[Symbian-hacks] Got a bluetooth GPS? Help me out!

[Christopher Schmidt]

Hey Everyone -- 

I'm giving a presentation on geolocation using GSM cells at Where 2.0 on
June 13th. I've done a fair amount of work in attempting to create a
service whereby you can look up your latitude/longitude using your Cell
ID (n1,n2,lac,cid) code.

However, I'm only one person, and thus far, I've only been able to
gather data for the Boston area -- not the most interesting service in
the world, if it only covers where I drive ;)

So, I've come up with a new version of my old 'autostumbler' code, which
stores the gps information on the memory card in the phone
("E:\gps.txt") and then allows you to upload this data.

There's a number of reasons for this:
 * Battery usage when uploading every point is very high
 * Bulk upload allows you to save on bandwidth costs in non-unlimited
   bandwidth situations
 * Less dependance on network availability at all times

The new code is at http://svn.crschmidt.net/symbian/stumblestore.py .
I'm going to be spending a bit more time today making this fail
gracefully in various error conditions -- for example, at the moment,
there's no 'catch' for if you don't have a flash card in your phone, so
it won't work in that case -- and then packaging it up as a .sis.

In the meantime, however, if you'd like to help me generate some data,
you can do so by running the code on your phone: start it, and it will
have you select a GPS. Hit "Stumble", and at some point later, hit
"upload" to upload your gps log.

This does send me your IMEI. This is for grouping purposes only: I want
to know how many people are helping me out. I have no intention of
making the IMEI public.

In the next week or two, this will become a publicly available
webservice (rather than running under crschmidt.net) through which
you'll be able to retrieve your uploads, and do other cool things with
the data. I'm interested in providing this as an alternative to the high
priced provider-based solutions, so be aware that I do not plan to keep
your data locked up in any way. I just haven't had time to get the
public facing stuff up yet, and I'd like to start collecting data.

Thanks in advance for any help, 
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer