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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?"
At least in my country (Estonia) you can track any GSM cellphone's (belonging to you) location from the provider's webpage or similar.
For a dedicated solution, you can buy a Falcom Mambo (http://www.falcom.de/products/personal-tracker/mambo/)
Dedicated GPS tracker with an emergency button
Long battery life
Very Open
#include "coucou.h"
" I would like input on a way to be able to keep track of my child."
no one uses google now days....
First, your child doesn't need GPS, she needs a cellphone. Why? Because even if you had this magical GPS tracking/locating system you want, there would still be some kind of data communication needed between the child and the laptop. That requires data usage or cellphone usage, so either way you're paying a monthly fee.
Google child cellphone and the very first result is Best cell phone for kids. In it, it says:
"Migo is made to use Verizon's optional Chaperon service that lets parents track the phone in real time on their handset or PC. For an additional charge, parents can set up boundaries for where the child can go. If the phone leaves the designated area, a text message alert will be sent to the parent's phone. (Only certain adult handsets are capable of using this service.)"
So you have the GPS tracking you wanted, plus your child has a cellphone so you can reach them if they're indoors and GPS isn't working so hot, AND you have the added feature you didn't even know you wanted: a text message the instant your child leaves a designated area. Not only that but it all works through your cellphone, so anytime you can't find your kid forget about going "Gee, I forgot to bring the GPS locator handheld with me". It's already setup on your cellphone.
Oh and sure, all this will cost you a few bucks, but I'm sure it won't cost more than a custom handheld locater and a small unobtrusive device to attach to your daughter and and creating a secure website on your own.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
When my son was 5 years old, on his first day at school, they forced him to get off the bus at the wrong house 2 miles away. Thank God the parent who was there was a friend of the family. He was traumatized--our friend told us the Bus Driver physically carried him crying and screaming and just sat him on the ground. As soon as he saw Rachel (the mother who often was our baby sitter) he calmed down. She told the bus driver this was not his house, and he replied that this was the address he had for our son and was where he was picked up that morning. That last part was a bold-faced lie because I had put him on the bus myself that morning in front of my house. Rachel's name and address were listed as an emergency contact in the event that neither my wife nor I were home if they needed to call us. I do know that we were the last stop on this drivers route, and this would have enabled him to quit a whole 20 minutes sooner, because he could go straight home after dropping him off.
Needless to say, after that incident (and after getting nowhere with the school administration or the school board) I took him to school, and my wife picked him up.
I trust school districts about as far as I could shotput a Boeing 777. A tracking device might be a good idea.
My daughter started carrying a cell phone in 6th grade for precisely this reason. It's paid off three times: Twice she got on the wrong school bus, and once we lost her in the press of the crowd during a parade. (That was really scary.)
Before GPS became common, I had to rely on her description of where she was. Once (the parade incident) she had to go into a store and ask the attendant for the address. (I discourage her from asking strangers on the street, and she's afraid of the police, due to an incident a few years earlier, so we compromised on convenience store attendants. It wasn't a perfect solution.)
Now, none of that is necessary. She carries a Blackberry Curve and I can check her location via Google Latitude on my own Blackberry. She knows that this is not because I don't trust her, but because I don't trust everyone else. Besides, she can also see my location, which forestalls "Daddy, when are you going to get here?"
There are other tracking services, but Latitude was good enough for our purpose, and free.
Hope this helps.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As a former verizon wireless sales rep I can easily attest to this fact. When vzw released their first 'Chaperone' phone, the Migo, most of the creeps weren't even trying to pretend they were for children.
You could fit a standard LG extended battery in the Migo, but you wouldn't be able to fit the case back on. I actually had someone tell me that they didn't care, they'd just duct tape it to stay and place and throw it in the back of his wife's truck.
I started refusing to sell the Migos we had unless they would bring in the child so I could teach them how to use the phone.