Tracking app?

[Darren Donovan]

A friend of mine and his kids all have iPhone, iPhone5 I think. He has an app installed whereby he can see where his kids are at all times. The kids' phones have to be on, of course. So on his phone, the kids' phones appear as dots on a map. That's real cool. Do we have any Android app that does something similar?
Thanks,

 

[nlitenme]

Lot's of them. A lot of the antivirus apps do it. Tracking is primarily what I have an AV for.

 

[Darren Donovan]

Can you give some specific names, so I can search for 'em?
Thanks,

 

[nlitenme]

Avast & Lookout are a couple of the most used/well known.

 

[Darren Donovan]

So with these apps, if I install either one on my phone and my son's phone, I can see where he is on a map?

 

[nlitenme]

Not thru the app itself, at least not that I'm aware of. I use Avast, so that's the only one I have experience with. They have a website that you can login to & track devices.

If you're looking to do it inside an app, a quick search brought up this one - https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ndroid.c&feature=search_result&token=WICy-fCO

There are others & again, I have no experience with these so I don't know much about them. Just try out a free one & see if you like it. If not, you can always uninstall it & try another.

Let us know which ones you try & how you liked them.

 

[fofjjsr]

I think Google Latitude will kind of serves this purpose.

 

[bvitale]

Latitude does add said above. My cousin and I messed with it. Works pretty good.

 

[nlitenme]

I think Google Latitude will kind of serves this purpose.

Latitude does add said above. My cousin and I messed with it. Works pretty good.

Cool, never actually used Latitude. I'll have to check it out.

 

[roberte1342]

Latitude will give a basic whereabouts indicated by a blue circle. This is mostly coarse location data gathered from cellular towers and nearby wifi MAC table lookups with varying degree of accuracy. If there are enough familiar WiFi hotspots that were picked up earlier by the Google Street View cars and/or other Android devices with GPS active in that area recently the location can be narrowed down to 500-1500ft indicated by a small blue circle around the person you are tracking. In more rural areas cell tower location is used instead and the circle can cover several miles only indicating what area of a city they are presently.
Latitude will only provide a real location if there is another app using the GPS such as Google Maps. You can ping the user to 'Check In' prompting them to open their maps thus activating their GPS.

You can also get Seekdroid if you want to remotely activate the GPS to get a more accurate location. Once the GPS is activated their Latitude location is update more accurately in the background. Seekdroid will keep it active for about 5 minutes. I've used if for a couple years now on my small fleet of Droids.
Setup is a bit of a pain since the v2 update, but once you get them all added you can access a log of the last 10 calls, battery level, get location, remotely lock or wipe the device via the website or by sending a text with a keyword you specify. It is a very lightweight app compared with using a virus scanner.
Another great app for activating GPS, lock, and wipe via SMS is Where's My Droid.

 

[fofjjsr]

Latitude will give a basic whereabouts indicated by a blue circle. This is mostly coarse location data gathered from cellular towers and nearby wifi MAC table lookups with varying degree of accuracy. If there are enough familiar WiFi hotspots that were picked up earlier by the Google Street View cars and/or other Android devices with GPS active in that area recently the location can be narrowed down to 500-1500ft indicated by a small blue circle around the person you are tracking. In more rural areas cell tower location is used instead and the circle can cover several miles only indicating what area of a city they are presently.
Latitude will only provide a real location if there is another app using the GPS such as Google Maps. You can ping the user to 'Check In' prompting them to open their maps thus activating their GPS.

You can also get Seekdroid if you want to remotely activate the GPS to get a more accurate location. Once the GPS is activated their Latitude location is update more accurately in the background. Seekdroid will keep it active for about 5 minutes. I've used if for a couple years now on my small fleet of Droids.
Setup is a bit of a pain since the v2 update, but once you get them all added you can access a log of the last 10 calls, battery level, get location, remotely lock or wipe the device via the website or by sending a text with a keyword you specify. It is a very lightweight app compared with using a virus scanner.
Another great app for activating GPS, lock, and wipe via SMS is Where's My Droid.

Latitude when I am at home puts me directly on the map where I should be.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Android Central Forums

 

[roberte1342]

If you are near several WiFi hotspots this is normal. A Google Street View vehicle, your phone or others in your neighborhood logged the nearby hotspots earlier and transmitted the MAC addresses, signal strength, and GPS data to Google. Google then built location data by triangulating these WiFi access points. You can test this by turning off WiFi. When off, your Latitude location accuracy will degrade considerably as it will be relying on cellular towers. The more WiFi MACs in a given area the better the accuracy, sometimes rivaling GPS. If you are in a more densely populated area with more cellular towers location accuracy is better than suburbs or rural areas when not using WiFi.
Anytime you have GPS and WiFi enabled your phone is helping Google provide WiFi location to others.

 

[Darren Donovan]

I just installed Real Time GPS Tracker, so far I like it!!!
A friend and I tried it, I can see his latitude, longitude, vehicle speed, elevation, direction, accurate to a few meters.