Track My Pi - (ITP Hackathon 2015)

Using the module shown here, we can find the location of the Rasberry Pi. By putting this at different applications such as luggage, or attach to your laptop etc, we can find the proper location of important items.

Step 1: Downloading Drobox-Uploader

Follow the steps mentioned in the below link:

Dropbox Uploader- http://raspi.tv/2013/how-to-use-dropbox-with-rasp...

Step 2: Find Your Public IP

The raspberry pi gets the latitude and longitude of the device to which it is attached using linux command i.e dig. The dig command gets the public IP.

Step 3: Find Your Location With IP

Using the service of ipinfo.io we convert public ip into the coordinate information as shown.

Next, we parse this ouput to get the location coorddinates in a text file.

Step 4: Update Your Dropbox With the Current Location

We then create a script which will read the text file and upload it on dropbox every 15 seconds.(Dropbox Uploader)

Step 5: Run the Linux Command

Running the linux script gives the following output and dropbox gets updated.

You can see the update happening every 15 seconds.

Step 6: Write and Run Python Script to Find and Display Location on Google Maps

From another PC at the client side , we download this dropbox file and run the python script to invoke the google maps module with the coordinates mapped.

Step 7: Further Steps...

We now know the location of the Pi module.

With a Sim module to the Rasberry Pi, we can know the exact location of the pi Module.

Comments

[DIY Hacks and How Tos]

Great Pi project.

[chaitanyachekuri]

Thanks a lot!!

[thedyerman]

Cool, but...How does the pi get on the network of wherever it is? Even if you did somehow automate the hacking of or rely on open wifi with some type of autologin to captive portals. - once on the network, the geo-coordinate info for IP addresses is so unreliable that it makes it pretty useless unless you just want to know approximately what country in the world. Best to get a GPS and sim module.. if you want any sort of reliability to this project. Neat idea tho.

[chaitanyachekuri]

Hi thedyerman!!

Using the modules we had, we created this project. But you are absolutely right and a sim or GPS module would give the exact and accurate location of the Pi. We had thought of this and we were planning on working on it.

Thanks for the comment and I hope you liked the project. :) :)