Gps In Cell Phones

[+Crazy Aaron]

Since I haven't been able to turn caching into a full-time profession, I do some work with mobile phone application development (games, email clients, etc).

 

It occurs to me that we are about 18-24 months away from users of cell phones w/integrated GPS units being able to seek out most caches. In 5 years time every cell phone will have GPS and have the ability to show coordinates to the user. Some phones will even have mapping, waypoints, etc.

 

Since the biggest barrier to entry in geocaching has been the desire to purchase a $100+ specialized piece of equipment, how do you think this will change caching?

 

Possibilities:

 

1) It won't change anything. Regular people aren't interested in geocaching.

 

2) Vandalism from teens and others will become a huge problem (remember teens often have the hippest cell phone gear).

 

3) More members only caches, i.e. less openness on the internet.

 

4) A huge upsurge in caches and cachers and the overall popularity of the sport.

 

What do you all think?

[+StarBrand]

I don't have any major concerns about this. Most people I have introduced to geocaching stick with it for a few months, rack up 20 to 50 finds and then never go again. There has to be that desire, that hunger, that thirst that drives some of us back to this site time and again. While some vandals will materialize and some people will start just because they can, I don't think it will have a major negative impact on us.

[magellan315]

Nextel has a cell phone on the market that has a built in GPS

[Charles Iverson]

YOUR IN THE WORNG TOPIC.....

[+bigdog999]

I have a Nextel i830 with built-in GPS. Its not a full functioning GPS receiver though, but will find your position. It takes forever to lock onto the satellites. As most people use smaller and smaller phone, I don't feel that people will use these phone for GPS use. Maybe to keep track of their children, etc.

[Charles Iverson]

GPS Units and Software

 

you might be able to get a answer there

[+Mopar]

YOUR IN THE WORNG TOPIC.....

When did they make Chucky a forum mod?

[+Bob Blaylock]

  How many GPS-equipped cell phones allow the user to access the GPS information?  My Kyocera KE433 does not.

[+sTeamTraen]

I'm not sure if there's going to be a big demand for anything which makes phones bigger and clunkier. You can already get an Ipaq with GPS, mapping, camera, bluetooth, always-on e-mail (like a BlackBerry), and it works as a phone, but if you do call with it, you look like a total dork.

 

The GPS functionality in a phone is cool for marketing (so the Hilton can send you a text message when you're a block away to offer you a free upgrade to the executive floor), but navigating with it... seems to me like yet another feature that people will never learn to use.

 

How many VCRs are blinking "12:00" right now because their owners can't be bothered (or don't know how) to set the time ? There's only so many hours per day that most people want to spend fighting with gadgets.

[+sept1c_tank]

Personally, I'm old fashioned. Although I can apparently get all three in one unit, I prefer to pack separately, a phone, GPSr and camera (along with a bunch of other things the phone people will never include).

 

I don't think GPS capability in phones will have much effect on geocaching, at least until there is a category where people can just make a call to find and log a cache.

 

Now, the (already existing) concept of adding phone/radio capabilities to GPSrs is a different story.

 

And I do like the cameras that have GPS capabilities.

[+GPScooterphish]

All Nextel phones have had GPS built-in since post 9/11. Nextel was the first to meet the Fed requirements for this. And last time I worked for them and pretended to care apps existed that made the phone function much as the vehicle GPS nav systems do.

Not ALL of the phones, mostly the higher end models. In other words:

All Nextel phones have GPS, but not all Nextel phones have user access to the GPS functions, outside of emergency location purposes (the i205 and i830 have GPS, but only the i830 user can install programs to utilize it - my models may be off, but you get the gist).

Of course, you had to download/purchase an application/service subscription to do it. The current state of things, I dunno.

Personally, I am a self-professed gadget geek and had the bluetooth enabled smartphone to use for OTHER purposes (connecting my PDA to internet for remote server access, file transfer, etc) before I actively got into geocaching.

Once I did decided to take the plunge I purchased a (now) affordable bluetooth enabled GPS transceiver to pair with my bluetooth enabled phone and tried several GPS programs before settling on one specific program (see my posts elsewhere in the forums).

[GeekWriter]

I just got a new Sprint Ready-Link phone (Nextel merger) with GPS. Anyone know if it can do anything useful with GPS (not just report location of phone)? I also have a Palm Tungsten C and a Palm IIIxe, as well as an old Magellan 315. Are there ways to connect any of these together to do maps, geocaching, etc.? (Without subscribing to PCS Vision service, since a year's subscription to that would cost as much as a cheap new GPS.)

 

Sorry for the bad grammar--I'm kind of tired now.

 

GeekWriter

[+ADKcachers]

YOUR IN THE WORNG TOPIC.....

When did they make Chucky a forum mod?

Forum Vigilante.

[+roveron]

Personally I'm not very happy that the government can pinpoint your location just by you carrying a cell phone, even if you don't use it. But then, I'm one of those nutty whacko's who believes in privacy. I don't have a problem with GPS locator's in cell phones, if you have the option of turning it off. Which would make perfect sense considering the reason supposedly is to enable 911 calls from cell phones to be pinpointed. Or to only broadcast when you dial 911. That would mee the federal requirement, yet allow you to have some privacy.

[+deimos444]

I think that when you look at the fact of inertia in human behavior it will not make a great difference.

The bottom line in geocaching is that you must get off your butt and actually do something to hide or seek a cache.

The people who are willing to take this action will not affected by an easier or cheaper way to find coordinates.

[+Tiffany's Slaves]

roverron

 

Sorry to tell you this but the ability to track a cell phone user has NOTHING to do with having a GPS chip in the phone. When you cell phone is "On" it periodically transmits an "I am Here" signal to the nearest cell site. That way, you receive your calls and messages (They have to be routed SOMEWHERE). Once you are located within a given cell, it is technologically easy to triangulate your position with a fairly high degree of accuracy.

 

If you wish to not be tracked, TURN THE dadgum THING OFF!

[+tabulator32]

I think that wireless phone service providers sales personnel will use geocaching as an example of things to do with their new cell phone while pushing their product in the show room and at demonstrations. This will cause an influx of geocachers, some of which will get in and get out while others get in and hang on.

 

Also, instead of pretending were talking on a cell phone when curious, frightened people walk past by holding your GPSr to your ear, we can pretend we're talking on a cell phone by holding our cell phone to our ear.

 

[+Gorak]

Some sort of location tracking technology will be built into ALL new mobile phones to meet the US E911 requirements which stipulate that a mobile phone 911 caller must be able to be pinpointed to within (I think) 100 feet. GPS modules are being incorporated into virtually every new phone on the drawing board however the actual tracking technology will be a sort of network-assisted GPS which uses network triangulation to assist the aquisition of a GPS lock or locate a caller in areas where a GPS signal is unavailable.

 

As for the conspiracy theorists, network triangulation can and is already used to pinpoint a phone with fairly good accuracy. Your phone sends out a "ping" every couple of minutes which is responded to by every repeater that can hear it. At any given time your phone is usually able to connect to 4 or more repeaters. The phone analyzes the signal strength of the replies to determine which repeater with available connections has the strongest signal and that repeater is chosen to establish a connection. Add to the equation some network-based software that can analyze the signal strength of your phone in relation to the repeaters and it can be used to triangulate your position fairly accurately. As long as your phone is turned on, someone can track you.

 

Some phone manufacturers are taking advantage of the location tracking technology to incorporate location-based services into their phones such as mapping applications and location-based marketing services. Phones being shipped as early as a few months from now will contain GPS, Bluetooth, WLAN, USB, full HTML internet access, 2MP cameras, 2+GB hard drives w/MP3 players, FM stereo radios and large colour displays all in a package no larger than the average phone you carry now. The OS in the phones allows third party application development to take further advantage of all the hardware features built into these phones. I've already seen some of these phones being used as navigation systems and I know a cacher in Europe who uses his phone to find caches.

 

Unfortunately, most of these phones will only be sold in Europe and Asia initially because that is where the majority of the market is and where new technologies are more readily accepted and deployed by the carriers.

[+roveron]

Well..one one question and two points.

Does the GPS transmitter turn off when you turn off your phone?

 

It takes longer and more coordination to triangulate from cell towers, than it does to track a GPS location broadcast. And if you're in range of just one tower, you can't triangulate, but the GPS location can still get through (I'm assuming it's sent through the cell network).

And it's not a conspiriacy theory, it's an established fact the government wants to know where we are and and have more information about people and their daily communications and activities.

If the government only cared about 911 calls being able to be located, they'd have worded the rules to say "When 911 is dialed, the lon/lat position of the caller must be sent until the caller manually stops the broadcast." Quite simple to implement.

[GeekWriter]

The more information the government collects on ordinary people going about their business, the harder it will be to get any useful information out of it. Which is completely counterproductive for finding actual threats. It's like having a mailbox full of spam--the more spam you have, the harder it is to find actual messages you want to receive. I presume it would actually make it harder to find a specific innocent person they wanted to track.

 

Not that I like the idea they're doing this... My cell phone is set to send coordinates only if I call 911. Whether that actually affects it or not, I don't know. I'm sure it's possible they designed the phone with a bogus setting that doesn't really turn off the GPS signal, just to placate civil rights defenders. I'm not sure how probable it is. Is there a way to check whether it's sending or not? Unfortunately, it's hard to receive calls if you take out the battery to power down the GPS sender. Might be feasible for "emergency-only" cell phone owners, as long as their emergencies (flat tires, out of gas, etc.) allow time to unwrap the battery and reinstall it.

 

Re the triangulation: I think I'm usually in range of only one tower, since we have three towers to cover two small towns.

 

Kathryn

[GeekWriter]

Forgot to address points in previous entry...

 

As far as the phone pinging the network periodically, my experience with T-Mobile was that my phone would ONLY ping the network on startup. Technical support told me numerous times that if I left my phone on for more than a couple of hours, the towers would lose track of it and nobody would be able to call me or even leave a voicemail. This kind of sucks when you have memory and attention problems and don't want to add more tasks to your routine, but it might be an advantage if you don't want the network to know where you are all the time. (I'm not sure how well this would work in an area with high cell density... seems like when the system does handovers, it would have to update the location. But out here in Small Town, USA I can go for days without moving to another cell.

[+Elracs]

Well..one one question and two points.

Does the GPS transmitter turn off when you turn off your phone?

Yes. Phones with this feature, at least on my phone, you can turn off the GPS. It turns on automatically when you dial 911 and then turns off again when you are done. You can set it to be on all the time, but it isn't set like that by default.

 

-Elrac

[+Gorak]

Obviously there are going to be times when your phone can only communicate with one tower but those times are extremely rare. Even if there is only one repeater that your phone can transmit a signal strong enough with to sustain a connection, other repeaters in the network that are too far away to connect to can receive and measure the “ping” so triangulation is still possible to some degree.

 

I’m a bit sceptical about your claim that your phone only pings the network on startup. One of the prime requirements of a mobile phone is to be able to hand off communications to other repeaters as the phone moves. The only way it can do that is by constantly monitoring the network. An easy way to check this is to set your phone next to a cheap FM radio’s antenna. Every couple of minutes you should be able to hear some interference on the FM radio that lasts for less than a second. That interference is the phone transmitting to the repeaters. If you surf to some of the phone hacker sites, you might even be able to find the phone keypad codes to put your phone into a diagnostic mode where you can see the signal strengths of the pings coming from the repeaters.

 

Whether your phone’s GPS receiver is turned on or not, your position can almost always be calculated by the network. In fact, the E911 requirements do not stipulate that GPS technology must be used. It only requires that the carrier be able to locate the phone within a given radius. Because the technology required to use the network as the sole means of location tracking (to the degree of accuracy required by E911) would require significant investment in their existing networks, the carriers have chosen to implement the cheaper (to them) solution of requiring the handset manufacturers to include GPS receivers in their phones. Since the carriers are the sole resellers of mobile phones in North America, the handset manufacturers are obligated to design and manufacture phones to the carriers’ strict specifications and, in fact, many features found in phones manufactured for the European and Asian markets are not found in the North American variants of the same phones because the target carrier does not want to support that particular feature for whatever reason. However, having the GPS receiver in the phone does not absolve the carriers completely. They must still have the ability to locate the phone while it is inside a building or anywhere else where a GPS fix cannot be achieved. Network triangulation, taking into account the last known GPS fix, would need to be used in those situations.

Edited July 8, 2005 by Gorak

[+deimos444]

Obviously there are going to be times when your phone can only communicate with one tower but those times are extremely rare. Even if there is only one repeater that your phone can transmit a signal strong enough with to sustain a connection, other repeaters in the network that are too far away to connect to can receive and measure the “ping” so triangulation is still possible to some degree.

 

I’m a bit sceptical about your claim that your phone only pings the network on startup. One of the prime requirements of a mobile phone is to be able to hand off communications to other repeaters as the phone moves. The only way it can do that is by constantly monitoring the network. An easy way to check this is to set your phone next to a cheap FM radio’s antenna. Every couple of minutes you should be able to hear some interference on the FM radio that lasts for less than a second. That interference is the phone transmitting to the repeaters. If you surf to some of the phone hacker sites, you might even be able to find the phone keypad codes to put your phone into a diagnostic mode where you can see the signal strengths of the pings coming from the repeaters.

 

Whether your phone’s GPS receiver is turned on or not, your position can almost always be calculated by the network. In fact, the E911 requirements do not stipulate that GPS technology must be used. It only requires that the carrier be able to locate the phone within a given radius. Because the technology required to use the network as the sole means of location tracking (to the degree of accuracy required by E911) would require significant investment in their existing networks, the carriers have chosen to implement the cheaper (to them) solution of requiring the handset manufacturers to include GPS receivers in their phones. Since the carriers are the sole resellers of mobile phones in North America, the handset manufacturers are obligated to design and manufacture phones to the carriers’ strict specifications and, in fact, many features found in phones manufactured for the European and Asian markets are not found in the North American variants of the same phones because the target carrier does not want to support that particular feature for whatever reason. However, having the GPS receiver in the phone does not absolve the carriers completely. They must still have the ability to locate the phone while it is inside a building or anywhere else where a GPS fix cannot be achieved. Network triangulation, taking into account the last known GPS fix, would need to be used in those situations.

Thanks.

The interferance and clicks that I have been hearing on my shortwave radio have been driving me nuts because of the seeming randomness.

I just did a reality check and my new motohoho is indeed generating nasty little rfs.

I guess you electronics guys are sometimes worth the air you breathe.