How To End Bike Theft: The Honeybike Project

Step 2 Install & Test Mologogo

Next, let's step away from our workbench and go for a walk. As part of this, we'll test our tracking setup.

I activated my pay-as-you-go phone (doesn't require a real address or any credit card, and came w/ $5 credit) and opted for the 35-cents-a-day unlimited web plan. Please immediately change your default ringtone from the obnoxious 'where you at' to anything slightly less ridiculous, for the sake of everyone's sanity. If you're running off the vibrator motor, you'll obviously want a ringtone including vibration...

Installing mologogo is pretty straightforward. The i425 is a newer phone without a full mologogo version as of this writing, but the i425 test version of the software (available on mologogo.com) worked fine for me. the only other real-cheap choice is the i415, which i didn't use because i couldn't find it in any local stores. the i415 seems more tested and slightly bulkier, but it may be a bit easier to tinker around inside:) also, you can use a camera's mini usb cable to install mologogo on the i425 but need a stupid proprietary cable for the i415.

Setup mologogo however you'd like. I've got mine refreshing ~every 15 seconds, turned off the 'revert to cell antenna location if no gps, and set retries to like 999. you can also set a calendar event on the phone to start mologogo every hour or whatever (to work around any issues w/ crashing), send location data to a different server, and all kind of other grooviness. I won't further belabor this point; mologogo's got a great wiki on it...

Obviously, you know mologogo's working when it is accurately displaying your path on your mologogo.com account from a computer...

Comments

[badace]

Found it (sort of). From the home screen on mologogo (after log-in) click on the green waypoint, in the window that pops up you'll see "View last 100 points from . Clicking on your name opens a new window with the last 100 points. Also I'm using the i425 and it's working even in an underground parking garage! I'm not using the shocking element of this project. I've hidden the phone and charger in the fender of my motorcycle for a poor-man's Lojack. Thanks for the idea, BadAce

[liseman]

Hey Badace, can you send me some pictures / explanation (maybe even an instructable) on your setup? If it's as cool as it sounds, I'll post about it to blog.makezine.com ... Thanks, Luke

[badace]

Mologogo is displaying the last five known positions. Is there a way to increase that? Aside from rolling my own server/mapping solution.