GPS tracking for Blackberry 8800, 8830
May 23, 2007 gps navigation, phones, software, tracking
First 3rd party GPS applications for the Blackberry 8800 are starting to surface. One of these is the MobileTracker from SkyLab. It utilizes the A-GPS chip inside your Blackberry 8800 or 8830 to record a tracklog. It will work anywhere in the world regardless of having cellular service or not. If you are battery conscious you can also customize the delay between each way point so it doesn’t power up the GPS chip every five seconds.
MobileTracker saves your track log on the microSD card so you can easily transfer it to your PC to get a visual on Google Earth or even Google Maps. It costs $24. But what are its uses other than seeing where you’ve been that day?
… the tracklog can be published and shared over the web using the free Google Maps service. So you can now easily embed a tracklog from your hiking, biking or running trip into your website. Imagine of publishing your current and previous running logs on your website or blog to let people take part in your hobby. Taking advantage of the BlackBerry you already have will minimize your expense on additional GPS hardware.
MobileTracker also tracks your height, and can be used in the background so you can still take calls, make appointments, etc. on your phone. There’s no limit to the length of the track you are recording.
Now if you could turn this into a Trojan and get regular emails about the location of your stalkee, then it would be really useful.
Loading ...
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:56 am
[...] Vía navigadget [...]
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Does anyone know if the 8100 paired with a bluetooth GPS will be supported?
July 31st, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I have spoken to one of the developers (I have a BB 8700 and really want this app to work on it). The main thing they need to work out to get this working on older BBs is the ability to save a file to the internal memory and not a SD card. I would think that should be relatively simple, but they said they will look into it for a future version.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
I just purchased the MobileTracker software for my BlkBerry 8800. While it seems to do everything as advertised, I seem to have problems with the GPS going to sleep while I am travelling and not use using the BB device. (ie. I enable the GPS, turn on the tracker, then go back to my main screen and put the device back in its case… and go on my trip)
At some point 10-15 minutes later I’ll go back into the MobileTracker application and find that although the tracking session is still active, but it does not recognize that I am moving. I need to go back to the MAPS application and “wake up” the GPS tracking. When I do so, it tells me it is searching for satellites (it very quickly finds them), and when found I go back to the MobileTracker application and the tracking is active again.
When I look at the resulting kml file in GoogleEarth, I see that all the points are tracked up until it “fell asleep”, and then there is a straight line to the point where I “woke it up” again.
Anyone have any ideas on how to keep the GPS active for the duration of a tracking session, even if I am not using the BB?
August 10th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
My company is issuing all salespeople a Blackberry 8820 so is there now a way for them to track everywhere we go without us nowing it? Talk about Big Brother. Does anyone know if this is possible?
October 4th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Not only is it possible, it’s a “service.” Sprint has 2 services at the time of this writing: Sprint Mobile Locator and Sprint Family Locator found at http://www.nextel.com/en/services/gps/mobile_locator.shtml and http://www.nextel.com/en/services/gps/family_locator.shtml . The Mobile Locator says, “View and monitor employee location in real-time.” The Family Locator says, “Locate family members anytime, anywhere, from your phone or via the web.”
“No extra equipment or setup required – all you need is a Nextel GPS-enabled phone or BlackBerry® handheld, a PC with web access, and a My Sprint Username and Password.” Every Sprint phone automatically gets a username and password; no extra charge.
Mobile Locator™ – $15.00/month
Sprint Family Locator – $9.99/month per family to locate up to 4 phones.
Just so you know about your privacy rights, here’s more from the Sprint site:
Your Privacy
Now that you have agreed to purchase a GPS* service you must also provide your privacy consent before the service can be used. For your convenience this is done at the account level. Providing consent for the application to locate devices on your account will allow Sprint to (a) collect, access, use, and, if applicable (b) disclose to your application provider, your geographic location and or presence information to deliver this service to you (your “Privacy Consent”). Because we are concerned about your privacy, we will not disclose this sensitive information to anyone without your affirmative Consent.
October 4th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
One more thing… Can your phone be tracked? Here’s the current list. https://sfl.sprintpcs.com/finder-sprint-family/phoneList.htm Read it and weep. It looks like the BlackBerry 7130 7250 8703e and 8830 can be tracked, but can’t be used to track. However, you can use your PC to track family members or employees, so if you have a BB web connection, you may be able to do the tracking using your BB’s web browser. Oops. The hacker in me is showing. I don’t want to give anybody any bad ideas. ;-)
October 8th, 2007 at 2:07 am
Hi Andrew
I have had similar problems with MobileTracker. I bought it last week and it just doesn’t seem to work properly.
I have found that if you go into Maps and enable the GPS you can then launch MobileTracker ok and it starts to record. However as soon as the powersave mode kicks in, the GPS is disabled and MobileTracker stops recording. I have found the solution to this is to Exit & Close Maps as soon as the GPS is enabled and then launch MobileTracker. Then it keeps working.
However…. whenever I use MobileTracker for any length of time (>20mins ish) it generates an exception error “Uncaught exception: Application MobileTracker (308) is not responding, process terminated”
Has anyone else had this? I think MobileTracker 1.2.0 is unfit for purpose and I have written to SkyLab MobileSystems.
Andy
November 27th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Yeah the GPS stopping working is a pain. I also found that making sure BB Maps is not running makes a difference. The Maps application seems to have some power saving feature that turns off the GPS to save power when the screen is not visible, and then when the screen comes back up the GPS quickly re-fixes (<2sec).
One catch make sure the Maps application is really closed, press the menu button then select close from the menu. If you just hit the back button the application actually just drops into the background.
Out of interest I am using an application called bbTrack, its free and seems to work really well for capturing the raw GPS data (note there is no “smoothing” applied).
December 4th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Hey Ketih,
Sprint sucks in terms of quality, customer service, dropped calls, and they phones are terrible and CDMA in general is terrible.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:21 am
[...] post by Troy and software by Elliott [...]
December 4th, 2007 at 4:46 am
[...] post by Comment on GPS tracking for Blackberry 8800, 8830 by Troy and software by Elliott [...]
October 6th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I purchased the MobileTracker from SkyLab 31/8/08 following promise by their Technical support that “Once you purchased a license you can request an OTA download link and we will send you one. So you can install the application just with your BlackBerry.” (There are no Linux tools for installation!). They failed to provide OTA after purchase and never responded to my emails after I paid for the product (Case 17165).
Outcome – I cannot comment on SW as I was not able to try it but I have grave doubts about integrity of Skylab Mobilesystems Ltd (to put i mildly).
Petr
April 15th, 2009 at 5:13 am
If you ever want to hear a reader’s feedback :) , I rate this post for 4/5. Decent info, but I have to go to that damn google to find the missed bits. Thanks, anyway!
May 25th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Try http://itumba.net instead. It works fine even in standby mode.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:48 am
Awesome app. I’m looking into it more now.
October 9th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Your site is also very interesting, very calming effect just reading it. Will spend more time with certain areas. Well done and good luck with your work.
October 9th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I love this site, so thank you