BBTrackr
I’ve made a simple application call BBTrackr. It is currently in beta.
The application has two main features:
1) It uses both your phones GPS (or GPS Puck) as well as cell phone data (GSM only) to contribute to OpenCellID.org. The OpenCellID project collects cell/location information sot htat location aware applications can be built for cell phones that do NOT have a GPS device.
2) The location information received from either the GPS or OpenCellID can be used to update FireEagle. FireEagle is a location based service that allows numerous web application to know your current location so that they can provide you accurate and useful information.
Both of these features are just a tease for some of the features we are planning for the upcoming BlackBerry Application for our site, theSUGGESTR.com. In the meantime support the OpenCellID project by downloading and running BBTrackr today.
Additional Features
- Configurable settings to control how often OpenCellID and FireEagle is updated.
- Only needs GPS or a GSM phone to update FireEagle (GPS is more accurate however).
- Simple Google Map showing your location.
- Calculates accuracy of OpenCellID predicted location (requires both GPS and GSM phone).
Click Here To Download BBTrackr
Screenshots and Additional Information
Here you can see the Google Map image. This image is refreshed whenever either an open cell update or FireEagle update occurs.
The Open Cell Update Count and FireEagle update count show you how many updates were made to each respective site during this execution of BBTrackr.
The GPS Location shows the coordinates of the most recent GPS location. It will also show status messages about BBTrackr’s ability to gather GPS locations.
Open Cell Location shows the best guess of your location coming from the OpenCellID API. (Note: this screenshot was done using a simulator hence the poor results).
The accuracy field shows how accurate the OpenCellID location is compared to the GPS location - this is only shown when both an OpenCellID and GPS location have been gathered.
The Cell Info data is merely used for informational purposes and shows the data coming from the cell tower.
Here you can see the main menu options:
- Start GPS Tracking will start BBTrackr GPS Polling. This will also restart the GPS Polling if a timeout occurs.
- Start OpenCellUpdates will update Open Cell ID database (assuming GPS and Cell data available) at a specified interval (see Settings).
- Start FireEagle Updates will update FireEagle of your location at specified intervals (see Settings).
- Setup FireEagle sets up the link between BBTrackr and FireEagle. Once setup this action can be used to remove or relink accounts.
- Update FireEagleNow allows you to manually force an update to FireEagle.
- Settings - See Below.
The following settings are available:
- Auto Start Tracking - If checked Open Cell ID tracking will begin as soon as the application is started.
- Tracking Frequency - How often to update the OpenCellID databased.
- Auto Start Fire Eagle - If checked FireEagle updates will begin as soon as the application is started.
- FireEagle Update Frequency - The number of minutes between FireEagle updates.
- Update FireEagle from GPS Only - If desired you can ensure that only accurate GPS coordinates be used to update FireEagle.
- NOTE: All changes require a restart of BBTrackr to take effect.
