BikeStalker
From Bob's Basement
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Project Inception: 25th February, 2008
Status: In development
Project Leader: BOfH
Contents |
[edit] Introduction
The idea of tracking a rider in the London to Brighton Bike Ride. The plan involves arming the rider with a small computer, GPS unit and 3G dongle. This will upload location data to a server where we can have fun with it. The initial idea is to upload it to Google maps.
[edit] Requirements
- Bike + Rider
- Connectivity
- GPS unit
- Our good friend, Hopper
[edit] Implimentation
[edit] GPS mobile phone
The idea is to use a GPS mobile phone, running a J2ME application to read the GPS data from the GPS and write it to Hopper. The mobiles in question are the Nokia 6210 Navigator and the Nokia 6220 Classic.
[edit] J2ME App
The advantage of using a mobile phone for the project is that the device has a built in battery and internet connectivity without needing any complex configuration. It is also compact and does not require much installation (other than installing the J2ME application). The platform also manages internet connectivity and power management of the GPS unit.
A J2ME application is in development (available in the subversion repository) which connects to a mobile phone's location sensor (most likely GPS) and converts this into latitude/longitude format, then using HTTP POST transmits this to a remote endpoint using the mobile Internet connection (either 3G or GPRS).
The remote site can be a web application which receives authenticated HTTP POST requests, and adds them to a database.
The software can be downloaded here: http://svn.bobsbasement.co.uk/bikestalker/trunk/j2me/src/bobsbasement/projects/bikestalker/
[edit] Google Maps Frontend
Google Maps has a JavaScript API, which, when combined with AJAX, could be used to show a near real-time representation of the riders current position and a track of previous positions.
A back end script will be required to get the latest data and compress it into JSON format, which can then be loaded on the fly into the Map currently being displayed.
Naxxtor has done some work on this, http://www.bobsbasement.co.uk/~naxxtor/gmaps/
