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One method - and kinda fun too - get your Technician class ham license and setup an APRS tracker. Hams have been doing this since when, 1998 or so. It's pretty much 'ancient' tech. But robust as all get-out. Not only can you track your scooter - but you can do other things too. Better part? Once you've got it up and running - no air charges. http://www.aprs.org/ http://www.aprs.fi/

Get a ham license, an old 2m handheld and a GPS puck.

http://www.aprs.org/

No, analog radios can do that too. Ever heard of APRS?

We did. Years ago.

http://www.aprs.org/

As an old amateur radio operator I must ask. How is location based social networking different than APRS that's been in use for over a decade?

Operators with an attached GPS had their location updated automatically, Operators without a GPS entered their location manually, and the location was passed with each message packet. There were web pages that allowed people not currently on-the-air to monitor the communications via http.

Parabolics are finicky and hard to build. A cantenna is much easier.

An active repeater is preferable but is not legal to make unless you're a cell phone company (special government licenses, hence the high price). Passive repeaters are laughably cheap and better than nothing. They have a directional outside antenna, which you orient towards the nearest cell tower, and an omni inside antenna for reradiating the signal inside your house.

If you're dying to communicate without wifi, you COULD use APRS (warning: 90's era webpage) to send texts over HAM bands. This is a popular interface for DIY mobile trackers: you can transmit and receive GPS coordinates over handheld radios, decoding with a laptop or microprocessor. No cell phone necessary.

Sounds a hell of a lot like APRS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Packet_Reporting_System
http://www.aprs.org/
http://ibcnu.us/ -- aprs iphone app

The HAM community already has this sort of thing. It's called APRS, and includes all the capabilities that you describe. All that would be needed is to put the necessary GPS and computer systems into the aircraft and wire them up to warn the pilot when another plane is getting too close.

What would be really neat is an ATV downlink on UHF so we could watch it. I've always wanted to see the transition where the blue sky disappears.

FYI, APRS is pretty much text messaging for amateur radio. The most popular use is reporting your position (which is what the balloon does), but it's an easy way to pass short digital messages....or even send an email if you're near one of the gateways.

Off topic, but semi-related because of APRS: AT Golden Packet Event. An APRS packet is relayed up the entire Appalachian Trail.

Disclaimer: IAAH (I Am A Ham). dit-dit.

APRS http://aprs.org/ http://www.aprs.net/ http://findu.com/ Just need to use it on an airplane frequency instead of ham, and get everyone else to do the same. Then again, isn't that what ACARS was supposed to be?

Apart from possible advertising this is not new at all. Radio amateurs (yep, those again) have been doing this for years, and it is called APRS (automatic packet reporting system). At regular intervals or at the end of each voice transmission, a packet is sent to a special station collecting the data from all users and posting it on the web. Position should be supplied manually (boring) or with GPS.

APRS

Because it is different. There are other systems out there that use other bases - Automatic Position Reporting System uses Base 91 encoding under certain circumstances, for example, and it does it for the exact kind of reasons this patent application is addressing. And it's been around for a while...

Us ham types've been doing GPS navigatin not only of our own vehicles, but others as well for over 12 years now! I use a package called 'Xastir' and an on the air protocol called APRS.

Basicly, take a GPS receiver and a laptop (Not just linux, xastir will run on Windows too), a TNC and a VHF radio - use pretty much any map you'd care to use (local or online), current weather information, satallite imagry, NWS alerts, warnings, etc, etc, etc... See your track - find your way, see forest fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes....
The only limit is imagination

Just wanna check on someone? Use your web browser and visit Findu - plug in their callsign and see where they're at.

And no, you don't need a ham license to play along. Just to feed data into the world wide Information System.

Kinda neat to zoom in on 'the old country' and watch my firends in the UK on thier way to work as I'm get'n ready to call it a day, then keyboard to keyboard messaging with 'em along the way.....
And no air time fees

Get a clue: See http://www.aprs.org

All Woz has done is shrunk the size and cost of the transmitters. Woz is the master of shrinking hardware (see the Apple II video and disk controllers, as previously mentioned). I guess I can see the potential for abuse, but my point is that a system like this was inevitable. Hams have been doing it on a slightly different scale for 10 years. Woz just consumerized it. It isn't really NEW, only the price and size is different. Personally I can't fucking WAIT to get some of these so I can FINALLY make my lights turn on when I pull into my driveway, and find my stupid dog when he takes off after deer.

Did you honestly think that NOBODY was ever going to do this and it's Woz that has opened Pandora's box?? NO! It was BOUND to happen. You should be HAPPY that somebody like WOZ is going to be the first to market!

Oh and sure your local stalker could stick one on your car/person/segway, but you could always just check the local tracking net and see if you can see yourself moving around. Or wear a tinfoil hat. Or zap yourself with EMPs occasionally. Or use a 900mhz RF sniffer. Yes they would be EASY to abuse, but it's also EASY to shoot somebody in the fucking face. It DOESN'T happen all the time. You will probably die of cancer or heart desease, not getting shot in the face. People don't shoot people in the face because it's amoral and illegal. Tracking someone without their consent is also amoral and (should be) illegal, and will probably quickly be made illegal if it isn't already. In many cases it would probably alrady fall under the umbrella of the anti-stalking laws that many states have enacted. Nobody should be SCARED of WozNet any more than they are scared of GUNS. They're both just tools. I've heard of people getting mugged with screwdrivers but I'm not scared of screw drivers. Sheesh.

There's a ham band in the 900mhz range, I wonder if these could be modified to run higher power as Part 97 devices...

Amateur ballooning can be quite a bit of fun. There is a small but active ballooning sub-hobby within the ham radio hobby. Ham radio is an ideal medium for transmitting telemetry from balloons, since we have access to cheap high quality (and high power) equipment.

I participated in a balloon tracking experiment not too long ago. The students of Timberlane Regional High School of Plaistow NH launched several high-altitude balloons carrying APRS transmitters, as a part of their CAPSAT (Coordinated Algebra (II) & Physics Simulated Satellite) project. I was able to track two of them. The balloons carried GPS receivers and ham radio Automatic Position Reporting System transmitters.

The launch was from Hopkinton NH. The first launch went well, and we received good signals from the balloon all the way out into the Atlantic ocean. This was quite a bit farther than they expected the baloon to travel, they had planned on recovering and reusing it :o It was still cool IMHO. Check out this kick ass map of the balloon's track.

The second launch was also a success, and the baloon only traveled about 50 miles before touchdown. Map is here.

The third launch went up with the GPS receiver turned off :/ At last check, it was at 00.000N 000.00W. They didn't launch any more balloons that day.

My tracking station consisted of a Kenwood TH-D7 radio and a PowerMac 7500 604e-180 running XASTIR on Yellow Dog Linux. The full results of the day (and APRS logs for the entire hamfest) are here.

This works by sending short bursts of location information over the radio at pre-defined frequencies, including your callsign. These are broadcast and picked up by repeater stations (and anyone can be a repeater.) Eventually, they're picked up and stuck in a database.

You can then query this database to find out where you are - or where your friends are.

It don't get geekier.

Lojack uses the paging system; you have to report your vehicle stolen; their ops center sends a signal to activate the lojack transmitter, then police have to locate it using radio direction finding techniques (doppler DF system using square array of 4 whip antennas on roof of car).

10-20's system obtains position using GPS and relays it via satellite hourly to once/day depending on the level of service you buy.

It is the SAME concept as Orbcomm's, as well as the proposed system using Eyesat-1 microsatellite Interferometrics launched in 1992. The ham radio ops have something similar using APRS including internet links and real-time mapping and an experimental satellite component PCSAT.

In urban areas, using 2-way pager, CPDP, or cell phone network is going to be cheaper and provide better coverage with less latancy. Most of the potential customers are there. In rural and remote areas, satellite coverage fills in the gaps in terrestrial networks, but the customer density is rather low. So the business model may be a challenge.

I'd like to know which LEO satellite system they're using. I suspect Orbcomm's.

Terrestrial APRS uses (usually) ham radio frequencies to pass around GPS position reports along with additional data, like the identity of the sender (their Amateur Radio call sign). There are a couple of Web sites that will show you real-time maps of the current position reports. The main Web site is http://www.aprs.org.

73

Anyone looking to do this sort of wireless mesh should definately take a look at how ham radio operators implement APRS. A lot of the same issues would have to be addressed. You don't want every station relaying traffic, just the ones with good, high antennas. In APRS, stations with better coverage are designated as "relays" or "wides".

It's actually pretty amazing when enough stations are in an area for it to work, even though it's usually 1200-bps with huge latency. Hams also do odd-ball things like routing packets to and from the internet.

-Isaac