Getting the Mac addresses of all devices in a building - gps

Me and my team we are working on a project for University. Our goal is to prevent people that are outside of a specific range to enter our wireless network. Lets say u are sitting in Starbucks and next to that there is another coffee shop. If u are a starbucks customer you will be able to enter the network and surf the internet. If you are sitting at the coffee shop next to starbucks though u will still see the wireless on your device but you won't be able to connect, or if you connect you will get kicked automatically.
My question is . Is there a way to get all the mac addresses of all devices in a specific area (Sturbucks building) and then only allow those to enter the wireless network. If thats possible through a mapping of a network or a device we don't care. We just want a way. And also is there a way to determine where exactly is a device,its location ? With or without a GPS.

The answer of all your questions is: NO.
You cannot get the mac adresses of foreign networks (sturbucks) without hacking the routers
You cannot get the location of a device in general. If the device is connected to your router, hotspot, Wlan, etc, you then could know that. In generall you cannot get the device GPS position, only if the user of the device allows that.
The other location possibility is the cell tower the user is logged in, that does not help you because you will not get the info in wich GSM cell the user is connected, without hacking the GSM network, and probably sturbucks and the uni has the same cell tower.
Remain wlan locationing: Here the same, the device might know it but you not.
Update:
There is one solution I remember now. Remeber the waste bins installed in London on public roads, they track when user pass by. They behave like WLAN devices, and track the mac adress. You could create such a system, maybe you cannot buy that. And place it near the entrance of the shop. Users which pass by have their mac adress recorded, you send that mac to your special wlan router and add that macs dynamically. Another possibility would be the use of bluetopot but this has to be enabled on the phone:
Look at the system how Apple's low energy blue tooth "location beacons" work: It is build for indoor positioning. you can triangulate the signal strength of a device. But probably the effort is beyond your project budget. (And still the useres woul dhave to enable blue tooth)

Related

Send other types of data with the free GPS service?

Is it possible to use the free GPS service to send other types of data such as plain text/XML/HTML??
E.G. systems for taxi companies - each car has in it a box which receives and sends information to and from the controller/ dispatch, back in the office. The driver can view all bookings and accept them, as well as tell the controller when the customer has been picked up and when they have been dropped off.
Is this all possible via the free GPS service? Or would the system's manufacturer have to pay to to rent a private satellite? Or would the system be using something similar to a mobile phone network? I would think it would be one of the first to options, as constant reliable signal is vital.
I know the question above is pretty open, and it's not what I'm too desperate to have answered...I just want to know if it is possible for me to build a device with a GPS receiver and have it send text and XML via the free GPS service?? (I want an admin to operate a team of employees from a browser, like with a taxi fleet management system).
No, GPS is a chip with an antenna that can receive only Location data.
It is not possible to send data via GPS.
All that devices that drivers, taxies, busses, tolling system use, send their data via mobile phone network.
So a device needs such a communication chip and a sim card.
Then you can send what you want.

How To Detect User Exact City Location?

I am developing dummy laptop locator generator. I would like to know if there is any way to detect user's precise city based on their home IP?
I thought I would use maxmind.com API but it sometimes doesn't detect city right. For my home IP it detected right but for my VPS it didn't. I really need some solution to detect city 100% right and if possible street with GPS coordinates. Is it possible?
It is not possible to determine someone's location by their IP address alone with any reasonable reliability.

How can I use Bluetooth 4.0 LE to detect/measure proximity to a PC (Windows 8.1)?

I have a crazy dream that one day I'll be able to way into my rec room and my lighting system will turn on based on my proximity to the seating area. I've played with home automation (SmartThings most recently, the proximity sensor is unreliable and has no way to measure room area proximity), motion sensors, etc... but none of them actually do what I want, and that is detect if I'm in a room for real, not if I'm waving my arms in front of a sensor.
One idea I had was to measure the SNR between WIFI devices. I was thinking of playing around with some wifi survey tools and see what I can measure in my home. The problem I think will be sensitivity and range. Wifi's range is typically intended to try and cover a home, so if I go that route, I'm worried it'll be a waste as I'll only be able to measure when I arrive home, not if I'm in a specific room.
The other approach I'd like to try is Bluetooth 4.0 LE. The Bluetooth GATT specification includes a Proximity Profile, but the problem with profiles is it's something that a Bluetooth enabled device would share with another device it's peered to. e.g. You have a proximity sensor in your pocket and it shares proximity info with a PC or another device.
In my case I'm hoping to try using my iPhone as the marker, and my HTPC as the measuring system. The HTPC can continuously measure the RSSI or SNR of any paired Bluetooth devices without having to actually exchange profile data with the device.
I could do something like write a Windows app/service that registers or watches for a paired Bluetooth device to connect. (such as when I get home and my iPhone auto-pairs with my PC, just like when you get in your car and it pair with your stereo) From there it would measure the SNR as a source of distance information. If the SNR is high enough (least noise, strongest signal) it could automate doing something. I was thinking sending a HTTPS call to my Smartthings hub to turn on my lighting system.
When the SNR drops too low (lower signal strength), it would again send a call to turn off the lighting system.
This method could work with any device that bluetooth pairs. The concept would work with pretty much any platform, not just Windows. Like in a Raspberry Pi with Bluetooth.
Does anyone know if this is possible or am I crazy? I was going to grab the Visual Studio C# 2013 Express IDE when I get home and see what the Windows 8.1 APIs let me get access to.
Also, Bluetooth 4.0 LE should be nicer to use. I was hoping that a heavy, full Bluetooth connection wouldn't be needed as I simply want to detect the device within a small range. (25' of free air)
Thanks.

GPS modem that can send data to our server

We are planning for vehicle tracking system. We would like to relay on GPS Tracking System and view position report via Google Maps.
For hardware requirement we are thinking of GPS modem that can transmit data to our system.
Which GPD Modem is suitable for my project?
Use a smartphone. Haha.
On a more serious note, since it's for vehicular application only, there are a lot of companies that manufacture GPS modules (u-blox is one of them). Just google and you'll find thousands of companies manufacturing them. But before you choose a GPS module, make sure you check the regulations of your target country. If the module works on the Iridium satellite network, countries like India & China won't allow it as Iridium frequency is close to their military frequencies. In Europe you'll be better off with the Inmarsat network. So, do your homework & you should be good.
Also, if you're developing your own map interface, you might wanna ask the manufacturer if they have any existing mapping interface you can hook into or disable. You mag be charged for either.
All the best!
Are mobile networks (like GSM/GPRS/UMTS) available where you are?
if so check-out the tracking products from this site or this site (Google keywords: GPS GPRS)
If not, you should consider a custom solution, maybe someone like this company can help...
I have worked on a project that involved sending data over GSM/CDMA network. It used a simple GSM/CDMA modem connected to an embedded linux device and was a stationary piece of hardware. Attach a GPS device and it may very well be a tracking system. The problem is when the network drops or the device moves out of the network coverage area. I am not sure if there any GSM/CDMA modem available with GPS added to them as we didn't have this facility in our hardware and it was very much desirable. We needed to use a separate GPS device, mostly iPhone, separately to determine the lat long of our device.
You can use any GSM/GPRS modem equipped with GPS device. The modem will forward the GPS data to your central server through GPRS and at the server side you just need to process rcvd data and display it on google maps.

Online map locator api like GPS

Google maps, ip location etc. working good.
But none of the services are locating a computer exactly where it is on a map.
Anyone know any api which can locate a computer on a map without user inputs.
I am tired of ip location, it is not at all exact and my client is not happy. :(
Thanks
Gobi
What you're trying to do is not possible without specialized hardware. Google maps on cell phones without GPS uses cell tower station information. Most other phones use actual GPS receivers. With neither of those, the only way for your network-attached computer to tell where it is is by looking at who owns its IP address, which is what the IP location stuff does. Unfortunately, that database has pretty low geographical resolution. If you really want accurate and precise location information, you have to have a GPS receiver.
This cant be done unless you have some GPS device connected to the computer. But I guess it is forbidden in the licence to use real time tracking in Google Maps, but I might be wrong.
There's one more way, but I don't know how practical it is: visible wifi networks. If your PC has wifi hardware then you can often correlate the list of networks that you can see to an approximate location based on databases of networks and position. This is how e.g. iPod touches can locate themselves, and iPhones when there's poor GPS reception in built-up areas.
But even if your end-user has wifi hardware and you can somehow read the network list from it then I'm not sure if there are public datasets for this though.
The W3C Geolocation API allows websites to request the user's best available location from the browser. In some cases this will use IP geolocation which you've already seen to be inaccurate, but it can sometimes do better.
The API is agnostic to the device and the method used to obtain location; on an iPhone, the Geolocation API may use cell tower triangulation, available WiFi network lookup or GPS satellite geolocation, or some combination. On Firefox or Chrome on the laptop, Google uses WiFi networks and IP address to give a location which is often much, much better than IP geolocation alone.
If you had a GPS attached to your computer, it's possible that your browser could take advantage of that too -- it's expected that future versions of Internet Explorer will support the W3C Geolocation API using the Windows 7 Location Platform, which can accept location from an attached GPS or manual entry or some other plugin.