GPS Bus-tracking on the cheap

Step 2 Get a GPS-enabled Phone

InstaMapper has a really great tutorial covering this step and the next.  Their forums also have useful info that solved a few of my problems.  I'll outline the basics:

To my knowledge, the cheapest phone that works is the Boost Mobile i290, it's $50 at Target.  You could get an iPhone or Droid or Blackberry but it'll cost you over a grand a year with the coverage plan and you're just going to be leaving it on a bus anyway.  Other Boost flavors work too, check the IM page.

Charge up your phone, pop in your SIM card, and go online to sign up for a plan (this is covered pretty well in the phone's documentation).  Your phone will essentially be accessing the internet all the time so you need an unlimited data plan.  I chose 'Pay-as-you-go' and then selected the 35cents/day 'Wireless Web' option ($130/year).  Your phone will probably come with $5 or so in credit so you'll have a few weeks to try things out before signing up fo real.

Interesting tidbit: you can make this whole thing work without ever enrolling in a data plan due to a loophole in how the Boost phones use their GPS services.  If you do this, you'll just have to keep your phone 'active' by periodically adding airtime (minutes).  You have to do this every three months and the minimum addition is $10, so that's a pseudo-plan of $40/year, good deal.  I tried this out on one phone and didn't notice any difference between this and the one on the legitimate-plan.  Do know that this trick is exploiting a loophole; I don't think it'll close but it might..

And now we have a phone that knows where it is.