Ok so Ive read many many Accu-tracking stories about covertly catching cheating partners, girlfriends, wives, etc... i think this is a Great use of it... and honestly I have used it for this purpose before too... but thats not my purpose in this post...
I have been working off and on over the last few years on my home automation system and as part of it, I have now got GPS tracking working....
here is how it works..
1] ACCU-tracking level 2 subscription
2] ACCU-tracking running on my DROID.. (I also have other phones I may use it on)
I use the REST API feature of the service so that I can pick up my coordinates into my own server...
with this of course I have a web page that will show where i am, so that my friends can track me if im meeting them for lunch or on a road trip and they want to see me etc.. that part is just for fun and everyone loves it.. I have used this off and on for a couple years....
the REAL power of this is that I wrote a program that resides on my home automation server that picks up my coordinates and puts them into a database.. through the use of the mappoint software I could turn the coordinates into street addresses as a comments field in the DB...
I then can mark each point (lat / lon) with a route number in my database.. (points can have more than one route number.. it is simply bitmapped)...
I then label each route with a name such as.. "Headed home", "going to the grocery store", "Going to work", etc..
on the touchscreen home automation panels they will display not only a map but also the "route" name so that my roomate can tell where im going... the next part is to be able to update the status of my tweeter, yahoo messenger, facebook.. etc...
Now the REALLY neat part is that when it has gotten 2 unique points for my route headed home it can have the air-conditioning running, the lights turned on, my favorite evening music playing on the stereo for me right when I come home..... totaly cool stuff...
NOW onto what I know the biggest technical question will be.. and that is "accutracking transmits at different times so you never truly get the same points transmitted each time" - how to handle that?
there are several ways... one way is with the mappoint address lookup because i can know the address will tell me what road im on so I can equate that to a route number by passing a certain point...
the other thing is all points have ranges.. so to "make a match" on a point I just have to be within range of that point.. when mapping out routes with mappoint it will show me my lat / lon so I can add a pretty high density of points to my database
this is not something I am selling, and it involves custom Visual Basic software, mappoint 2009 (soon ill upgrade to 2010), ASP.NET software, and it integrates into my HomeSeer Home automation system (through an API and custom scripting)...
this is just to show yet another neat use of the accutracking service..
now to get the app to work right on my droid ill be happy..
-Christopher