Notices

I'm pretty sure that doesn't work yet, so set it to check at a certain interval

So, I'm a little confused.

If I set this as the "distance" on the spot, that's great. But how often does it check the wifi? Is that still determined by the check interval, but now I can just un-tick the "use cell tower info" & "use GPS" boxes and it will just go via wifi? Or is it tied into when the wifi connects? If the latter, should I change the check-in to "1 interval"? Or does that not matter for wifi?

I've got a couple spots set to it right now, and plan on going to lunch soon, so it should check me in within the next hour or so regardless. Just curious how I can expect it to work under the hood. So far, it's yet to auto-check me into anywhere this weekend, despite me being in 4 zones for hours each day, outside, using GPS with a 60 second timeout. (And yes, the daemon is running, confirmed via xterminal, and I was watching it, waiting for it to work. )

Update Google Latitude isn't really updating location every hour even set to "at LEAST every hour". It think this counter should be a little bit shorter than 60min or 120min, etc... to guarantee that when set time limit is passed then update is also done during next connection.
Example: Counter to countdown 55min in case of update set to every hour and so on.

I hope you got the point
Otherwise working well.

Well, it was supposed to work now, but isn't really well tested.

That the GPS icon doesn't turn off is normal; turning on location services in "cell tower only" mode still shows the icon.

/Z

ah, ok... my bad.

Although there is asynchronous knoweledge of when the wifi is connected / disconnected (you'll see this in the verbose output), actual checkins etc. only happen on the "interval" times (otherwise you might accidentally check into your local starbucks while just walking past it; you have to be there for some time period)


No, it actually won't let you uncheck it completely. I actually explicitly made code to disallow that. Never thought of that as useful. Remember tho that

a) cell tower positioning doesn't use any additional radios and hence takes no powerpower
b) if you ARE at a wifi, it never even tries neither cell nor GPS, *effectively* keeping them both off simply by virtue "I am on a known WiFi"

It still matters. Basically it's like this:

WiFi subsystem sends messages to the program "connected to blah" and "disconnetected from blah".

All my program does with THOSE messages is to remember in a variable "I am now connected to blah" or not.

The regular interval still appleis, only, it checks that same variable. If you are connected to "blah" and it's a known ZapLoc's wifi, then it will use that position, and skip turning the GPS on completely. Other than that, it will treat that location as any other location (check in if you've been there N intervals, set as latitude position, etc.)

Hmm, have you done the "verbose" output of the daemon thing? It is very talkative and explains pretty much every decision of the why/why not's of checking in or not "you are too far away", "you have only been here 1 interval" or "the phase of the moon is off"



/Z

Actually make this "not tested at all" - which is very close to "not working". Tho there is code to make it purely *theoretically* work.

EDIT: And it doesn't. Work, I mean. And even when it does work it seems rather meaningless, since the N900 seems to hop around to various cell towers quite often... much more often than you ever want to do updates..... I will remove this option in future updates. Consider it "nonfunctional" for now.

/Z

First impressions, loving this app. Thanks.

Thanks!

/Z

Thanks for the explanation of how it works. It does make sense to do that. There is one thing to consider about A-GPS: The liblocation sub-library does send data to sup.nokia.com to ask where it's at given then tower list. Unlike the iPhone, the N900 doesn't cache that info locally to do local look ups. So if the interval is really short it may eat some GPRS data if it's checking A-GPS location every 5 minutes.


It could be if you don't want to generate the A-GPS data, but still want the auto-checking functionality based on the wifi info. I get having the interval to make sure you're not checking into a place if you pass it while walking past it. But I could see a use for allowing no GPS checking at all. If all the places you want to check in have wifi, there's no need to turn on GPS at all. Either you can see the wifi or you can't...

I was unaware of the option. I'll give it a try to see if I can figure out why it's not working for me with GPS coordinates. I've been auto-checked in a few times now, but only to places where I've set the wifi network as the trigger area. Good news: Wifi based check-in works great! So I'll try the verbose mode, output to a file, to see what it's thinking about and why it's not liking the GPS enough to check me into places.

One question on the wifi checking: Is this based only on the SSID, or do you register the MAC address in some way as well? The reason I ask is that many commercial chains use the same name in various store locations. If it's just based on the SSID (say, "StarbucksWifi"), any time I hang out at any store in that chain, it will check me into my preferred store, not the store I'm physically visiting. If it's based on MAC, or a combo of the two, that would prevent accidental check-ins.

One comment: Not sure you're aware of this, but many people who use this are also likely to use a nav app on the phone. More than likely ModRana or NavIt. Both of those have settings to cache the tiles locally on the N900, and are happy to share those tiles with other apps. You may want to look that their threads to see how to access those tiles so you don't have to download them every time. It would speed up the app and allow better low-bandwidth use, when near the edge of GPRS signal range.

One small bug I've found: If the GPS fails to lock and I close the app before it locks, the app portion sometimes lives on in the background until kill it off. Even after killing it sometimes it's still flashing the GPS icon. I have to toggle offline to turn off the icon. It only seems to happen when I'm inside and can't get a lock, but it's happened often enough to be annoying.

Overall though, this is really a great program! I love the auto-checkin where it works, and even using it as a client to manually check-in most places is really nice thanks to the fluid interface. Very well done.