Related
www.google.com/gmm
I did not see this when I searched so I thought I would post it.
Latest version of google maps (2 beta) is out and it includes my location (tower based locater)
Its not great but depending on your location it can give pretty good fix as to where you are (and provide directions/searches nearby). Pretty useful tool, I find the performance better than Navison.
I always wondered why a gps locations couldnt be created using cell phone towers!
Thanks for the heads up!
Downloading now!!
When you click on Menu click My Location to find your location via softgps.
Aww..my location is temporarily unavailable
*edit*
This works better when NOT connect to computer via USB cable LOL
This is totally sweet!
Wow, very nice. Just tried it out and it is accurate to a few blocks.
I've been using for a while now...I like it.
Gives you a decent starting point as opposed to typing in address. In directions...just use "my GPS Location" as a starting point and it will use the nearest tower as your starting point.
Looks like I might hold off on the tilt a bit longer. ($149 on premier has me tempted)
-AD
Very cool! Simple, Fun, & Progressive for our non-gps Hermes!
Well I installed it and My location is not available.... But thinking about it I read somewhere that it uses Celular broadcast, and I am afraid T-Mobile NL does not provide celular broadcast maybe because it is an 1800 MHZ network ???
Google Maps 2
This is an uterly brilliant program! For the first time, I can use my phone, without a GPS receiver, to find my approximate location, view the map or satellite picture, and find the nearest pub, garage, hotel etc. Wow!!
Works like a charm here! Pretty amazing stuff. We just went out tonight, got hungry, wanted pizza....and google told us where to go!
Churchill said:
Well I installed it and My location is not available.... But thinking about it I read somewhere that it uses Celular broadcast, and I am afraid T-Mobile NL does not provide celular broadcast maybe because it is an 1800 MHZ network ???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably. Couldn't get it to work either.
Isnt Proximus Belgium 1800 Mhz too? Works here and very accurate.
Can confirm also works well on Telstra (Australia) GSM/UMTS networks.
Nifty bit of software.
Many thanks to aaronsmckee for alerting us to it.
Churchill said:
Well I installed it and My location is not available.... But thinking about it I read somewhere that it uses Celular broadcast, and I am afraid T-Mobile NL does not provide celular broadcast maybe because it is an 1800 MHZ network ???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That might be it... or it may be that Google has not added the tower id number for NL yet (it is still in beta). The way the app works is that it draws down the tower id number from the tower your using to connect with. Then it matches it up against a DB that google has of all the tower ids. So it might just be that they have not yet added NL yet or perhaps just your particular carrier (I would be intrested to see what results NL users with different carriers get).
Tower ?
Let me ask a quick question. The location indicated. Is that the actual location of the tower or and approximation of your position ????
angelome said:
Let me ask a quick question. The location indicated. Is that the actual location of the tower or and approximation of your position ????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its not the tower location. I work ~2 miles from home and at work it said i was within 1400 meters of the location. Which was pretty close, when I was at home it gave the same location (well about 1 block difference from the one at work) but said I was within 5000 meters of said location. Pretty neat program update. Its not the tower location because I looked at satelite view and there isn't any tower anywhere close to the blue dot
Very nice! Works ok on weak GSM signal near Swindon (UK) on T-Mobile. At home it shows within 1 ml of actual location. Now - will they enable some interaction with Google Map so you can send a web page link to someone that will show where you are on Google Map . Lots of potential with this one.
illavbill said:
its not the tower location. I work ~2 miles from home and at work it said i was within 1400 meters of the location. Which was pretty close, when I was at home it gave the same location (well about 1 block difference from the one at work) but said I was within 5000 meters of said location. Pretty neat program update. Its not the tower location because I looked at satelite view and there isn't any tower anywhere close to the blue dot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe there is some extrapolation based on signal strength but the tower is the key identifier (from an article about it)
"Cellular networks work in this way that neighbouring base stations form "cells" in which users can make phone calls. Interestingly each base station sends unique "cell identification" (cell ID) so if you know where physically each base station is located you can extrapolate physical location of a phone! Apparently Google has database of cell IDs and Google Maps application sends to Google list of neighboring base stations and in return Google servers are returning approximate geographical location of your phone! "
GPS-A
This is probably based on the GPS-A(assist) technology that 911 uses. I would guess that it uses signal strength(distance), and multiple towers(direction) to make its guess. Its pretty neat really. just installed it tonight. I had given up on google maps in favor of live search, but I think I may have just changed my mind. trying to figure out where you are, to tell it to find you kind of sucked when you were wwalking around a new town that you had never been before. This one is definatly a keeper.
Tried last night. My locationw as temporarily unavailable. I switched to 2G only and voila, it found me (well, sort of)
On Orange UK.
Tried it on mine, and got my location within 1400 meters. Its not bad, very useful if you wake up hungover in a doorway somewhere.....
Works in NJ
I had also given up on Google Maps in favor of MS Live but I may have just changed my mind. I loaded this last night, drove for about 40 minutes on highways in northern NJ, and it was reasonably accurate. It showed my location on the highway for the most part which makes me believe the location indicated is not the tower location. Now, the location on the map leads or lags wherever I might actually be but that is OK. I was in Central and Northwest NJ in the "boonies", way out in the hills.
All in all, pretty impressive. I am sticking with it and hope that there will be continual improvements.
I have seen on samsung simple phone i don't remember model... however so it has google earth and it was working by internet and was shoing my place in about 10Mtrs corency... so can we or do we have some kind of program to make that on HTS EXCALIBUR?????? i have tried google earth for smartphones but anyways it's requesting GPS device...
It is possible to triangulate your location to a certain (horrible) accuracy using Cell Towers in your area. I believe there are actually programs that do it (I have used one). The best accuracy i have ever gotten was within 150 Meters, standing still. That is the second down-fall..you can't use triangulation efficiently when moving (if at all...)
So unfortunately, there is not real good way to do this. For decent results, you would want a GPS.
It is possible to triangulate your location to a certain (horrible) accuracy using Cell Towers in your area. I believe there are actually programs that do it (I have used one). The best accuracy i have ever gotten was within 150 Meters, standing still. That is the second down-fall..you can't use triangulation efficiently when moving (if at all...)
So unfortunately, there is not real good way to do this. For decent results, you would want a GPS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used Google Latitude which uses some sort of cell tower triangulations on my DASH and it works out pretty well. I was able to get within 80 meters and if you actually look at the Google map that is in the Latitude, my position is actually spot on.
My Google Maps Street View puts me within 50 meters.
Now is this using a DATA Connection? (I noticed the title said GPRS). That could make the difference. Whenever I tested out a program like that, i would be using little to no data connection, but if there is a greater stream of data being transferred, that may affect the response (or make it easier for the phone to identify the closest 3 towers)...
xXx
so what kn of settings I must give in GOOGLE LATITUDE that it shows me my place by GPRS? i pushing on MY LOCATION but program is saing that my location is unavalibe... I live in armenia can it be areason of error?
Virtual GPS
There is a program by Kamlex called Virtual GPS. There is a free version and a pro version. It uses no internet access and gets your location through the cell towers.
When using Google Maps, just set your gps com port to which ever port the VirtualGPS is using (usuallly 3) and it will locate you to the nearest tower. I will post the program here.
Hi, my Weather and Sense UI widget both show "Actual Location" text instead of the location name, anyone know how to fix this? i seen onec it says my Town name but since then i see only "Actual Location"
Hi,
you are not alone. Take a look at this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=659751. So it seems to be a wider problem and till now I do not know a solution. I asked HTC and also my GSM operator, but till now no response :-(.
I think this is the way it works ...
It shows currect actual location ...
You can add more location into the widget, your home city, other cities, etc.
Maybe it can't retrieve the location name (not in database?).
Cause when I tried Sense on my phone when it had correctly fixed my location it prompt me the correct town name, not "Actual location".
I had the same problem on my Hero, so it seems to be a general problem rather than a problem localized on the Desire.
My one has always been fine. Of course the 'accuracy' of the location name is limited by nearest cell reference etc but it is close enough.
The OTA update to the firmware (ending .11) seemed to cure my weather app issues....touch wood !!
For me is related to my carrier. It happened on my HD as well.
If I'm at work it shows "Actual location" instead of my city, but if I'm anywhere else in the city it shows my current city. There are also some other locations where I get "Actual location". I think it's an issue of cell towers triangulation in regards to longitude and latitude for the phone to translate in an area or city.
I have no such problem and always get Birmingham displayed.
Incorrect Time Zones in World Time
I have recently discovered several incorrect time zones in the World Time feature of the device. All of them are near the GMT +5 time zone in Asia. The following cities are one hour off – some an hour ahead, some an hour behind.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Chardzhou, Turkmenistan
Islamabad & Karachi, Pakistan
There are probably many others, but these are the ones I checked in a search to get the correct time displayed on my device while in Tashkent. This is very annoying and difficult to work around as I’ve found that the time on the today screen does not automatically adjust in most of the countries I travel to outside of the U.S. even if the network is 3G. I usually have to select the city as the default manually from the world time menu. This is not a big deal, but when I selected Tashkent, I discovered that the time was wrong. No problem I thought, I’ll just select another city of similar longitude. I can’t find any cities in the database with a correct GMT+5 local time. I can change the time of any selected city, but this changes the displayed time of ALL cities.
I have installed KB975353 which I believe to be the most recent Windows Mobile daylight savings time update from Microsoft.
Any help?
Thanks,
Dave
FIX
It's an issue with the HTC World Clock... not with the android system timezones.
You will need to extract these files from your phone, which you can do only if you are rooted, with ES File Explorer (or another root explorer):
- /data/data/com.htc.provider.weather/files/WP_0409WWE.db
- /etc/WPDB.zip (then extract another WP_0409WWE.db file inside)
You will then have to open and edit them using SQ Lite Database Browser:
Just make sure that the timezone indicated for Bishkek is Asia/Yekaterinburg and the timezone indicated for Dushanbe and Tashkent is Asia/Karachi.
For some reason HTC mixed them up...
Once you edited and saved the files, zipping the second one back in, you'll need to push them both back to your phone, to the same folders.
Make a backup of original files, you never know...
Now the world clock and clock / weather widget should have the right time!!
One issue remains, if you leave it up to the network to determine local time settings, so uncheck that box. Still looking for a solution on this one...
It is not an issue with system time zones (/system/usr/share/zoneinfo/) but you can double check if the latest files are there. Others have posted on this.
Cheers!
First I want to say a huge thanks to 'Avalon-99' and 'deedee' for testing my previous builds
Its Here!!
Well after some awesome testing over the past few days. Its came to the time to release the first actual release of FBLoc!!
What is FBLoc?
FBLoc is a small app that allows you to update your Facebook status with your current location, Either by CellID or more accurate GPS!
CellID: Gets your status based on the Cell Tower you are currently connected to, then querying its location and some info from your phone reverse-geolocate the co-ordinates returned by the program to an approximate address...
GPS: The same as CellID but instead of using the co-ordinates from a Cell Tower it uses the GPS co-ordinates and then returns the address at that location...
Download it now!!
Thanks,
-David
Copyright © 2011 David Bell / DavidTiger All Rights Reserved.
All Source Code, Compiled exe and DLL files are the copyrighted works of David Bell/DavidTiger.
You may use/redistribute any included samples or files, leaving credits where due.
You also may NOT attempt to dissasemble or reverse engineer any compiled distributables (exe/dll).
You will need to manually authorize my facebook app with your facebook account (to allow status updates from the mobile app)
1) Login to Facebook.
2) Click this link - CLICK ME!
3) Allow the facebook app
4) Click where it says "Click Here to get your access_token!"
5) Copy the access token without "access_token="
6) Create a text file called "key" should be of type .txt
6.1) in the txt file place your access token you copied
7) Copy the txt file into the FBLoc folder in program files on your phone
8) Run the app
9) Enjoy
10) Report any errors that you face!
Cheers, Dave
Sort of works for me.
Location is technically close enough, see screen cap, "A" is the found location, red circle actual. Program says "County Londonderry, BT52 2HU" which is wrong.
Not a biggie for postcode but location should be Coleraine.
I think it depends on how close the Cell Towers are to you at the time. And how accurate the database I'm currently querying is...
I'm adding some debug options, so when I'm out next week to my familys 100 miles away I can test its accuracy along the way
For me on the map its about the still some distance from my actual location..but I'm still getting the correct town and start of postcode (KA18 1)
(see my attached image)
EDIT: I have noticed (for me) that removing some points after the decimal on the co-ordinates gets it a lot more accurate!
See the 1st attached image for these coords: 55.4550,-4.2679
But then look at the 2nd image for these coords: 55.45,-4.26
Using only 2 places after the decimal brings my location to just a few hundred metres from my precise location
3rd Image: Shows latest build, showing approx street name and county, Which for only using CellID and no GPS what so ever then I think its pretty accurate...
I have attached to this post the latest build for anyone who can test it with the new coords settings, see how accurate it is for them!
Thanks, Dave
Hi, I tested it in Germany on my HD2.
I could find my Location. I'm living on the country and it found a Location 5 km from me.
I Click on Update Status and got the message Status Updated.
But on Facebook, nothing happend.
Location much better, now gives town correctly.
For some weird reason, and I am assuming its pure CellID swithcing if I move the phone 2" across the room, the address returned changes from no 2 to no 77.
Not updating my FB though.
Yea same for me, I'm sitting 3ft from a window and if the phone is on my left (close to the window) its one location.. if its on my right then it changes location by a few hundred metres...
@avalon: I'm not sure how good this may be outside the UK/Ireland...
For the facebook problem:
See my attached images of the steps I take to get the access_token
1) Allow the facebook app to access your data etc..
2) Click to continue to ur token
3) Your token
4) Then (for now) you have to manually create a text file called settings with your access code in there..
(ahh wait, just noticed!)
You only copy the actual code, leaving out "access_token="
so for me my code starts with "1943" because "access_token=1943"
Hope that fixes the facebook updating problem
I deleted access_token= and now it works fine
It works in Germany, but I live on the country and the cells are very large.
So it couldn't be very exact.
Sent using RapidRead!
Quick update & Test build!
Now includes GPS for those who want a more accurate location!
Let me know what you all think of the current progress...
Any ideas/suggestions post them up and I'll be happy to implement them..
Still to come:
Internal Authorization for Facebook (75% Done)
Ideas/Suggestions:
(Show location on google maps, via internal browser)
Cheers, Dave
Use CellID works good.
On Use GPS, I got after a while the message "An Error Has Occured".
I don't know, which error, maybe I have no GPS Fix?
Could you inlarge the buttons "Use GPS" and "Use CellID"
Hey, I have resized the buttons
Change Log (FBLoc4.rar):
Added Satellite info - see how many satellites are in view and how many are locked-on
Changed all error messages to slightly more meaningful errors, So you know what part is having an error.
Preview Images:
003: Shows my Cell ID Location.
004: Shows my GPS Location.
If you show both results on google maps, it shows you CellID can be pretty accurate
Click for >> Google Map Showing Both Points
Red = CellID
Blue = GPS
Let me know how this one works for you
-Dave
I have Satellite Count 7/8
LAT=50,27039801
I couldn't see LON, it's to wide.
Error message: " Error Getting GPS Location"
With CELLID, I found my Location.
Okay thanks, I know where the error is coming from. Just hard to say why its doing it.
You are getting a gps fix so its not a coordinate problem :/
I'll add add a few debug messages to find the exact line/position it errors.
Try this version...
I added some messagebox's so I can pinpoint where the error occurs... As its working for me I can't replicate the problem...
(Just a thought.. Are you connected to the internet, WiFi or 3G,GPRS etc??)
You need the internet connected to be able to convert the coordinates into a location
If your are connected then the error comes from somewhere else...
Hi,
i have an internet connection.
Here are my last messages:
- Waiting for Response
- Got Reponse
- Splitting Location Array
- Putting Array into variables
- Error Getting GPS Location
Doing some UK travelling later this week, I will try and run screen caps to check the CellID and GPS locations, see how close they are.
Ahh thanks, I now know where the error is coming from.. Now I just need to fix it
Try this ver, added more messages around the area where the error occurs.
Working messages should be:
"DEBUG: Var 1"
"DEBUG: Var 2"
"DEBUG: Var 3"
then 3 msgbox with the 3 location variables
And if all goes well then should say: "DEBUG: Return Found Location"
-----
Thanks, deedee
I'll be doing the same this weekend on a trip to my family.. a good 100 miles or so, and then a few trips to town aswell.. which is another 10-20 miles.
I'll have a good idea of accuracy hopefully by then end of it. Just now at my house the difference between GPS and CellID is about 410 ft apart
Hi,
the messages:
-DEBUG: Var 1
-DEBUG: Var 2
-DEBUG: Var 3
-DEBUG: 0
-DEBUG: 0
-Error Getting GPS Location
-DEBUG: finish
Okay, The problem lies in the splitting of the list it receives after getting the location..
WAIT lol.. I just remembered from previous apps I've made and then confirmed it..
Because your coordinates the separator is , instead of the expected decimal .
Which then is causing the error
Simple fix: Just check if the coords have , then replace it with . then it should be fixed!
EDIT: Test the attached build, please
Yes, you find it, my separator is ","
You are to fast, will test it
It works quick and fine.
Now I got "Error Update Status" on Facebook, if I tap on "Update Status"