Palm Pre GPS Tweets

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnlM8UJUtOQ]

[Mike] sent in this project he’s been working on. He has posted instructions on how to get your Palm Pre to tweet its GPS coordinates at regular intervals. It does require that you have Linux installed on your Pre, but that’s not that big of an issue as he has a tutorial for that too. Getting the tweet to happen involves setting up a custom PHP file that sends the tweet, then a cron job to get it to run on a schedule. He mentions this could be useful for finding a lost phone as well as keeping track of loved ones. We would like to see him add a script to do similar with a picture. Maybe take a picture and upload it every time a call is placed?

15 thoughts on “Palm Pre GPS Tweets

  1. “It does require that you have Linux installed on your Pre”

    Huh? Um, WebOS is linux. No need to install it, it is already there. It’s just got a fancy new GUI wrapping it. Actually, you just need to get root access and you can do pretty much anything you can do on any linux system, assuming you have enough system resources.

  2. “use full” “see him ad a script”

    alright guys, seriously, read your posts. It’s just, really, really unprofessional.

    And @36chambersisamoron… the guy seems to think he doesn’t have a data plan, so maybe he worked something out with his? Chill out.

    -Taylor

  3. Why would I want to tweet my GPS location again? I mean I can post it to private web server, I can email it to a private email etc. Why would anyone want to tweet their location?

  4. Hi Concino,

    For example, you could use your Palm Pre as a GPS tracking system via Twitter so people can find you if you get lost in the snow. remember that CNet guy who got snowed in? He’d be alive today if he had this phone with him.

  5. I didn’t know that the Palm Pre required Data plan ( I usually don’t get into things involving fonz that I don’t have ) I guess I should have been more specific.

    This function would be useful on many phones w/GPS, however it would be much MORE useful if the data was tweeted through SMS, lots of people have unlimited text, and I know that @ least on the iphone, you don’t need a data plan to take advantage of the GPS. Also the Cell network is much more far reaching than 3g or wifi

  6. @max
    “For example, you could use your Palm Pre as a GPS tracking system via Twitter so people can find you if you get lost in the snow.”

    if you get lost in snow please dont cal 911 keep tweeting…

  7. You know, you could use this code to build a google maps link out of it then send it

    pos=$(luna-send -n 2 palm://com.palm.location/startTracking ‘{“appId”: “ILovePalm”, “subscribe”: true}’ 2>&1 | tail -1 | cut -d, -f4,5,6,7,8 | sed -r ‘s/[^-\.0-9,]//g’)

    lat=$(echo $pos | cut -d, -f1)
    lon=$(echo $pos | cut -d, -f2)
    acc=$(echo $pos | cut -d, -f3)
    dir=$(echo $pos | cut -d, -f4)
    spd=$(echo $pos | cut -d, -f5)
    bat=$(grep BATTERY: /var/log/messages | tail -1 | awk ‘{print $8}’ | sed ‘s/%,//’)

    now=$(date)

    # Enable this below if you want to keep logs – not sure where to write them /var/home/root not the best place.
    # echo $now,$lat,$lon,$acc,$dir,$spd,$bat >>mygpsdata.log

    #Build a message variable for all the data to be logged.
    msg=$(echo $now,$lat,$lon,$acc,$dir,$spd,$bat )

    #Build message content to be sent
    msg2=$(echo $now Battery:$bat Accuracy:$acc “http://maps.google.com/maps?q=$lat%2C$lon+(Heading:%20$dir%0DSpeed:%20$spd)”)

  8. Wow, this is awesome. It would be extremely useful for say, a spouse with questionable intentions (like mine) or a troublesome teen (like I was). I don’t know much about programming, but it seems almost anything is possible with linux. Of course, I do not condone or endorse doing that, because it is illegal.

  9. Hey there,
    I’d like to talk to the person who wrote this hack please. I’m trying to figure a way for poor pilots in the US (and yes, there are a lot of people who fly a little $10,000 plane and are barely able to feed themselves) to be tracked for Search and Rescue. Each year we loose between 500 and 1000 people in small airplanes and radar and satellite locator becons just don’t cut it. I’ve pinned down the FCC on this topic and it’s legal to use the Sprint network cell phones in small general aviation airplanes (NOT AIRLINERS) for this purpose. In fact, any cell phone that avoids the 800 MHz frequency range is OK (NOT ON AIRLINERS). Can anyone please hook me up with whoever got the Palm Pre to automatically send out it’s own GPS coordinates and show me what it takes. I’m willing to drive somewhere to meet them (I’m in Maryland). Victor.Nazarian@auatac.com

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