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400 bucks is good for a standalone unit. A person who will steal your car will disable your computer cut the battery cable and or take out the computer. Setting anything up with that will be a waste of time. So you should buy the standalone unit and stuff it inside your seat it has standby power of 17 hours so you wire it to the seat power from the "power seats" and its hidden and you get full power.
well, I tried to translate that gpss.co.uk page and what I think I found is:
1.The software is free, if you aren't a business and want to sell it and you take the quiz (?)
2.It just works with your gps dongle and windows (?)
3.Doesn't need much computing power to run (?)
This could be the easiest and most inexpensive way to do this if we can find a pc that is:
1. very small
2. no display
3. doesn't use much power.
The smallest cheap pc I have found is the boundless virgin webplayer. It is about the size of a small laptop (with a screen), and a little lighter. And I believe it has a dc power supply. It doesn't have a harddrive, but a small laptop drive can be purchased. Without the harddrive, the unit cost me $35, brand new.
I contacted Robin at GPSS.co.uk. He pointed me in the direction of falcom.de for a possible DIY solution. To be honest I could not work out what I would need from their site.
Anyways, Robin's GPSS software got me thinking a bit. It can output current location info to a file which can be read by a second GPSS install. I know you are all looking for a self contained solution but for now I want to at least track my cars when they are out and about.
So, as I have GPRS connectivity to the internet from my car it should be possible to upload data to a web site to store my location info which could then be read by my PC at home.
A second thing I found was in this thread where com port splitters are being discussed. Lantronics have some software to redirect your com port across a TCP/IP network. Meaning it would be possible to receive data on a local com port even though the real com port is on a remote machine. I think the Lantronics solution for sending the data from the remote device is lantronics device based but it has got me thinking all the same.
In the meantime the com port splitter software will allow me to run my regular GPS software and GPSS at the same time for capturing data!
A person who will steal your car will disable your computer cut the battery cable and or take out the computer.
The original idea is supposed to be standalone. A backup battery may not be needed as the car will not move without the battery unless of course someone push it or tow it away.
Magpie,
You got the right idea. Im sure theres a program out there somewhere that can transmit the raw data from serial port and reconstruct it back on a dummy port on another PC via internet perhaps?
If you do find one please let us know :)
Ricky327,Quote:
Originally Posted by Ricky327
The thread I pointed to in my previous post talks about two programs which does exactly that. I have tested this by running some GPS software on my PC in the house with the port redirection software running on the carpc and receiving end on my PC in the house. Once configured I was able to connect the the GPS receiver from the PC in the house just as if the GPS receiver was connected locally. All good so far.
Here comes the hard part. This solution requires me to connect to the car from the home PC. I did this test through my home wireless network to the car. When the car is connected to the internet via GPRS I am unable to connect the the carpc through the internet but I can connect back home from the car. Unfortunately, the port redirection software requires me to connect from the house to the car which I am unable to do. I think my interim solution would be to create a VPN back to the home PC allowing me to connect as though the car was on my home lan.
This is probably not making much sense but I know the theory should work here. Questions I still have are around getting the car to auto connect to the internet and starting a VPN connection back to my PC at home. I also have concern over the cost over time.
With the GPRS connection to the internet always on there is very little data transmitted so costs are kept low. This would be perfect as costs would only be seen when I connect to the port redirection software.
I'll let you know how I get on. With this solution I won't need to use the GPSS software. It's not a windows app so I'm less interested in it unless I can use it just for capturing data.
Magpie.
UPDATE:
Just incase someone is interested...I done the basic operation of my plan...seems to be looking good so far.
The NMEA sentences at 4800 baudrate from the GPS is read by the PIC. Only the $GPRMC sentence is captured and the rest are ignored.
The $GPRMC is the recommended minimum specific GPS/Transit data...contains just the minimum information for basic navigation. This sentence is updated once every second.
This string of $GPRMC ASCII code is then stored in the PICs RAM. The $GPRMC sentence is then read from the PICs RAM and retransmitted at 300 baud rate. This is then converted to FSK at 1200Hz and 2400Hz (Kasas city standard) before being fed to the mobile phone mic input. I chose this FSK frequencies and baudrate to ensure the mobile phone audio can cope.
The $GPRMC sentence is retransmitted once every 2 seconds at 300 baudrate...the receiving end should see the tracker positions updated once every 2 second rather than once every seconds.
The same $GPRMC sentence can be transmitted twice or more to fill in the missing updates. Even though the date and time is the same, the mapping software dont seems to mind it (mappoint and mapsonic)...it just update the new positon when it receives one without a complain :)
No mobile phone is used during that testing.
I still need to program a PIC FSK decoder. This recover the $GPRMC sentence transmitted at 300 baudrate, store in the PIC RAM then output it to the PC serial port at 4800 baudrate...as I said above it seems ok to repeat the same sentences until a new one is available.
Any comment please..Ill love to get this thing working.
The aim is :
Should work with phone without a built in modem.
The PIC is acting as a modem at 300 baudrate.
Stand alone unit.
With battery backup maybe?
Any pay-as-you-go SIM should work.
No data enabling required.
No credit required on the phone.
...Im not to sure how I can get the PIC to pick up the mobile phone when it rings. Through a data cable perhaps? Once I get this thing working I wanna work on getting it to txt another phone when the car is in trouble, triggered alarm perhaps?
TIA
I'll let you know how I get on. With this solution I won't need to use the GPSS software. It's not a windows app so I'm less interested in it unless I can use it just for capturing data.
Any update on your side?
you guys might wanna look into this:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/wireless-communications/28230-unlimited-gprs-internet-10-month.html
Bluetooth phone + Bluetooth GPS + Easyspeak = ?
Hi there - i just glanced down through this thread and it seems interesting and some guys here do know what they are on about. i have recently completed a project on controlling appliances by sms so i have a lot of expierence on this.
Some said you dont need a microcontroller - you do - any kind but one with hw uart preferable. You may need to knock up a max232 datacable for debugging with pc.
For ringing the phone all you need is a mike and a micro with adc - this can hear what keys are pressed easily - i wouldnt use this method however - no security whatso ever - at least sms can be encrypted
anyways - i can answer any hard ware -software q's u might have