A New App for the Forum?

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Kim (skyking4ar2) Bertram

Moderator Emeritus
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Posts
4,052
Location
Santa Fe, New Mexico
With everyone wandering around the country getting hunkered down for the winter, how come we don't have an app for locating Framily while we pass through the area?

Like hover over a map and see who's near?  :eek:

Ok, I know, some of you are hiding from the Feds, but still....it could be opt in, like taxes!  8)
 
There are PROBABLY several reasons. Number one it would be a time consuming app to write with no financial payoff. Two, it would depend on each of us updating our location manually every time we moved. Since it would not be possible for everyone to update their location every time they moved the info would never really be accurate.

Right now I am on a long trip from California to Florida and back. I am in touch with a dozen or so forum members I am planning on meeting up with along the way. If anyone else is interested in a mini-rally send me a PM.
 
SeilerBird said:
Number one it would be a time consuming app to write with no financial payoff.

Probably not a good enough reason for any self respecting coder...most code has no financial payoff..

SeilerBird said:
Two, it would depend on each of us updating our location manually every time we moved. Since it would not be possible for everyone to update their location every time they moved the info would never really be accurate.

Hitting a button on a smartphone is not rocket science.

It's a simple matter of connecting a GIS database with a user database....I have done it with web pages but not on an iPhone. Guess I have a challenge.  8)
 
Kim,

We use the Datastorm website to inform folks on our list ( those who requested to know where we are) .

Terry  fills in the information when we arrive at a new destination and  voila we have communicated with  friends and Framily about our location.  The site has revealed to us lots of other  Datastorm users in the location when we arrive.

You can also post on RVForum and say where you are and  maybe someone wil l post they are near. ( or maybe they will hide from you!
BB
 
We have also used the Datastorm Users map for years to let people know when we've moved and where we are at any time.  That was not a trivial programming task but Don Bradner (who owns the site and put the map together) is a good programmer.  He wrote an application that gets the GPS location from the Datastorm and posts it to his server.  It truly is one click.

Getting the GPS location on a smartphone is easy, it's the back end that takes the work.  You need a domain hosted on a web server with database support that can accept the information from the phone, update the database, then create the map on demand from the database.  Designing the system would probably take me a few hours, but actually coding it will take someone knowledgeable in backend programming tools like PHP, MySQL, HTML, Java (for the phone side), etc.  Kim can handle it in his spare time ;)
 
I have a nephew who is an engineer for Red Hat Linux and travels internationally supporting Java. The stub for the iPhone to Google is just a page of code. I knew I should have picked up Java when I had the chance... :mad: Maybe my nephew can translate.  ;)

The database stuff, I got that...

I probably should not have let my alligator mouth overload my hummingbird (expletive deleted).

 
Good start, Kim.  I would look at the Google Maps API for the map display.  Write it first for the larger market, Android, then port it to IOS.  Let me know if I can help.  50+ years of systems design and programming at your disposal.
 
You got it, sort of.. Depending on just what you want.

First: For folks who live in sticks and bricks you can take any good maping software (I use MIcrosoft Streets and Trips) enter the addresses and pin'em. then as you approach the pins show up on the map.

IF they have cell phones and let you.. There are "Family tracker" programs.

If they use a Hughesnet internet, there is a page for those folks to log in on as well.

And there are more.

As a ham radio operator one of these years I'll get into APRS (Amateur Packet Reporting Service if I'm not mistaken) which tracks the movements of member hams .

Now indiscriminate tracking is, of course, a privacy violation and you get sounds of "Big Brother" and 1984 (George Orewell's that is)  but the "My Family" apps let you track those who let you track them.
 
    Tom, for those of us who grew up with crank phones, with "party lines", I always believed a "Smart Phone" was when we moved from a Rotary Dial to a push button.

Ed
 
Hfx_Cdn said:
    Tom, for those of us who grew up with crank phones, with "party lines", I always believed a "Smart Phone" was when we moved from a Rotary Dial to a push button.

Ed
I have a smart phone Ed and the app that I use most is the timer for timing my BBQing.
 
A simple method that wouldn't require a smart phone or an app would be for folks to just update one line in their signature line. We could even make it a profile field, which would allow the data to be searched and outputted. But, whichever method one chooses, good luck getting more than a tiny fraction of our membership to update regularly.
 
An app already exists for this purpose. It's called "Find Friends", and it comes free with iOS 6 - so it's for Apple users only. You can setup "geo fences" so you can be alerted when your friends get close.


Mylo
 
And Android users can use Google Latitude to do the same thing.  Neither app is a solution to the problem as stated.
 
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