OpenCellID (was OpenBmap logger (GSM positioning)])

Thomas Landspurg t.landspurg at 8motions.com
Fri Feb 20 20:12:10 CET 2009


2009/2/20 Onen <onen.om at free.fr>

> Hi Thomas,
>
> Thomas Landspurg wrote:
> >
> >   Dear OpenMoko community (and thanks ed for pointing this out).
> >
> >   I am behind the opencellid.org <http://opencellid.org> project, and it
> > seems that there are some discussion around it these day on the mailing
> > list.
> >
>
> Last month, and today, indeed.


Yes, I've get to it today! It's a pity not to have been notified of such
discussion before. I've been through them, and I want to add some
clarification about difference between database:

- OpenCellID can also store signal strengh. But one of the issue, is
heterogenity between datas. Some client don't have this information, and
this create some additional complexity. That's why this information is for
now only stored but not yet used. And in all was, if you want it, it's in
the measure table, and not in the cell table.

- About the barycenter of the area/instead of barycenter: it's not always
the best way to do it, as it give more value to false datas. while the
"simple" barycenter reduce these. Another option would be to exclude data
that would be completely "out of range"

 And more "general" information about the databse: more than 500 developers
have registered to get an API key. Obvisouly not 500 application are out,
but show the interest of the community



>
> >   So let me clarifiy:
> >
> > - As described in the web site, the license is under creative common
> > share alike 3.0. I had several request today stating that just linking
> > to the license was not clear enough, so I will re-clarify it on the web
> > site, but also in this list.
> >
>
> Last time I checked (and other people, see the post I pointed out
> earlier today), it was not clear. But today, as people had a look again,
> it seems to me pretty clear :-)
>

Last time, it was written under creative common license, with a link to the
creative common share alike license. I am sorry if this was not clear
enough, but as you see, a simple mail is enough to get it corrected.



>
> > - I am surprised to see statment that I did not answer to some
> > questions. I've verified,and all openmoko request have been answered. I
> > am not perfect, and may be some emails have been missed, but a search on
> > openmoko on my mail box did not raise any pending question.
> >
>
> Not sure what you mean by openmoko request... When I stated that neither
> us nor openmoko did get an answer, I should have written: "If I recall
> correclty openmoko tried to reach opencellid, but I have not heard of
> any response. We tried to contact opencellid, but got no response." I
> personally have not tried to reach you. But Nick yes, without answer,
> for what I have understood.
>

   Would be curious to have his email just to check. I am quite sure I've
answered to all demands like this.


> >     There is more than 100 000 cells covered, with 5.5 millions of
> > measure, and more cells will be "donated" soon. We expect to reach 200
> > 000 cells in the coming weeks thanks to a new project donation. There is
> > also more than 10 different clients (windows mobile, symbian,
> > blackberry, j2me,...) gathering the database.
> >
>
> Is there different countries?
>

Yes, the stats page show all countries:

http://www.opencellid.org/cell/stats


>
> Good to see there is no client for openmoko, otherwise I may have worked
> for nothing ;-)
>

 Yes, I've heard that other where working on such client too!


>
> >   I've been running this project since more than one year , with an
> > objective to push community efforts around cell id. So I would be more
> > than happy to see new effort joining this project instead of creating
> > separate efforts.  So let's join effort and create something big!
> >
>
> I am very glad to read this, especially as I was very disappointed not
> being able to leverage the existing work you have done. For my part I
> work on the client side. A logger/uploader. I guess it would be easy to
> modify it to upload to your database if we go that way. But for now, I
> think it would be good Nick (who takes care of the server side) and you
> keep discussing, in order to evaluate a possible merger.
>
> As there are also plans on embedding the database on the phone, and
> using it to locate, I would like to know if this part would interest
> you? Or only the server side and upload?
>

The idea is to provide all the means to do so. So if there is anything that
is needed to help you to do this, I would be happy to provide it. For
instance, a way to send an area and get the list of cells in that area. I
amalready working on such  functionality.
  But the switch to from OpenBMap to OpenCellID should be quite fast as I
assume that the API is probably the same, or very close to. (
http://www.opencellid.org/api )


>
> >  And as a reminder, the complete data base is available for download.
> >
> >  So if you have any question/interrogation, feel free to share them with
> > me so we can clarify this.
> >
> >  Regards,
>
> Great we can move along. I hated this feeling of reinventing the wheel!
>

So do I!


>
> Onen
>
>
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>



-- 
Thomas LANDSPURG
8Motions
Founder/CTO
http://www.8motions.com
http://www.opencellid.org
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