Why LittleBrother was developed?

The "ZERO-power consuming" tracking solution / CellTower based - supporting CDMA and GSM Network
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emac
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Why LittleBrother was developed?

Post by emac »

Hi,

actually I would like to share with you some information which have lead to the development of LittleBrother - since what I have read in the last few month about the "use" of LittleBrother is IMHO not the right direction.

Why LittleBrother is there?
I was asked almost a year ago, if I could extend my GPSLogger app so that it could send an SMS... I wondered a bit about this kind of request and get into a discussion with a Doctor who have told me that his son has a serious disease - causing that from time to time is son is on the run (without knowing what he is doing). This happens just occasionally - but when this happens his son is in serious trouble.

Almost at the same time my grand mother (suffering from Alzheimer diseases) was on the run again, had fallen and broken her ankle (and was lying outside in the cold till she was found next morning) - she was not able to recover from that and passed away few month later...

There are RemotePhone Tracking applications like SmrtGuard could help when you need to know the exact location of the device/person - but first of all you need to be aware that a individual is on the run (have left a area that's so called "secure")

Both incidents motivated me to create LittleBrother at the start - the challenge here was that using the GPS-Antenna all time is quite power hungry (as I know from GPSLogger) so the location had to be traced somehow totally different. That was where the CellTowerLocation based service Idea was born.

Usecase 1
After the initial version was implemented I discovered that LittleBrother became very useful for myself - why - actually that's quite simple. In my job I do not work at fixed times - with that my wife almost never know when I am coming home. Specially in the summer time this could lead to the situation that she is leaving the home for some short trips with the kids few moments before I arrive at home - which is always quite sad - since what's the sense of leaving work early when you are then just sitting home alone? Sure you can ask, why I did not call here to let her know that I am coming home soon - good question - the answer is also very simple - it also can happen in my job that even while I am leaving an indecent occurs thats forcing me to stay longer...

So since I am working aprox. 50km away from where I live I have created a LittleBrother Sector with a 25km radius around my home - as soon as I am entering this home sector LittleBrother is sending my wife an email. So when she is planing to leave the house she now can have a quick look into her mail and check if it's worth to wait a half hour in order that daddy is spending some extra time with the family. That's my personal use case and this service is highly appreciated by my wife since she now knows when she could expect me arriving at home.

Coworkers are using LittleBrother for similar purposes - letting there mother know that they have left the city - or arrived back again at the weekend - of course LittleBrother is far from being accurate concerning the real current position (specially when you are living on the country side)... but personally the accuracy is good enough for the described use cases.

Usecase 2
Despite of the daily usage LittleBrother will also make you aware what kind of data you are leaving day by day by just leaving your phone on - we here in Germany have currently a discussion going on - the so called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" Telecommunications data retention - so our government want that every provider will store the information about each individual moving in the network - and this for the last 6 month. With LittleBrother you will see what kind of trace you are leaving in this digital world (and just my personal advice when you are plaining any kind of crime - make sure that you turn OFF your mobile phone :mrgreen: ). It's really scary to see what you can construct from this information - yes it's not that precise as the use of the GPSLogger but fairly good enough to tell where you have been...

Usecase 3
In the last few month I use more and more WiFi - but I also discovered that when WiFi is enabled but no WLAN is in the area the battery is draining down noticeable. So since all the information is already present in LittleBrother I have extended the functionality and you can now enable/disable WiFi automatically. While in the past I had to turn off WiFi when I left my home and had to turn it on again when I arrived at work this is now done fully automatically by LittleBrother - simply be defining two Sectors (CellTowerLists).

Even if this was not the initial idea when I started to develop LittleBrother it already have become very very useful for me personally.

few additional side notes

Why notify via SMS?
That's simply - in certain counties providers are offering SMS-Flatrates to the customers and it's then the cheapest was to instantly inform another phone (that does not support push notification technologies).

What can be next?
Good question - currently I am thinking about additional notification channels - like Twitter - also something that is going though my mind: Why I have to check in manually with foursquare when I am at a certain location - why not let LittleBrother do it automatically? [but for now foursquare's API have a certain limitation that will make it almost impossible to allow to use it from the BlackBerry for a 3'rd party developer like me].

If you have further ideas what can be done as "geo chron" job - just let me know :idea:
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