Use Twitter to track your Pre 18
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:50 am EDT
The possible uses for this hack are at least initially kind of limited, but it is an interesting demonstration nonetheless. Over at Palm Pre Hacks they’ve managed to get the Pre to report its location to Twitter every hour and even posted a video demonstration. The system involves gaining Linux access onto the Pre, installing a cron job (a scheduled task) that reports the phone’s GPS coordinates every hour, and some SSH and dynamic DNS magic that’s frankly a bit above my own head. But in the end, your location ends up posted onto Twitter every hour with a relative accuracy.
Apart from stalking yourself, you could install this hack on your own Pre for tracking should you lose the phone, or maybe onto your kid’s Pre to keep tabs on them when they say they won't go down to the quarry. Palm Pre Hacks even mentioned that with some additional tweaking you could have the Twitter RSS feed linked into Google Maps and provide a visual tracking of where you’ve been with your phone.
Hey, if Palm can track your location, you may as well let the entire planet do it, right?
[via: Hack a Day]
18 Comments
Or you could go to sprints website and sign up for Sprint Family Locator and set times to report the location of the phone on the hour every hour. The two bad things are one the services cost $5/month(you can add as many phones as you like.), the second on is....its not very accurate. But it does the same thing with out everybody in the world knowing where you are.
But that does nothing for the much desired geek cred.
You can make a Twitter private only for followers, right? So Create a private Twitter account solely for tracking and only allow yourself to see the updates. Easy Peasy.
That is correct. If you don't open it to the world, then the world won't know.
My Pre has reported its location to one of my private servers every 5 minutes (when it's had network access) since the day I got a root prompt. Glad it's getting easier to set up for less-technical users.
I haven't charged my Pre in a day and a half due to some unexpected travel plans. I made and received several short calls, sent a few dozen TMs and googled a few things, and it was down to 42% when I finally started charging it just now. Apparently the 50 milliseconds of network activity necessary to transmit something like "lat=34.56789&lon=-76.54321" doesn't drain the battery nearly as much as, say, Sprint Navigation or Pandora or having a marginal cell connection causing it to attempt to roam constantly.
cool implementation... op needs to learn how to cam though...
I didn't know you could run php on the pre. I really have to root my Pre I have ten years of Linux experience and I love php.
Are there any apps that do this yet without having to go through this extensive process? I don't want to have to pay monthly for WhereisMyPre when I can just use twitter!