Does anyone SMS their GPS co-ords home?

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Guys

 

I see that quite a number of mobiles these days have inbuilt GPS recievers and most have the typical car display for driving.

 

What I was wondering is, has anyone managed to make their 3G phone, with inbuilt GPS reciever, SMS, according to a schedule like every 15mins etc, the current GPS co-ords, alt,speed, hdg and timestamp to another phone?

 

At present when I go long distance I tend to call the wife, at her request, when atop towns on the way. If its long distance then the cost of the calls can be significant and a 15min SMS might be a better solution, certainly if something were to happen, its useful stuff for the searchers to know.

 

In order to be of use for more than just the east coast and capitals it will need to be Telstra 3G capable I would have thought.

 

Anyone?

 

Andy

 

 

[Mazda]

I'm not sure about phones but there are systems to do this. Satcom C Inmarsat units can send regular position reports and there's also a system called Spider Tracks, I think from a New Zealand company.

 

Inmarsat also lets you get emails and send faxes in flight. You don't need the aircraft one in small aircraft (too expensive and designed for high speed) the truck one is OK.

 

 

[Mick]

Not so technical, but I SMS the name of each town to my wife as I pass over it. Even if she does not see the message immediately, the time of the message is automatically recorded.

 

She is equipped with a copy of my flight plan and hence can keep track of me.

 

She is also a pilot with a nav rating so she can make sense of any diversions that end up occurring.

 

As I say not as technical as GPS co-ords, but it will certainly help narrow down a search area should something bad happen.

 

Cheers

 

Mick

 

 

[Admin]

Apparently my new phone which has a GPS in it and uses Co-Pilot software for street navigation can be setup to advise someone of my location and ETA every x minutes. Not sure how it works yet but perhaps Slartibartfast might have an idea.

 

 

[slartibartfast]

Not off-hand Ian. Mine is PDA based so it doesn't have SMS.

 

The CoPilot website says:

 

Improved Live location tracking via the Internet with the ability to send a tracking invitation to a Microsoft Outlook contact

 

Send current location, ETA, and destination via SMS or a map of the current location via MMS

 

So it must be possible to do exactly what Andy was asking. Pretty cool technology.

 

Just RTFM.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Apparently my new phone which has a GPS in it and uses Co-Pilot software for street navigation can be setup to advise someone of my location and ETA every x minutes. Not sure how it works yet but perhaps Slartibartfast might have an idea.

Ian

 

What brand and model did you end up buying, if I have that I can chase an online manual and see if it will do what I want.

 

Thanks for the pointer

 

Andy

 

 

[Admin]

Andy

 

I got a htc TyTn 2 phone http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_tytn_II.htm which is also a PDA and runs Windows Mobile

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Ian

 

I went through the users guide but didnt see anything that suggested the capability as there by default.

 

However spent an hour googling madly and came up with a software solution called GPS W.A.I.T (We Are In Touch) which installes on a smartdevice (phone /PDA combo) and was designed to work with 2 devices both running the software, each displaying their own location and the other(s) however at the end of the day the SMS format between the 2 is known and it can be set according to a schedule to send as I wanted on a 15, 30 or 60 minute schedule (or more often if you feel the telcos need more of your money). So as long as you clearly identify the SMS format to she who tracks you I think this will do the job for the princely sum of $19.99USD from pocketgear or handango.

 

There is a 7day, non crippled trial version that Im inclined to have a look at

 

Andy

 

 

[Admin]

Sounds good Andy - the trial version first as long as the functionality isn't locked out. Sorry, my mistake with my post but the actual feature that I was referring to isn't the phone itself but a part of the C-Pilot Street Navigation software that comes with the phone.