thekl0wn

So, what's the entire project's acronym? We can't go any further without a catchy acronym to reference the project.

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lambosprit

Just wondered if I can be of help.

I already have a tracking software developed that could be changed to collect the data your after. It already works by internet or wifi and works on an sqllite database.

I found out alot about nmea strings on this site. Hugely helpful.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/mobile...ications1.aspx

One of the key things I found out about was accuracy. Each nmea string has its own variable of how accurate it is so its easy to set a level of accuracy to consider worth collecting or not.

anyway if you need me I'm here and interested.

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Fiberoptic

That is great! Do you have any more details on this?

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thekl0wn

There's some good info in that article! Thanks for posting!

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lambosprit

what details do you want?

You can check it out here

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/gps/...me-server.html

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lambosprit

I've been thinking more about this. I concentrated on the issue of privacy because I think to get the large number of people required to get this to work its going to have to be private.

Its possible for me to modify my software so that each user gets an automatically generated user id. Nobody would have any idea who the user was as no personnel details are collected and you don’t have to log onto a site first. This could be like a GUID key. I know its technically possible to trace these but isn’t everything.

I could then get the client (or server) to update the ftp site through a proxy site. That way there’s no tracing of ip’s.

Speed could be sent to the server as a range so >30mph rather than an actual value. These could be the major speed limits so for the uk it would be >30,>60, and 70 of course.

Lastly I could implement a random removal of points that could identify location. I think this last point could be removed over time as more of the map is fleshed out.

I think you’d also need to get the big skin people on board as well. If the likes of DigitalFX , Lsx Void and CF (I know its not a skin) where involved then the distribution would go up hugely (my software has been download <100 times that’s not gong to make for a great map!)

Getting thunderstick interested with his sign recognition software would be a major step on the way as well as nobodies going to be interested in imputing data as they drive.

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soundman98

one of my concerns would be the random data cuttoff-- i think that this would still need to be used even after there were alot of people using it--ie. i would never want people to see my driveway as part of the map, and possibly get routed down it.

the other issue, while not that big of a deal for me, is that some members would like a link to be added to their signature to show how many tracks they have uploaded. like i said, this is not a big deal for me(i am fine with just a 'mp3car map data contributer' title in my sig). maybe there could be some sort of link that would update with the user upload account that the member could specify.

i would be happy to contribute as long as the a random data cutoff is used, and there is no personal data connecting me to any specific upload, so i don't have to worry about getting tickets based on my uploaded data.

Bugbyte

These are good ideas! I think they represent a good balance of usability and privacy. If possible, it would be good to allow people to obfuscate their tracks parametrically. Heh-heh. I said parametrically. What I mean is there should be options to share more or less data that can be set by the user. So, one checkbox might be 'only share data after 3 minutes of travel' and the user can set that to whatever he/she wants. Another might be 'don't share data within x miles of this location'.

I wouldn't have too may of these restrictions and maybe just something like a "share a lot of data" or "share less data" setting for users to help them out.

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lambosprit

well we could allow that. It just needs the member to supply their guid to the site. Then the site could show the uploaded miles etc. Kind of an opt in.


No probs with that. As I said I think this is the major issue. If people feel safe they'll sign up and give loads of data. If they dont they wont touch it.

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lambosprit

Parametrising is not a problem. It could be kept as simple as "I like my privacy" or "I'm not bothered".

The other thought I've had is more people don't have internet in the car than do. I suspect most have wifi though. Do you think we could rely on this or would it be better to have an off line mode , say file and another little app that uploads the data from a desktop. Trying to keep things simple and easy to use here.

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Bugbyte

Definitely an offline mode. There will be times when you lose the data connection even if you have internet in the car. It should be robust and able to recover from signal loss.

As for having or not having connectivity, can it be written so that it uses the available net connection? My iPhone is able to switch from WiFi to Edge pretty seamlessly without intervention.

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lambosprit

I dont think I was clear. My current app keeps the server updated when ever there is an internet connection (either wifi or other). It has all the robustness etc you talk about as well, however I dont see the point of live updates. What I see is it creating a log that gets sent to the ftp site.

Now my question was whether we can rely on sending the log via the car (I guess this is ok because most people have atleast wifi) or we need a standalone app where the logged data can be removed from the car and sent to the ftp site from any desktop.

for you personnally it would just use your cars net connection but what if you didn't have any way of connecting from the car. Do you think you would be bothered to take data from the car and send it manually? I can do both so the point's mute but I was interested how easy it should be made.

Last question. My app stores everything in an sqlite database (its free). If this was sent to the ftp site would you be able to use it or does it have to be in another format (I used xml for the first versions of my app but it had issues)

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Fiberoptic

Live updates will allow you to watch traffic trends which is going to be an important part of getting a critical mass of users (see waze post in the same forum). It is also interesting to look at Waze's privacy policy.

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soundman98

i think that the waze idea has some great points, and live updating could become a great asset later on, but, like you said in the other thread, there is just too much 'big brother' mentality in that project...and it looks like it requires a constant connection.

lambosprit: after re-reading your last post i would say that i would prefer to control when the program sends the data-- i have configured my wifi card to automaticaly connect a couple of access points along my way into work, but becasue i am still driving, internet goes in and out very quickly, and for a app like this, i think that while it would not pose a immediate threat, it could cause issues later on with data corruption from partially sent info.

also, how easy would it be to reconfigure the program to use the features of the server program(random data cutoff, logging, etc.) on the car side, and keep the server side 'dumb'-- where it only looks for a certain access code/login, and then allows the upload?

lambosprit

I'm spending a couple of weeks abroad soon so intend to make some progress on this.

My list of tasks is

1) Convert my client to give each user an automatically generated user id.
2) Provide data to mp3's ftp server through a proxy site.
3) Allow user to specify if updates to ftp are automatic (whenever a network connection exists) , a user defined time (each day) or manually. Data corruption shouldn't be a problem as I check for that, may be a different story using ftp though, have to see.
4) Data collected would be user guid, lat, lng, alt, sequence (replaces date). Possibly some other stuff , see below. It will also be collected every minute regardless of user settings. (I may make this speed related to cut down data load) so we have a referance to time. Data accuracy setting will also be hard coded so we have control over what data is collected. I will leave the user setting for them to change what data they wish to use but for this project we need to set the limits.
5) I'll allow a user to decide if he is privacy mad or not and allow a random point removal setting.

I know we want real updates on traffic flow etc in the future but for now I think getting the maps up and running is the most important so I won't collect current speed and an accurate date/time.

What I'm then going to do is work on sign recognition. I dont think speed limits are the important thing for now although if things go well I'll try and do this. What I think we need is understanding road signs that tell you where you are like road names and numbers. I've researched it and it looks doable and it'll be fun to try. What I hope to get is road names, number of roads off junction/roundabout (I'm UK based but will make it any country configurable I hope), type of junction etc.

Now this last bit may be beyond my capabilities but I'm up for trying.

As for privacy statements I think we should make this a free for ever thing. I used to use pocketgps but was pretty miffed when they privatised all that freely collected data for their own benifit.

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