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?"

Comments

Holy Crap! Calm down

[FredFredrickson]

Holy crap- you are, what we in the biz call, an over-reacting parent. Calm down and take it easy before you destroy your daughter's life.

That being said- verizon has an application for cell phones that lets you track your children- it's on get it now. I'm sure other carriers have something similar.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[tekiegreg]

Duh-boy, cue debates on how much surveillance for your child is really necessary.

I'd say just let him be a parent and decide what's necessary. He knows his daughter better than we all do.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[Anonymous Coward]

you're assuming the guy in the article is honestly trying to track his daughter. one of the clients i work for is a bettered womens advocacy group and shelter. they have horror stories all the time of guys who do the same thing to their wives, ex wives girlfriends etc. its easy enough to rig a cellphone thats GPS enabled to create a tracking device and discreet survailence tool. if you ask me, the whole thing is shady. perhaps its my paranoia light flashing because of my client, i can understand your concern, but 10s of thousands, nay 10s of millions of kids make it thought the school system every year without their parents needing to freak out like that.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[blueZ3]

This isn't mean to be a flame, because as a fellow parent (of toddlers, no less) I understand that it can be an extremely stressful and fear-inducing thing to lose track of your child. But I agree with the parent: get some perspective on things by waiting for a bit before subjecting your daughter to Big-Brother-like monitoring.

Not only do I think you are overreacting, you are sending the wrong message to your school-age daughter. She doesn't need 24-7 tracking, she needs lessons in dealing with unexpected situations. Instead of jumping directly to an electronic device, teach her what to do if she gets lost... the same strategy that's been used successfully by parents for many, many years: find a "safe" adult (police officer, female adult with kids) and tell them that she's lost. If she's old enough to attend school, she's old enough to learn her phone number and address.

Besides, if she's anything like most kids, anything you "attach" to her (short of a steel shackle) she is going to remove and leave behind or lose. :-)

Again, I understand your reaction (on one level) but I think you're overreacting.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[raju1kabir]

Yes, because if one bad thing happens to one of seven billion people anywhere in the world, then it makes perfect sense to focus all your energies on making sure it doesn't happen to you.

More and more proof that the human brain just wasn't meant to comprehend societies as large as ours. The in-built statistical heuristics break down completely and start recommending the most irrational things.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[Anonymous Coward]

Your signature made a really poor combination with your last sentence...

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[LWATCDR]

I think that you and many other people are missing the real problem. Elementary school children can be as young as four at the start of kindergarten. Elementary schools are just too big these days!.
One elementary school in my town has several thousand students. That is just insane.
Schools should start small and grow in size. The elementary school should be in your neighborhood. The idea of shipping kindergarten kids like UPS packages to child warehouses is the problem.
Of course to build more but smaller schools costs money.....

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[JWSmythe]

    When I was in kindergarden, they went with the low-tech system. Every kid had a name tag that they had to wear all day. It had their name, grade, teacher, and bus number. Teachers aids were by the buses and would verify the bus number on the tag matched the bus. If they kid got on the wrong bus, they were turned away and walked to the right one.

    How much does it cost for a 3x5 index card and a safety pin? A whole lot less than an electronic tracking system, and recurring cell bills for your kid.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[vlm]

When I was a kid, we had an even simpler and even lower technology plan, which was, never go anywhere without "Matt" and "Dawn".

If your bus stop has only one kid whom uses it, then move out of the retirement village.

Another ultra low tech strategy that worked well at various times in my youth, and currently works well for me as a parent, is "buy a house two blocks from school". It is of course uphill both ways in the snow, but, at least its a short walk.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[raju1kabir]

As a parent with a mentally disabled child, I do not agree.

As a parent with a mentally disabled child, you are talking about a situation that is more challenging and complex than the situation the rest of us are discussing. Apples and oranges.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[_Swank]

Only one of the two solves the original problem; the technology-based tracking system is useless in ensuring the kid gets on the right bus, while the index card system should generally work.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[psychodelicacy]

It's morally different, perhaps, but not in effect. The school accidentally places the child on the wrong bus; the child ends up who-knows-where without a parent at the other end to collect him/her. The child ends up unattended even though that was never the intention.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[Locke2005]

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.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[dzfoo]

>> 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.

Re:Holy Crap! Calm down

[shmlco]

A child is about a 1,000 times more likely to be killed by drowning in a neighbor's pool than abducted by a total stranger. 10,000 times more likely to be seriously injured or even killed playing school sports. And 100 times more likely to be struck by lightning.

Parents need to stop watching CSI and Criminal Minds and Law & Order.

Easiest solution is to go with Lojack

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Great online service

[PIPBoy3000]

This one seemed to work pretty well at finding my wife, anyway.

Buy her a cellphone

[shitzu]

At least in my country (Estonia) you can track any GSM cellphone's (belonging to you) location from the provider's webpage or similar.

Placing children on the wrong bus?

[rob1980]

When I was in middle school they gave all the kids a laminated bus pass with the bus number in big block type, and had the bus numbers spray painted on the sidewalk so everyone who had to ride the bus knew exactly where to line up. Nobody ever got on the wrong bus because nobody ever got in the wrong line. So why is this a recurring problem for your daughter's school district?

I say make them fix the problem instead of forcing you to shell out money to cover it up for them.

Outsource the Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Simple Solution

[Dr. Evil]

Teach them their phone number and give them a bracelet or something with their address on it.

You should also probably stop watching television. Give up on the news especially. It's just scare mongering crap.

Oh and watch Finding Nemo. It's got some lesson in there about being an overprotective parent.

You're solving the wrong problem

[dkleinsc]

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 is a recurring problem of placing children on the wrong buses. Fortunately, my daughter was located, with no thanks to the local school district.

The problem isn't that you don't have a tracking device for your daughter. The problem is that your local school district isn't doing its job correctly and regularly putting kids on the wrong bus. Instead of posting on Slashdot for a technical solution, a far better solution would be a call to your local news organizations about how the school district is getting kids lost on their bus system and admits to doing that regularly. Raise a stink at school board meetings, PTA meetings, and so forth. Get other parents involved. You're talking about a school district's incompetence endangering not only your own child but all the children in the district.

Pretend, for instance, that you get a perfect tracking device for your daughter. That sorta solves your problem, in that you can go and pick up your daughter from wherever she was left, but doesn't solve your neighbor's problem, and doesn't solve the problem of what happens to your daughter when she's standing around in a strange neighborhood.

Re:You're solving the wrong problem

[canajin56]

a far better solution would be a call to your local news organizations about how the school district is getting kids lost on their bus system and admits to doing that regularly. Raise a stink at school board meetings, PTA meetings, and so forth. Get other parents involved. You're talking about a school district's incompetence endangering not only your own child but all the children in the district.

Two problems with this. First, it's a lot of work. Second, he wanted a solution that runs on Linux.

Neural network...

[n3umh]

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.

Errr, what?

[whiledo]

Was this supposed to be some sort of abstract attempt at humor? Your GPS device does not send data back to the satellites. It's just a passive receiver. It doesn't matter one bit how many other people have GPSes. Might as well claim you're getting poor FM radio reception due to too many people listening to their stereos.

You would have had a point if you talked about your MOBILE not getting a signal or something due to devices that use that network had you said that.

Re:Drive her

[starglider29a]

True. Why use a public, already-funded, low MPG-per-rider system when EACH parent can drive their SUVs to drop the kids off? In fact, why don't you just home-school your child and save lots of resources. And if you all buy hybrids, you can save the auto industry.

I hope I broke the needle on your sarcasm meter.

Re:Cell phone

[Thornburg]

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?

Re:Drive her

[that IT girl]

You do realize this is impossible for an increasing percentage of the population, right? Hence the existence of buses to begin with.

Re:Cell phone

[Minwee]

If she gets lost due to the school or her own demise, she can call and say where she is.

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.

Title Ambiguity

[CopaceticOpus]

I believe this "Making a Child" Locating System will be of interest to many Slashdotters.

How about teaching

[BlowHole666]

How about you just teach your child what bus to get on. Or pick your child up from school. In 20 years are you going to want your child to think it is ok to track a person? Will your child be one of the ones that says "Well my parents tracked me as a child and I was fine, so lets let the government track us". The buses have numbers written on them just teach your child what number theirs. Once you advocate tracking people as a valid solution to a problem everyone is doing it.

Please don't think of the children.

[Dutchmaan]

Remember folks, it's been said over and over and over again... First it will be tracking criminals, then it will be tracking children for their safety, then it will be tracking the general populous because they grew up with it.

With technology come vigilance on how it's used and how it could *potentially* be used.

Humanity, sliding down that slippery slope since 1984.

Options if tracking is what you want to do

[mgwmgw]

I am not sure whether tracking your child is a good idea or not.
I don't tell other people how to raise their children.

If you wish to buy a tracker in a phone, here is some information.
Good Housekeeping expressed opinions
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/reviews-tests/appliances-electronics/kid-cell-phones-0306
loc8u ofers a GPS Watch
http://www.switched.com/2009/01/07/lok8u-launches-gps-child-locator-watch-at-ces/
Wherify has one
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/wherify-wherifone-cell-phone-with-gps-locator-lets-you-gps-track-your-kids/
AT&T has one
http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/AT-T-launches-child-locator-service_a1470.html
Here is a discussion of short and long range child locators
http://www.gpsfortoday.com/child-locators/
Amber Alert has one
http://www.gpschildtracker.net/child-gps-devices-systems-tracking-phone-chip-child-location

However, if you don't want to use a phone
and build more of it yourself,
here are some websites that may be useful:
http://www.tradekey.com/selloffer_view/id/2924121.htm
http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/gps-tracking-server.html
http://forums.coolest-gadgets.com/showthread.php?t=4079
http://www.ecplaza.net/search/0s1nf20sell/gps_tracker_%20gps_tracking_gps.html
http://5thirtyone.com/archives/876/comment-page-1

Yep: remember poor little fruit stand

[way2trivial]

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.""