OpenCellID (was OpenBmap logger (GSM positioning)])

Nick realtimeblog at gmail.com
Fri Feb 20 21:17:36 CET 2009


Thomas,

After trying to reach you a few times last year,
i am really glad to have some news from you now.

I am reponsible for the openBmap website. And yes, it would be a great 
thing to merge our projects !

The number of logs you have is very impressive ! well done !

My concern would be about the quality of your data .

you still mention on the front page

"Note:If you want a professional CellID Database, I suggest you to go to 
Navizon
who provides top services and databases."

what do you mean ?

and after importing 800 000 of your gps points in january, I see that 
for instance
gps speed,  gps hdop, gps pdop, gps vdop are not available
 (at least at the begining of this huge measures.txt file !),

A bad pdop, vdop, hdop and i am positioned at 1 km from my real position ...
What if i am in a high speed train at 300 km/h? or in plane ? (yes, it 
can work in planes...)


In my opinion, considering the following services

*** asisted gps
*** "cell id" to google "my position" kind of service
*** "cell id" to "town name" service

 the real questions are:
what precision do we need for openmoko location service through gsm cell 
id ?
what precision our possibly merged database would provide ?


what do you think about the above considerations ?

really glad to hear from you !

regards,
Nick

Thomas Landspurg a écrit :
>
>
> 2009/2/20 Onen <onen.om <http://onen.om>@free.fr <http://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>
>     <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
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Openmoko community mailing list
>     community at lists.openmoko.org <mailto:community at lists.openmoko.org>
>     http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Thomas LANDSPURG
> 8Motions
> Founder/CTO
> http://www.8motions.com
> http://www.opencellid.org
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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