Android Phone Finder Update
A few years ago, I used a combination of Google Voice, Tasker, Secure Settings, Dropbox and Dropsync to enable finding my phone by sending a text message to it. Â I documented the first part of the project, which included detecting the text message and turning on GPS, and using Google Latitude to find the phone. Â Latitude isn’t around anymore, though you can track location in Google+ now.
At some point after that, CyanogenMod added a feature to their CyanogenMod Account that would let you find your phone and remotely wipe it as well, so I switched to that. Â Earlier this year, however, they discontinued that feature and moved it to their C-Apps. Â There are privacy issues with C-Apps, so I didn’t want to use it. Â As a result, I tried to resurrect the old hack. Â Although I had switched from the Google Voice app to the Hangouts app as my text messaging client, the process still worked, with a few tweaks. Â Here it is:
Set up Tasker and Secure Settings to detect a text message. Â Make sure you select the right text messaging client. Â For me that’s now Hangouts. Â Create an associated task that does the following:
- Variable Set–Name %GPS_WAS To %GPS
- Secure Settings–Configuration GPS Enabled
- Get Location–Source GPS Timeout (Seconds) 90
- Write File–{a dropsync-enabled file} Append Off
- Secure Settings–Configuration GPS Disabled if %GPS_WAS ~ off
Steps 1, 2 and 5 will turn GPS on to get the location, then turn it off after, but only if it was not already on.
In step four, you have to write a file to a location that is synchronized by Dropsync to a DropBox folder. Â Here’s the contents of that file:
<html><body>
%DATE %TIME<br>
%LOC accurate to %LOCACC meters<br>
Altitude %LOCALT meters<br>
Speed %LOCSPD meters/second<br>
<a href=”http://maps.google.com/
</body></html>
The process takes a minute or two to update the file. Â The delay is almost entirely due to waiting for the GPS to get a coordinate fix.