Hello,
I was thinking recently, and I came up with an idea for a way to have a pseudo GPS. I haven’t executed it mainly because I don’t have the skills yet, but I thought I might put it out there:
Basically, you have a server that reads the IP address of all the HTTP requests that come to it, then looks it up for the IP address’s location with an API that locates IP addresses. Then, in Codea, you make a request to that server, then the server returns your location.
Please let me know if this would work or not, just out of curiosity.
Thanks!
I think the wifi (non GPS) iPad does it that way, and mine nails my position to within about 30 feet
@Ignatz - I assumed that it would only work with Wifi. But those who really want to hack around, it’s worth a try.
It’s not a new idea, but someone would have to implement the server side code… I don’t know if any of the Geolocation services charge web sites in order to use them, but I can bet it’s not free.
@tomxp411 - I know @Briarfox is a server coder, and there are great free IP geolocators out there like: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17402103/google-api-for-location-based-on-user-ip-address
There you go.
Just call that and parse the results. When I tried it, this gave me back my external IP address and the closest big city… I assume it’s my ISP’s hub for this region.
That should work for stuff where you need to know a person’s county, and it looks like you don’t need any server work. Just call that URL with http.request()
Unfortunately, in my case this won’t really help. I need to answer questions like “is this bulldozer within 50’ of this loading shovel” or “has this haul truck reached to dump zone.”
I tried tapping on the above http and it gave me a city 84 miles away. The closest big city is only 35 miles away. It picked a city 1/5 the size and more than 2x farther away.