[Geowanking] iPhone Geolocating technology?
Kevin Elliott
kevin at phunc.com
Wed Sep 12 18:32:14 PDT 2007
Anselm,
This is very true. I would imagine that an effort in the iPhone dev
community can be made to reverse engineer (through a debugger) how the
FieldTest.app actually functions. Similar techniques were used to
reverse engineer the SimFree.app (IPSF commercial unlock application)
in order to produce the free and open source version. It shouldn't be
unreasonable to look to see what the FieldTest application is actually
doing. A direct API may not actually exist, but we could technically
write a static library for performing the same activity.
I would imagine that this functionality lives in the same baseband
firmware as the unlock. I've been meaning to take a deeper look
myself, having been both a GIS/GPS and iPhone enthusiast.
-Kevin
On Sep 12, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Anselm Hook wrote:
> It looks like the community has not built apps to read the cell
> tower id from the iphone yet... but yes those datasets are a great
> asset... hopefully can benefit the iphone too as per this thread...
>
> Interesting links I came across while looking at this:
>
> http://www.wirelessinfo.com/content/Inside-the-iPhone-field-test-mode.htm
> http://opengsm.blogspot.com/
>
> - a
>
> On 9/12/07, Martin May <martin at brightkite.com> wrote:
> On Sep 12, 2007, at 12:24 PM, Andrew Turner wrote:
>> Depends on where you are - and like you point out with Wigle - it
>> comes down to the data.
>
> True, it does come down to the data. Christopher started an effort
> to collect location data for GSM cells at http://gsmloc.org/, and I
> personally mapped most of the Denver area a few years back (for T-
> Mobile) using my own software. Cellspotting has a similar database,
> although I'm not sure if they have lat/long info for the cells.
>
> The nice thing about GSM cells is that they probably don't change
> quite as often as Wi-Fi hotspots, cover a larger area per cell, and
> are present in more places. The drawback is that you have to collect
> the data for each provider (maybe similar to Ian's duct-tape cell
> bundle ;)
>
>> What, specifically, were the licensing qualms with Wigle? Multiple
>> people have said something similarly vague, but nothing specific as
>> to
>> why.
>
> It's basically as Dan said, they only allow use on one single
> computer for one user, pretty much ruling out anything useful that
> is web-based. They offer a commercial license, but I have no idea
> how much they charge for it or what terms apply to that.
>
> Martin
>
> --
> Martin May
> CTO, Brightkite.com
>
> martin at brightkite.com
> T 720-299-4027
>
>> On 9/11/07, Martin May <martin at brightkite.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I've looked at the Wigle database about a month ago, and it seems
>>> that while
>>> the database itself is a great source for geocoded SSIDs (and more
>>> importantly, MAC addresses), the licensing is somewhat restrictive.
>>>
>>> With regards to the iPhone, another interesting question is
>>> whether we can
>>> access the API that the field test app i using to show currently
>>> visible
>>> cell towers with signal strength. This information could then be
>>> used,
>>> similarly to Wi-Fi, to geolocate the handset. Since the GSM
>>> network has
>>> better coverage than individual Wi-Fi networks, this could be a more
>>> worthwhile technique
>>
>> Depends on where you are - and like you point out with Wigle - it
>> comes down to the data.
>>
>> What, specifically, were the licensing qualms with Wigle? Multiple
>> people have said something similarly vague, but nothing specific as
>> to
>> why.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> --
>>> Martin May
>>> CTO, Brightkite.com
>>>
>>> martin at brightkite.com
>>> T 720-299-4027
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 11, 2007, at 6:16 PM, Mike Liebhold wrote:
>>>
>>> There's news today that there might be something useful here for
>>> building
>>> iphone wifi geolocation:
>>> http://code.google.com/p/iphone-wireless/ it looks like
>>> it's possible to scan for an AP SSID:
>>> http://code.google.com/p/iphone-wireless/wiki/Apple80211Scan
>>>
>>> ideally, if you have a db of locations of AP SSIDs then all you
>>> have to do
>>> is scan and compare visible APs with known AP locations to
>>> determine your
>>> location.
>>>
>>> so the question remains, (aside from the skyhook/loki commercial
>>> db) what is
>>> the best source of a db of geocoded wifi AP SSIDs? Drew, Is
>>> wifimaps.com
>>> the best, current source? also, I'm wondering if anyone has had
>>> any recent
>>> experience with the wigle db?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Drew from Zhrodague wrote:
>>>
>>> Do you or any of these others publish the associated datasets, eg.
>>> under
>>> Creative Commons or other open license? Seems there's a problem
>>> getting
>>> critical mass of data for such efforts...
>>>
>>> We're releasing the wifimaps.com data under the GPL, as soon
>>> as we can
>>> package it into a useful format!
>>>
>>> The next question becomes -- what format do people want their
>>> wifi
>>> locations in? WFS? KML? Something made-up? Again, I'm looking for
>>> some kinda
>>> help on this project, as I'm in way over my head =_)
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Andrew Turner
>> ajturner at highearthorbit.com 42.2774N x 83.7611W
>> http://highearthorbit.com Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
>> Introduction to Neogeography - http://oreilly.com/catalog/
>> neogeography
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>
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