Homemade tracking parcels, or There and Back Bashny.Net

Surely many of those who order goods from abroad, wondered what happens to the parcel from export to import? In some otherworldly space, they sometimes spend months of his journey? What planes fly airmail sent to Novosibirsk to Moscow administration?

The idea

To see how moving parcels from abroad in Moscow, more than the official track. To do this, send a device that can communicate their position.





A friend of mine ™ mailed to another friend of mine ™ ...

Implementation

You must select a device that can communicate their coordinates on a schedule and having an independent power supply at least a month of such work.

Smartphone

The most obvious solution.
Pros: You can program almost any behavior, for example, to use the precise positioning of satellites to measure the acceleration at the same time, lighting, temperature, so who knows what else, and immediately report to the tweeter.
Cons: no external battery will not live and delivery of international mail and with add-on a lot of weight and attracts attention. And suddenly delayed in transit?

Homemade "smartphone"

What if you take the battery from the notebook (or car, depending on the projected delivery time), GSM-module, ARM-processor, GPS-chip, but to put to the nose of Ivan Kuzmich ... This device has all the advantages of a smartphone, but from minuses only unusual appearance (in the mail you will?) and probable price development and manufacturing. Perhaps it will be the next experiment, and now we have decided to restrict ourselves to a simpler option.

Pros: all the advantages of a smartphone, the long lifetime of the battery, the ability to camouflage, for example, under a brick.
Cons: unusual appearance (whether to accept the mail?) And is likely to price + development time and manufacturing.

It should be noted that in general are reluctant to accept delivery included devices with inserted batteries. While all tablets iPhones and other such devices, and it is.

Special trackers

Same as the previous point, but someone designed and constructed.

Pros: preparing a special device.
Cons: price bites. If the parcel does not reach, it is useless.

UPD: There is an option for less: dx.com/p/168496.

+ Small
+ Can connect an external source, and will run forever
+ Receive SMS directly referring to Google maps

The best option

How much lower the requirements for the battery capacity? Seldom get in touch (being in a deep sleep most of the trip), and the use of less accurate positioning (on the network, without using satellite GPS / GLONASS).

Pros: geolocation, even within the honeycomb iron wagon or hangar unavailable for GPS, long-term work at a small battery.
Cons: low positioning accuracy in comparison with GPS, a low frequency measurements.

And this device does not attract too much attention, there is!

On your marks!

The table found a "camp" phone Philips E102, honored for a long time does not work, but meets all requirements: Ultra-Capacity battery at 650mA * h, the ability to work with a SIM card and turn on or off up to four times a day on a schedule. This key feature rarely found in the description of the device.

Mode is selected, two session a day for fifteen minutes (with a margin on the search network.) If a mobile phone in standby five working days, then one might expect a maximum of 48 times greater, or eight months. These figures will be different due to poor reception, the costs of inclusion and the search network, the possible frosts, as well as self-discharge of the battery (according to Wikipedia about 3% per month). In general, there was a good chance that the battery will last for time path.

In preparation for the launch of the phone, it was dismantled and resuscitated - it was cleaned contacts the power button, which is oxidized and did not give him included.

If the phone was able to write in the logs the LAC and Cell ID to connect to then process and obtain the location of cells by their identifiers, then it would be a grandfather we could build a map of movements after arrival (if that happens). Phone do not know how, and it was decided to use an external service to monitor its location. Yes, and tracking in-line adds interest.

At the station was bought SIM card, which is added to the trusted list of MTS find another number from which happened tracking. MTS-locator is able to determine the location of the subscriber schedule - something that is necessary for this project! The only negative effect the service only in Russia, so the overseas part of the path to follow will not work.

Similar services Beeline and Megafon Locator locator have other cellular operators



Just before sending the phone charged and checked silent on and off schedule twice a day. Also included are the most economical mode. All settings:
inclusion at 7:50 and 19:50
off at 8:05 and 20:05
lowest ringer volume level, vibration-free
the minimum brightness of the screen
backlight time - five seconds
disabled sounds greeting

Unmask the phone in an opaque box could only come nevovremya SMS or call (assuming that the enemy can not pelengovat us on the radio). This phone model is not able to disable all signals remains or vibration, or melody, but there are several ways:
Administrative: include a ban incoming SMS and operator
Pofigistichno I submit without disconnecting signals, and that was done
Normal: download wap silent on mp3 or midi signal
Zhelezyachnye: unsolder vibrate mode or pull out the speaker (at present it is not soldered Philips and easily removed during disassembly)

One day (hereinafter - Day 1) in a resort town telephone was packed in a box, postal workers to the request to remove the battery received assurances that it is turned off (the truth) and empty (not true), and sent by airmail to Moscow.

Travel

Arrival in Sheremetyevo

Three days after sending the package disappeared from the Ukrainian tracking (s vіdpravlene mіstsya mіzhnarodnogo Poshtova obmіnu mezhі Ukraine for Ukraine. Dyakuєmo scho skoristalis our Hotel), and soon appeared on the radar!

"Locator" does not work in roaming, to catch a plane in the air a little chance, so it is expected the first point

This ended the first, and probably last segment flight airmail. It seemed that a couple of days - and the journey will end, as predicted by all the friends who did not believe in miracles. But there is a little more daring phone waiting lot of adventures!



Tour of Russian

Already in the ninth day of the phone suddenly shifted, but not to the destination, and began to steadily move away from Moscow, according to the points - airmail gave way to the railway mail, and on the 13th day - and at the postal turtle. At first we thought that the point under Vladimir - a positioning error (you never know how the service is running), then - that sort in the neighboring area is cheaper than in Moscow finally has placed bets, will reach any posting to Lake Baikal, the Pacific Ocean, or sent home to China.

Major stops occurred in Novosibirsk, where the phone lay up to 29 days, leaving to communicate regularly twice a day. However, this is not a record delivery time, and we had hoped that the batteries will last until the end. Only one session did not take place (or pigeon pecked no cellular coverage?), Once ran a customized schedule for mpoiske, and once - payment service "Locator".
Perhaps during that time I made a few more phone airmail flight?

On the thirtieth day of the first entry of the Russian tracking (Import 630982 Novosibirsk PI-2), the parcel has passed customs, and the thirty-five - processing 630 982 Novosibirsk PI-2 has left the place of international exchange - the phone went back home. After five more days rail he was at the Kazan station, and most did not leave Moscow.



Tour Moscow

After posting the Kazan railway station was on the grading in the south of Moscow (Moscow, the intersection of Rd. And Warsaw Street. Road, District of st.m.Yuzhnaya geokodingu MTS). From there, she would finally head to the right post office, but the postman, it seems, on the way to sleep in the subway:



In each place there were at least five points, so that the error does not. Moreover, both places are in the official track: 111948 Moscow MSP-3-Mpko North and 111,987 SMEs Moscow-3 Mpko-South.

www.yapfiles.ru/show/648158/5.gif.html arrived!

On the morning of the forty-eighth day of long-awaited event happened, parcel left the South and came to the place of delivery. For the purity of the experiment, we waited for the notification (bringing the delivery time of 50 days before the anniversary) and got the Steadfast Tin Soldier:



Hero



Remaining battery. Enough for a trip around the world!



During the way to send almost flew over the bar code, so that the woman on the issue had to drive his hands. Seeing the end of the UA, she chuckled and said, "Ukraine ..." So began a dialogue about how it was that was sending airmail almost 2 months. The woman said that thanks should be primarily the recent changes in the customs, which now can not cope with the flow of parcels and they are orderly travel to distant cities, there to lie in warehouses waiting for customs to go through customs, and then in most cases, return back to Moscow.

Some statistics: the phone spent 48 days on the road, having more than seven thousand kilometers of the necessary 1300km with an average speed of no less than six kilometers per hour. True, if you count 48 days to 1300 km, all 1.3 km / h.

Costs

Part of the money came in the form of phone come down and balance on his account, so I believe these costs are zero.

Posted in [mergetime] 1373010496 [/ mergetime]
Conclusions

Phone for a thousand rubles and a half months can get in touch and entertained by the host.

Have fun in the comments area, where more honored to send this phone. However, the experiment is easily repeated and independently.

Author: legrus
Source: habrahabr.ru/post/185510/

That's all I wanted to say!



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