[Q] Remote GPS Activation / SMS GPS Enabler

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 15, 2011

Hi everyone,

Okay this might be a dumb question but I'm going to ask.

Is there a way to remotely enable/activate the GPS and WiFi on my Android phone through a text message?

I currently have GPS Tracker, Lost My Droid, Real Time GPS Tracker, Seek Droid, SMS GPS Enabler, and Where's My Droid installed on my phone to try and remotely turn on my GPS and WiFi. The problem is that yes sending the text to my phone and have the sound go off for Where's My Droid and Lost My Droid works, but the problem is having my GPS and WiFi turned off on my phone and not hearing because its not there.

Yes, their are plenty of good apps that let you track your phone if your GPS is on, but they do not allow you to turn on GPS and WiFi through (SMS) text.

So all and all, is there an app or apps that can do this for me, so I can do what I want to do?

Any information would be helpful, instructions would be better lol.

Thanks, II

quaa · Feb 16, 2011

InfiniteImmortal said:
Hi everyone,

Okay this might be a dumb question but I'm going to ask. Is there a way to remotely enable/activate the GPS and WiFi on my Android phone through a text message? I currently have GPS Tracker, Lost My Droid, Real Time GPS Tracker, Seek Droid, SMS GPS Enabler, and Where's My Droid installed on my phone to try and remotely turn on my GPS and WiFi. The problem is that yes sending the text to my phone and have the sound go off for Where's My Droid and Lost My Droid works, but the problem is having my GPS and WiFi turned off on my phone and not hearing because its not there. Yes, their are plenty of good apps that let you track your phone if your GPS is on, but they do not allow you to turn on GPS and WiFi through (SMS) text. So all and all, is there an app or apps that can do this for me, so I can do what I want to do?

Any information would be helpful, instructions would be better lol.
Thanks, II

I am the Dev of seek droid. Why leave the GPS disabled? It really does not conserve that much battery. Enabling the GPS does not leave the GPS turned on or even give the GPS any power unless the application you are using requests GPS.

pizz0wn3d · Feb 16, 2011

Go pick up tasker from the market, and you can create a profile to have it enable gps whenever you get an sms.

You should probably have taker already anyways. It's a beast.

Herp derp Captivate XDA App

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 17, 2011

quaa said:
I am the Dev of seek droid. Why leave the GPS disabled? It really does not conserve that much battery. Enabling the GPS does not leave the GPS turned on or even give the GPS any power unless the application you are using requests GPS.

For some reason on my phone if I leave the GPS enabled it will drain out my battery in a few hours (8hrs). Where as if I turn GPS off, my battery has lasted up to almost 16hrs which is double and it is the only setting that I have changed.

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 17, 2011

pizz0wn3d said:
Go pick up tasker from the market, and you can create a profile to have it enable gps whenever you get an sms.

You should probably have taker already anyways. It's a beast.

Thanks for the advice pizz0wn3d. I will look into Tasker and see if it works for me and what I need it to do.

rbtconsultants · Feb 17, 2011

f you don't see the satellite dish in the notification bar then it really shouldn't use any battery, even if GPS is enabled. If you have location stuff turned on so the GPS is being used (i.e. you see the satellite dish in the notification bar) it will use battery.

Bob

pizz0wn3d · Feb 17, 2011

InfiniteImmortal said:
Thanks for the advice pizz0wn3d. I will look into Tasker and see if it works for me and what I need it to do.

Let me know and I can send you the profile I use. It makes the phone talk (alerting them that gps is being remotely enabled to track the phone down) and sends a confirmation text to the number that activates the gps. Then you can use "wheres my droid" or whatever else to track that S.O.B. down.

Edit: Speellieng

Herp Derp Captivate XDA

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 17, 2011

That would be Great!

pizz0wn3d said:
Let me know and I can send you the profile I use. It makes the phone talk (alerting them that gps is being remotely enabled to track the phone down) and sends a confirmation text to the number that activates the gps. Then you can use "wheres my droid" or whatever else to track that S.O.B. down.

Thanks, pizz0wn3d that would be great! I looked up Tasker, it has a great many features that I can see paying for, but did not see the remote GPS activation/enabling in its description, on their website, or wiki. If you can, also send me the direction on how to set it up to do it. I might whined up missing something up with 190 options.

But can always re-ROM if need be.

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 17, 2011

I know

rbtconsultants said:
f you don't see the satellite dish in the notification bar then it really shouldn't use any battery, even if GPS is enabled. If you have location stuff turned on so the GPS is being used (i.e. you see the satellite dish in the notification bar) it will use battery.

Bob

Bob, I do know this. For some reason my Map app starts up on its own and launches Latitude causing my GPS to activate and stay on. I don't want to uninstall Maps or Latitude because I do use them. Its easier to just turn off GPS then hassle with trying to find the source of the problem, in truth.

pizz0wn3d · Feb 17, 2011

InfiniteImmortal said:
Thanks, pizz0wn3d that would be great! I looked up Tasker, it has a great many features that I can see paying for, but did not see the remote GPS activation/enabling in its description, on their website, or wiki. If you can, also send me the direction on how to set it up to do it. I might whined up missing something up with 190 options. But can always re-ROM if need be.

Well the way my profile is set up, whenever I receive a text with a certain phrase in it, it'll turn on the gps. Along with a few other things

It's not one of the advertised features because it's just one of the many things you can do with it.

I'll try to post a dropbox link in a few minutes.

Edit: This oughta work. Import this into tasker.

http://db.tt/D7u8eKw
It should be able to import after you paste the xml file into:
/sdcard/tasker/profiles

Then just hit menu -> profile data -> import one profile

Herp Derp Captivate XDA

foxbat121 · Feb 17, 2011

InfiniteImmortal said:
Bob, I do know this. For some reason my Map app starts up on its own and launches Latitude causing my GPS to activate and stay on. I don't want to uninstall Maps or Latitude because I do use them. Its easier to just turn off GPS then hassle with trying to find the source of the problem, in truth.

If you use Latitude, it will be on all the time and cause battery drain because it needs update your location 24/7 even if Gmaps is not used. You don't have to uninstall it. Just make sure you log out of Latitude if you don't use it.

sycko · Feb 18, 2011

Seek Droid

opcow · Feb 18, 2011

pizz0wn3d said:
Let me know and I can send you the profile I use. It makes the phone talk (alerting them that gps is being remotely enabled to track the phone down) and sends a confirmation text to the number that activates the gps. Then you can use "wheres my droid" or whatever else to track that S.O.B. down.

Alerting them sounds like a bad idea. I envision a battery pull or a phone being tossed out the window of a moving vehicle.

pizz0wn3d · Feb 18, 2011

opcow said:
Alerting them sounds like a bad idea. I envision a battery pull or a phone being tossed out the window of a moving vehicle.

Haha maybe. I wasn't thinking of it that way. It creates a notification telling them to call the number that I texted them from to return the phone to the owner.

Plus I thought it would be funny to scare whoever has the phone. Now im starting to think of it as a bad idea thanks to your post..
>.>

Herp Derp Captivate XDA

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 18, 2011

pizz0wn3d said:
Haha maybe. I wasn't thinking of it that way. It creates a notification telling them to call the number that I texted them from to return the phone to the owner.

Plus I thought it would be funny to scare whoever has the phone. Now im starting to think of it as a bad idea thanks to your post..
>.>

Herp Derp Captivate XDA

Yeah, I thought the same thing when I looked at it, so I just removed it for the profile you gave me. But it works very nicely in part with Seek Droid.

Thanks Again.

pizz0wn3d · Feb 18, 2011

InfiniteImmortal said:
Yeah, I thought the same thing when I looked at it, so I just removed it for the profile you gave me. But it works very nicely in part with Seek Droid.

Thanks Again.

For sure, glad to help.

Herp Derp Captivate XDA

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 18, 2011

pizz0wn3d said:
For sure, glad to help.

You don't reply to private messages do you pizz0wn3d? Questions are, Is there a site to download prebuilt profiles for Tasker? Second, What are the features to have your phone go to lock screen and ring remotely. Mine aren't working that I built.

Last questions for you, at least for now, lol

II

pizz0wn3d · Feb 19, 2011

InfiniteImmortal said:
You don't reply to private messages do you pizz0wn3d? Questions are, Is there a site to download prebuilt profiles for Tasker? Second, What are the features to have your phone go to lock screen and ring remotely. Mine aren't working that I built.

Last questions for you, at least for now, lol

II

Oh sorry, normally I do but I haven't been on xda outside of the app in a few days so I haven't been able to look at my messages.

There is a wiki on the app that has a bunch of different profiles you can try out, as well as a couple of tutorials to get the hang of making profiles.
Link:
http://tasker.wikidot.com/profile-index

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about going to the lock screen, as idk if it's possible to do that though tasker. I'll mess around and see what I can find.

What exactly are you trying to do that requires you to go to the lockscreen and play a ringtone?

Herp Derp Captivate XDA

InfiniteImmortal · Feb 19, 2011

My failed creations

pizz0wn3d said:
I'm not sure I understand what you mean about going to the lock screen, as idk if it's possible to do that though tasker. I'll mess around and see what I can find.

What exactly are you trying to do that requires you to go to the lockscreen and play a ringtone?

Well for the lock screen; I was trying a remote lock down after I enabled the GPS tracking, so they could not turn it off, other then removing the battery of course. The only thing I can do right now is, set screen time out to 7sec. which is the smallest amount Tasker allows. The lock in Tasker is a joke

because if you click on the notification bar at the top and select something you can bypass the lock, even in full screen mode.

As for the Ringtone/Ringer; I was trying to setup the phone to ring when people text me, similar to that of Where's My Droid, but with a twist.

When I get their text, the assigned ringtone under their contacts or from file would play, that way I would know who it was without having to look at my phone every time. For this one in particular; do you or someone else know how Where's My Droids setup works?

Then I can try to base it off of that.

From what I can tell, it tricks the SMS into using the the ringer system and not the notification system. So a bait and switch from SMS Receiver to Cell Receiver.

That's all I know for now.

Thanks for the link!

I'll go through it to learn some more about Tasker.

pizz0wn3d · Feb 19, 2011

InfiniteImmortal said:
Well for the lock screen; I was trying a remote lock down after I enabled the GPS tracking, so they could not turn it off, other then removing the battery of course. The only thing I can do right now is, set screen time out to 7sec. which is the smallest amount Tasker allows. The lock in Tasker is a joke because if you click on the notification bar at the top and select something you can bypass the lock, even in full screen mode.

As for the Ringtone/Ringer; I was trying to setup the phone to ring when people text me, similar to that of Where's My Droid, but with a twist. When I get their text, the assigned ringtone under their contacts or from file would play, that way I would know who it was without having to look at my phone every time. For this one in particular; do you or someone else know how Where's My Droids setup works? Then I can try to base it off of that. From what I can tell, it tricks the SMS into using the the ringer system and not the notification system. So a bait and switch from SMS Receiver to Cell Receiver. That's all I know for now.

Thanks for the link! I'll go through it to learn some more about Tasker.

I've never tried to set up a remote lock through tasker, I just had it set up to enable the GPS so I could lock+retrieve it via wheres my droid/lookout. But i have heard that the tasker lock down was pretty weak >.<

I actually never realized the phone didn't support custom tones for contacts outside of the calling ringtones. That actually sounds pretty difficult to implement via tasker. You would first have to disable notifications from your sms app so the tasker profile wouldn't just play a sound over that one. You'd also likely have to create a separate profile for each contact that you want to have a custom sms tone for.

[Q] Remote GPS Activation / SMS GPS Enabler

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