{"id":1444,"date":"2016-04-22T10:35:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T15:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2016-04-22T10:35:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-22T15:35:14","slug":"android-phone-finder-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/?p=1444","title":{"rendered":"Android Phone Finder Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

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. \u00c2\u00a0I documented the first part of the project<\/a>, which included detecting the text message and turning on GPS, and using Google Latitude to find the phone. \u00c2\u00a0Latitude isn’t around anymore, though you can track location in Google+ now.<\/p>\n

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. \u00c2\u00a0Earlier this year, however, they discontinued that feature and moved it to their C-Apps. \u00c2\u00a0There are privacy issues with C-Apps, so I didn’t want to use it. \u00c2\u00a0As a result, I tried to resurrect the old hack. \u00c2\u00a0Although 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. \u00c2\u00a0Here it is:<\/p>\n

Set up Tasker and Secure Settings to detect a text message. \u00c2\u00a0Make sure you select the right text messaging client. \u00c2\u00a0For me that’s now Hangouts. \u00c2\u00a0Create an associated task that does the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Variable Set–Name %GPS_WAS To %GPS<\/li>\n
  2. Secure Settings–Configuration GPS Enabled<\/li>\n
  3. Get Location–Source GPS Timeout (Seconds) 90<\/li>\n
  4. Write File–{a dropsync-enabled file} Append Off<\/li>\n
  5. Secure Settings–Configuration GPS Disabled if %GPS_WAS ~ off<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    In step four, you have to write a file to a location that is synchronized by Dropsync to a DropBox folder. \u00c2\u00a0Here’s the contents of that file:<\/p>\n

    <html><body>
    \n%DATE %TIME<br>
    \n%LOC accurate to %LOCACC meters<br>
    \nAltitude %LOCALT meters<br>
    \nSpeed %LOCSPD meters\/second<br>
    \n<a href=”    http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?q=%LOC<\/a>“>Map<\/a>
    \n<\/body><\/html><\/p>\n

    The process takes a minute or two to update the file. \u00c2\u00a0The delay is almost entirely due to waiting for the GPS to get a coordinate fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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. \u00c2\u00a0I 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}