GSM Tower Location and GPS

[Esbjörn Dominique]

Google Maps has a feature somewhat like this. Look at
http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/mylocation/index.html or
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-magical-blue-circle-on-your-map.html

/Esbjörn

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 7:32 AM, Gora Mohanty <gora at sarai.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:57:28 +1200
> "Robin Paulson" <robin.paulson at gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
> > > Here's another idea: Record signal strength and position information
> for
> > > generating a coverage map. We can record tower code, signal strength,
> and
> > > phone location. This information could be used with the Open Street Map
> data
> > > to generate a real-world coverage map. This could also be useful during
> an
> > > emergency in a remote area. Instead of just knowing where the towers
> are I
> > > could look at the coverage map generated from other users.
> > >
> > > What do you folks think?
> >
> > great idea
> >
> > some work has already started on a tagging scheme for this, have a
> > look on the osm wiki:
> >
> >
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Communications_tower
> >
> > so there are others with the same idea
> [...]
>
> We were kicking around this idea for a while. There are some problems
> that we faced with this when trying to build a generic application:
> (a) Many (most?) phones do not give a J2ME programmer easy access to
> GSM data (cell ID, LAC, signal strength, etc.) for all visible towers,
> though these data can be obtained through serial AT commands, (b) It
> is much easier to get GPS data, say from an external bluetooth GPS
> device into a J2ME application running on a phone (requires JSR179)
>
> None of these apply to OpenMoko, so I can easily envisage an application
> that maps cell towers by sending GPS + GSM data to a central server
> over GPRS, or SMS, or storing these data, and syncing it once in a
> while. If there is interest in this, we would be glad to collaborate
> on a solution.
>
> Regards,
> Gora
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/attachments/20080625/6e687bd1/attachment.htm