile then Disable.
- The profile needs to have a name to be used by other profiles, so long-tap on the profile's header bar then in the Profile Options dialog, select Name, then in the Name Profile dialog enter Current Location.
You now have a profile that will get a location fix when activated and set the LOC_TIMESTAMP variable to the date when the profile was deactivated. This gives a pretty accurate record of the last location fix.
We now need another profile to periodically activate the Current Location profile and send the data somewhere:
- From the main Tasker screen, select New->Time.
- In the dialog set From: to 9:00 and To: to 17:00 (assuming you only want to track 9-5, if you want to have this active constantly, uncheck both the From: and To: fields). Check Repeat: and set the value to 30 Minute(s).
- In the Task Edit: screen we need to add 3 tasks:
- First make note of the current GPS status so we can turn it off when done if needed:
- Select +->Variable->Variable Set.
- Set Name to %WASGPS and To to %GPS%.
- Select Done.
- Second turn GPS on if it is off:
- Select +->Misc->GPS.
- In the GPS dialog set Set to On.
- Check If then in the three fields enter the respective values %WASGPS, ~ (equals), and Off
- Select Done.
- Third enable the Current Location profile:
- Select +->Tasker->Profile Status.
- In the Profile Status dialog, long-click in the Name field, select the Current Location profile from the Select Profile list (this is why it needs to be named).
- Set the Set field to On.
- Select Done.
- Select Done to return to the main Tasker screen.
We now need to add some exit actions to the new profile. We need to configure the exit tasks to wait for enough time for a GPS fix to be established (at least I think we do, you may be able to omit this step), then turn the location profile off, disable GPS, and send the location notification.
- Tap on the right hand side of the new profile and select Add Exit Task.
- First wait for a minute:
- Select +->Tasker->Wait.
- In the Wait dialog, set Minutes to 1.
- Select Done.
- Deactivate the Current Location profile. Steps are the same as above, but set Set to Off.
- Deactivate GPS if it wasn't active before the task ran.
- Select +->Misc->GPS
- In the GPS dialog set Set to Off.
- Check If then in the fields enter %WASGPS, ~ (equals), and On
- Select Done.
- Notify the current position. You can do this by sending an SMS or by sending an HTTP Post to a web service if you like. There is also an option to compose an email, but I don't see an automatic way of actually sending one. To send an SMS:
- Select +->Phone->Send SMS.
- Long-click the Number field and pick a contact to spam.
- In the Message field, enter %LOC_TIMESTAMP: %LOC.
- Select Done.
- To send an HTTP Post:
- Select +->Net->HTTP Post.
- Configure the Server:Port field and Path as needed and enter the %LOC_LOCATION and %LOC as appropriate values to whatever keys your service needs. Then select Done.
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