Hey All,


Well, I haven't even gotten my N800 yet but I've been thinking about all the possibilities. I used to have a Windows Mobile phone specifically the Samsung i730 and I remember getting Navizon which was suppose to combine WiFi with Cellular signals (and an OPTIONAL GPS adapter) to determine your location. I got it working once with the i730. Accuracy wasn't too hot but it could have been no one mapped where the cell towers were too well. I would think the N800 should be able to do the same thing with a little tweaking. They released an API that may help and also there is JAVA version they just released for the PC and MAC.

http://www.navizon.com

Not sure. I don't have a GPS adapter for my PC or phone. Any one wanna give it a shot maybe? Thanks,

- DigitalAce7

I was thinking about this the other day, and thinking it might be a suitable candidate to be a backend for the Geoclue project...

We'd definitely love to have a WiFi triangulation -based positioning backend, as that would work in a lot of situations.

Loki is another WiFi positioning provider.

The problem is that all of these solutions seem to be proprietary. It could however make sense to contact these companies and ask if they'd be interested in implementing the D-BUS methods needed for acting as a geoclue backend.

Navizon isn't so much about true WiFi, but using the cell ID provided by the cellular networks for a mobile phone to provide rough location.

However, thinking this through, I'm not sure whether mobile phones can provide the cell ID information via a Bluetooth connection, so it may still require the Navizon client on the phone to calculate the information, and then the Geoclue Navizon backend would simply need to access the client on the phone somehow to get the position, and then provide it forward.

It might be worth asking Navizon whether there is any way to access the client directly - I know there is a way to access it - you can publish your location via an XML feed for use on the web - maybe a Geoclue backend could be written to access this over the internet to provide the information...

Certainly most people who carry a 770 / N800 will also have a mobile phone with them, so somehow being able to utilise the mobile phone network as a location information provider makes some sense to me.