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Making a Child Locating System
celtic_hackr writes "Well, I never thought I'd be an advocate for placing GPS devices on people. However, since it took less than three days for my local school district to misplace my daughter, I have decided that something needs to be done. By the school district's own admission it has a recurring problem of placing children on the wrong buses. Fortunately, my daughter was located, with no thanks to the local school district. Therefore, I would like input on a way to be able to keep track of my child. I know there are personal tracking devices out there. I have nothing against these systems. But I want more than this. My specification are: 1) a small unobtrusive device I can place on my daughter, 2) an application to pull up on any computer, a map with a dot indicating the real-time position of my child, 3) a handheld device with the equivalent information, 4) [optional] a secure web application/plug-in I can install on my own domain allowing me to track her from anyplace in the world, 5) a means of turning it all off, 6) a Linux based solution of the above. I believe all the pieces for making such a system are out there. Has anyone built anything like this? Is there an open source solution? How would I go about building my own? Has anyone hacked any of these personal trackers before, to serve their own purposes? How does a tinfoil hat wearer engineer such a device to make sure Big-Brother isn't watching too? Can these devices be locked down so only certain devices can pick up the GPS location of an individual locator? What other recommendations do you have?"
Police and insurance companies are familiar with the operation of these units. And a few brackets will easily and securely mount the unit to your daughter's undercarriage.
This one seemed to work pretty well at finding my wife, anyway.
1. Hack an iPhone or other smart phone to act as a torrent server over 3G
2. Fill the drive with Metallica tracks
3. Duct tape the phone to your daughter
4. If you need to know where she is, just ask the RIIA
Won't somebody think of the children!
....uhmmm.
Y'know, I got lost all the time as a kid. I threatened to run away and I think my parents reaction was "go ahead". It's almost as if they didn't want me around.
Hang on, I have a phone call to make.
All you need to do is devise a complex computer with some decision making abilities and program it with information with destination coordinates in case it gets lost.
Program it to recognize a local authority figure like a policeman or teacher and provide them with the destination information so that they can help it find home.
I suspect the most effective hardware platform for such an application is some sort of fairly high-functioning biological organism.
Two problems with this. First, it's a lot of work. Second, he wanted a solution that runs on Linux.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Just get her a small cheap phone and teach her how to use it. If she gets lost due to the school or her own demise, she can call and say where she is.
Wow, which carriers have coverage in Purgatory?
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Either that or your phone company has a much better roaming agreement than mine does.
I believe this "Making a Child" Locating System will be of interest to many Slashdotters.
Your signature made a really poor combination with your last sentence...
Just get her a small cheap phone and teach her how to use it. If she gets lost due to the school or her own demise, she can call and say where she is.
Wow, which carriers have coverage in Purgatory?
All of them, that is where their customer service is located.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
I have another cell phone idea. Rig up the pre-paid cell phone to shoot emergency flares when the number is dialed. The wiring should be similar to the IED designs the insurgency has been using in Iraq but you'll want to substitute the bomb bit for a emergency flare. I really can't stress enough how important that last part is. Now, affix the device on some sturdy head ware. You'll probably want to base this hat on a steel wok and just add a chin strap and remove any handles. Now all you need to do is mount the device on top of the inverted wok/hat and you're all set.
If your kid goes missing just dial the number and even if you don't see the flares I'm pretty sure someone will contact you shortly after flaming rockets erupt from your child's hat. Wrong numbers might be an issue but it's a small price to pay for safety.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
The Linux/Open Source requirement is to get the Slashdot editors to post the story.
Get her a Firefly or similar device.
I know he's concerned about his daughter, but getting an entire starship to transport her to and from school just seems like overkill.
What's wrong with that? My parents used to leave me in the car parked outside the bar while they went out for a night of drinking, and other than wasting all my time on slashdot, I turned out pretty much ok! Other tricks they pulled: put the kids in Coach while they flew First Class, and on trips left the kids in a motel room while they went out for the evening, then yelled at the kids because they told the motel clerk they didn't know where their parents were. But guess what... kids are pretty good at taking care of themselves.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
>> Goodness...how did we EVER survive as a species before cell phones and GPS trackers??!?!
It was a different time; kidnappers and paedophiles were not invented until the 1990s, along with terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. It's the interwebs I tells ya.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/n/name.htm
"When the 1960s ended, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district reverted to high rent, and many hippies moved down the coast to Santa Cruz. They had children and got married, too, though in no particular sequence. But they didn't name their children Melissa or Brett. People in the mountains around Santa Cruz grew accustomed to their children playing Frisbee with little Time Warp or Spring Fever. And eventually Moonbeam, Earth, Love and Precious Promise all ended up in public school.
That's when the kindergarten teachers first met Fruit Stand. Every fall, according to tradition, parents bravely apply name tags to their children, kiss them good-bye and send them off to school on the bus. So it was for Fruit Stand. The teachers thought the boy's name was odd, but they tried to make the best of it.
"Would you like to play with the blocks, Fruit Stand?" they offered. And later, "Fruit Stand, how about a snack?" He accepted hesitantly. By the end of the day, his name didn't seem much odder than Heather's or Sun Ray's.
At dismissal time, the teachers led the children out to the buses. "Fruit Stand, do you know which one is your bus?"
He didn't answer. That wasn't strange. He hadn't answered them all day. Lots of children are shy on the first day of school. It didn't matter. The teachers had instructed the parents to write the names of their children's bus stops on the reverse side of their name tags. The teacher simply turned over the tag. There, neatly printed, was the word "Anthony.""
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random