Cell Location, Coming Up, Input Needed

[Pent]

Due to popular demand (even 'popular moaning' in some cases, you know
who you are) this is going to be the first major feature since launch.

I'm happy to receive input from people that have used similar features
in other apps about what works best.

I could imagine one of:

a) state cell near, where you can specify ID and minimum signal
strength of a nearby cell tower, similar to Wifi Near. Note that you
could combine two Cell Near states too get 'I have to be near both of
these cells'

b) state cell configuration, where you click Grab and Tasker looks at
all the nearby cell info and looks for that configuration being
repeated.

Easiest to implement and most configurable is definitely (a). I can
imagine having to spend a long time to tweak the 'am I there yet'
algorithm for (b). So unless lot's of people jump in with '(b) is the
only way for me', or option (c) comes up, it's going to be (a).

And I'm going to start tomorrow :-)

Pent

[Dave Fisher]

Pent <tas...@dinglisch.net> wrote :

> Due to popular demand (even 'popular moaning' in some cases, you know
> who you are) this is going to be the first major feature since launch.

Oooh, me like new features :-) Dare I ask if this may lead to having a no cell state - ie. when out of coverage ?

As for how it should work, I can only say what I used on L*cale, namely the Location (energy-saving) plugin, which worked just faultlessly for me - was far better than any other location detection plugin I tried (or the native battery sucking methods!).

When you add the location and click configure, there was a button to track the cells. The current one(s) were shown in bold. The profile was then active when one of the cells in the list was active.

Simple, and worked a treat.

When there was no cell reception, the cell was tracked as -1/-1 I think, which then enabled the profile.

http://www.appbrain.com/app/at.pansy.droid.locale.location

Hope that helps!

Best Regards,
Dave F

[Benny - Motorola Droid 2.2]

Hi Pent, I don't know to much about this except that when I used the
locale and one of the cell plugins,I would bounce off no less than 10
cell towers while at work. I don't know that option (a) would work for
me with just two towers. At home I bounce off of 4 towers.

Tasker is like having google app inventor built into your phone!

[Klaus]

Hi Pent,

Maybe I can suggest something:

User could define a timer (in minutes for example), how long Tasker
should remember "last known" cell ID.

Because as in bad reception area the tracked cell id might be lost and
I don't think we want Tasker to keep scanning them.

[Fubrite]

Would getting the cell info (option b) allow you to triangulate your
position more accurately - which I would prefer...

[Pete Scott]

I like Dave's suggestion: I think it is essentially your approach 'A'
but with list support (and hopefully more user-friendly than being
offered a text list of cell IDs and having to type the list... I
really like being able to select multiple nearby cell IDs from a
list). A single 'strength' setting would probably(?) suffice for the
entire list of cells.

[disaster.ita]

> (even 'popular moaning' in some cases, you know who you are)

I admit it: I am the guilty! Sorry man.

I have only used Location plugin as reported by Dave, it is good, but
not perfect.

For example: if I change two near location, it is likely that the
cells are the same. That plugin only compare cell id and nothing else.
The best feature of the plugin is the cell track and grab.

The (a) option seem good, the chance to specify minimum signal
strength should be valid. As you tell, we can combine 2 or more cell
near state and the result should be pretty good.

The (b) option at a first look seem more accurate (at least to me),
but than I have thought a little and perhaps it is not so good. There
is the possibility that in the time of grab the phone "hear", over the
other, a cell with very little signal and maybe that situation will
not be so anymore.

With (a) we can do context as should to do (b), but choosing by us the
important cell.

Then I vote for (a), (a) for President!! ops Pent for President! ;-)

Thanks Pent for listening your users, sorry for my moans :-(

PS: also sorry for my bad English

[Pent]

> When you add the location and click configure, there was a button to track the cells. The current one(s) were shown in bold. The profile was then active when one of the cells in the list was active.
>
> Simple, and worked a treat.

Could you explain more ?

You select several of the cells from the list, then whenever *any* of
those are active the situation is active ?

Is that not a bit of a wide area ?

Pent

[Pent]

> Hi Pent, I don't know to much about this except that when I used the
> locale and one of the cell plugins,I would bounce off no less than 10
> cell towers while at work. I don't know that option (a) would work for
> me with just two towers. At home I bounce off of 4 towers.

What do you mean by bounce off ?

Pent

[Pent]

It's not a scanning system, it's a callback. And I won't be tracking a
particular cell,
there's a call 'getNeighbouringCellInfo' which returns a list of
nearby cells.

But yes, a two-times-and-your-out system like wifi near to start with
I guess.

Pent

[Pent]

> Would getting the cell info (option b) allow you to triangulate your
> position more accurately - which I would prefer...

You have a list of cellIDs and their signal strengths to work with.
Tell me a good algorithm :-)

Something like: when you click grab it records all the nearby cells.
When you're trying to fix, you get 10 points for exact signal strength
and lose points as the signal strength gets stronger or weaker than
the recorded one. You need e.g. s * nocells-in-fix to be in the
location,
where s is the configurable sensitivity.

That's the kind of rule I would need.

Pent

[Pent]

> The (a) option seem good, the chance to specify minimum signal
> strength should be valid. As you tell, we can combine 2 or more cell
> near state and the result should be pretty good.

However, you would be limited to 2 for the foreseeable future, and
that wouldn't
leave any space for attaching other states.

Pent

[Dave Fisher]

Hi Pent,

On 19/08/2010 19:03, Pent wrote:
> Could you explain more ?
>
> You select several of the cells from the list, then whenever *any* of
> those are active the situation is active ?
>
> Is that not a bit of a wide area ?
>
>

Say I am at work, and this is the location I want to detect using the
CellID. I create a new state, Cell Location. The settings for this state
would include a list, and a button to monitor the available cells at
this location. I click on "Monitor" and the list is populated with the
CellID (eg. 50010). As I move around the office/site, the phone switches
to another cell, 50011. This is then added to the list (and indicated as
the currently active cell). I move some more, and another cell is added,
50015). Having finished wandering around the site, I now have the list
of cells that are valid to this location. The state is complete.

Now when any cell in that list is active, the State is satisfied, and te
profile activated.

Thats basically how the L*cale plugin works, and for me, would be fine
if Tasker worked the same way. How you would tie in signal strength etc
I am not sure, as I don't really have a need for it myself.

Hope thats a bit clearer!

Best Regards,
Dave F

[Saqeb Akhter]

This is the best method, and what I used to use for Locale, At home I
bounce off of 3 cell sites, so having any one of those match would be
the best solution it was roughly a 3-4km area, which is fine for me.

But definitely need to be able to have a list of cell ids, and
activate the state if any of the cell ids in the list is present.

[Pent]

> Now when any cell in that list is active, the State is satisfied, and te
> profile activated.

OK, well I understand that now thanks. But surely we can get vastly
better accuracy
than that by looking at the the mix of neighbouring cells, not just
'any cell', so
that you have to be at the intersection of the cells rather than on
the edge of any one ?

Pent

[Pent]

> This is the best method, and what I used to use for Locale, At home I
> bounce off of 3 cell sites, so having any one of those match would be
> the best solution it was roughly a 3-4km area, which is fine for me.

Could someone explain this 'bounce off' term ? Does it mean 'use one
of' ?

Pent

[Saqeb Akhter]

It just means that while walking around my apartment I'll switch cell
sites, from what I've seen for me in my apartment I switch between 4
cell sites. The way Locale works is that if any of of the cell sites
is in range the Profile is active. I think that worked the best as
usually in any given area you are within range of 3 cell sites ideally
and could be using any one of them. At least thats how my friend who
is an RF Engineer at a Cell Phone Provider says they tend to engineer
their network. For example even though you are in range of Cell Site
A, it might be close to capacity so you could switch over to Cell Site
B or C, etc.

So having said that I think having a list of cell sites is the way to
go but pherhaps the way the profile is activated can be user
configurable, i.e) If in range of 1 out of X cell sites activate
profile, if in range of 3 out of X cell sites activate profile, etc.

Does that help?

[Dave Fisher]

> OK, well I understand that now thanks. But surely we can get vastly
> better accuracy than that by looking at the the mix of neighbouring cells, not just
> 'any cell', so that you have to be at the intersection of the cells rather than on
> the edge of any one ?

I don't really know how the cell coverage works - all I can say is that plugin was vastly superior to anything else I tried, and thats how it worked there!

Before investing a shed load of time on this, would it be worth implementing the basic method and gauging some feedback on the usability/accuracy ? Personally I only used it at one location (work) and it was superb for me.

Regarding "bounce", when you stand still I think the cells appear to move slightly, due to atmospherics/environment the signal strengths vary so you "bounce" around to the strongest cell within the location. You could see that happen with the Locale plugin as they current cell was indicated, so you could watch it changing.

--
Best Regards,
Dave Fisher

[Benny - Motorola Droid 2.2]

It means for me that at any one time while at work, my phone will
switch back and forth from between one and up to 10 different cell
towers. So If I where to only be able to use one or two, my work
profile would more than likely switch off and become inactive. This
means everything goes back to default before the profile kicked in.Not
good. I am on a cdma network(Verizon) if that matters.

The locale plugin I used was the same as stated above. It worked great
at allowing me to have a list of cell towers in the area around my
work in a list, with the active one being in bold. My work profile
never once became inactive when it was not supposed to after using
that plugin.

[Pent]

> It means for me that at any one time while at work, my phone will
> switch back and forth from between one and up to 10 different cell
> towers. So If I where to only be able to use one or two, my work
> profile would more than likely switch off and become inactive.

OK, thanks, so option (a) is not going to work.

Pent

[Pent]

Right, got started and had an initial setback.

The function to get 'neighboring' cells hardly every returns anything.
And then suddenly returns 4. So that's not helping much.

It seems we're going to have to follow the plugin example of using the
current cell, plus any that are accumulated while walking
around, and accepting any as a match. Can't even use signal strength,
because with a single cell you don't know if going closer
or further away is closer to the location the user wants.

Pent

[UncleMike]

I admit I've had a hard time keeping up lately, but how is Cell Near
any improvement over a Location profile that uses only a Network
provider? Is it more accurate (I wouldn't think so)? Is it less
power consuming?

[Pent]

Similar accuracy, doesn't need network.

Pent

[disaster.ita]

Ouch! What a pity!

You are right Pent, with L*ocale plugin you get wide area.

Then, I have a question: Do you can see what cell are around? If so
you can activate a context when X (user specify variable) cell are
around of a group of Y listed as L*cale plugin does. For l*cale plugin
X=1, it is too little.

I have tried with app "netmonitor" and I see many cell, but sure only
1 is connected at a time and it is not necessary the strongest signal.

If you want, give me a simple test app, without beautiful GUI, only
for test. It track a list of cell and I specify how many of these
should be around for activate a profile, then app give me a notify
(with time) when profile goes on and off. I try it a week and I will
tell you the results.

[Dave]

Nice i like this feature!
keep up the good work pent!

[jasonl99]

There's an app called Y-5 which does something similar (but it's not
locale-compatible) but I think it would be one way to create a list of
cell towers.

Put simply, when you are connected by wifi, it notes all Cell ID's.
So when I'm at work connected to "workAP" throughout the day, any cell
towers it sees gets added to that group. The nice thing about this
approach would be that it's completely automated - when I'm connected
to wifi, it automatically adds more cellIDs. You might also want to
do something with an expiration date for each cellID too.

I know this isn't the total solution (for example, if you're not
connected to a wifi network, you'd need an interface to add cell ID's
in that case as well). Maybe it could be four types of groups:

1) CellID's while CONNECTED to Access Point "Work AP" (the suggestion
above)
2) CellID's while NEAR Access Point "McDonalds"
3) Cell ID's while near a GPS Location
4) Manually-entered cell ID's

Just thinking out loud...

[Pent]

Thanks for the input but it sounds complicated!

At the moment I've done:

- click Update
- while it's running cells are added to the list
- click Stop
- cells can be manually edited

I'd like to see how that works before thinking further.

Pent

[TW]

that sound pretty cool to me Pent!
look forward to this.

just wondering about one thing, say you are at work and have to go to
the basement (or some other place with 0 reception) for some time the
cells will not show up and the profile will exit event though you are
at work.
do you think you can implement State for cell connection? this way we
can add it to a custom variable and use that in the If?
The State for cell would be very usefull for other things too (for me
anyway :) )
not really trying to slip in a feature request but it seemed
applicable to this new feature :)

[Alan Smith]

When I had a Windows Mobile phone, I used Phone Alarm by PocketMax for
my phone profiles. That application's location feature continually
added to a list of cell IDs in range & allowed the user to label them
as 'a location' ie: Home, Work, etc. the program then used this to
provide a location profile. This seemed to work quite well & accurate
enough for me, at least. Whereas the Network provided location is
often well away (up to 1 mile) from where I really am.

[Pent]

> do you think you can implement State for cell connection? this way we

Do you mean if there's a phone connection ?

I've already added a signal strength state and variable %SIGNAL.

Pent

[TW]

yep, I meant just that :)
I see it's been added on the Next version list, amazing, thanks!