Guest deadphill Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 I just noticed this little program over at Mobile Top Soft called (un-surprisingly!) Remote Tracker. Created for the continued line of devices with GPS built in (Artemis, Kaiser, Diamond etc.) its a neat little application that will track your device using gps and using the program, will text an alternative number details of its location. Now I have seen programs like this before, and have always thought them lacking due to the fact that all that needed to be done was a hard reset, however this is reported to survive a hard reset using certain registry values. I'm not certain what they are but unless a thief is cunning enough to steal a windows mobile device, and then to subsequently be able to hard reset the device, and then know that it has this application on it, then I think there might be a good chance that this could work. I have not tried it yet, as I am trying to get my device ready for repair, but I will be installing this when my Kaiser is ready. Hell I might even install it on my fiancée's Diamond just to freak her out once or twice, though I am not advocating for this program to be used just to spy on people! Whatever your needs/usage for this application may be, more information can be found using the link above, or to just download the program follow the link here. Don't forget to list your first impressions, problems, general opinions in the topic thread. And best of all, don't forget, its FREE!!!! Cheers Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paul (MVP) Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 If it can survive a hard reset, i'm definitely interested! /me looks :D P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 Exactly what I have been waiting for. I always thought programs of this nature were floored as a hard reset just erases the program, but if this can survive it, its got to be worth considering. If it does work, I think you might be having to update your list of great free apps for kaiser, artemis, diamond etc! Cheers Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dudegalea Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 From the description, you have to cook a ROM in order to make this hard-reset proof. Which makes sense to me! No idea how you actually go about doing that though. Now, RTRegCreate tool can create a configuration file using your PC. ROM cookers can use this DLL to make RT hard reset safe! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 I'm sure that there will be a solution to this quite quickly! And when there is, it has the potential to be great! Cheers Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WearTheFoxHat Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 /me shouts TLR !!! Time to get that apron on, and get cooking! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest highlorddave Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 /me shouts TLR !!! Time to get that apron on, and get cooking! i have been looking for a piece of sofware like this for a while, but i cant find any info in the documentation about removing this app should decide you no longer want/need it. Alot of this type of software is designed to be hard to remove, im reluctant to install this before i know if im going to have difficulty removing it at a later date Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 From the sound of it mate, all you need to do is flash it with another ROM. Reports are suggesting it is built into a cooked ROM. So just find yourself a cooked ROM without this in it. Cheers Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WearTheFoxHat Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 Devils advocate for a second ... Supposing your Kaiser were nicked ... and you found out where it was ... would you actually go and knock on the door and say "Oi gimme my phone back?" The police are able to track phones via triangulating the signal, and yet will only do it in cases of child abduction/kidnapping. A mate recently was burgled, and she knew exactly whom it was, and they took her mobile. The police wouldn't triangulate the signal to even give them due cause to get a warrant for the persons property for a search! pathetic! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 That's of course if you get the police involved...... Who's to say you don't have an army of hoodies backing you up when you go to get your phone back :D I would imagine the amount of work the police have to do to get the triangulation is so hard for them to do, they see it as not worth doing. Either that or they don't do it because there are certain guidelines each force has to adhere to. I work on the lantern project, which is mobile fingerprint taking using windows mobile devices and a GPRS card to identify people when the police are out and about, saving them time from having to arrest a person and then take their prints at the station to determine their identity, and I don't think they even use triangulation on these devices to find out where they are! Cheers Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WearTheFoxHat Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 lantern project ... sounds cool ... but also sounds very EDS ! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 Oh how wrong we are!!! Its part of the Ident1 project. That is run by Northrop Grumman. I work for a company called Phoenix IT who the hardware side of the contract is sub-contracted to. It might not be of surprise that as the resident Windows mobile fan, Lantern is kind of my baby, so far as maintaining it is concerned. One day I hope to be able to bring along a lantern for display if we ever have another Modaco meet. Until then.... Cheers Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Leaskovski Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 The thing is, most people would just turn the device on and use whatever sim in it as it would be at the least cost to them. Not many people know how to do hard resets on these devices. So my question is, are there many programs out there that use the GPS to find out the location and then send an SMS/email once a device is turned on? Or is this the only one? Does this send emails as well as SMSs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mike1002 Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 (edited) Have to say, this program is awesome. I helped test this piece of software, and after multiple builds of some GPS errors, the author fixed it. Its got a wealth of features that similar software doesnt have (such as being able to get phone book, call logs, call recordings). Developer is also very active, and extremely open to suggestions, so if theres not something in there that youd like to see, he'd love to hear from you. Topic on XDA is http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=394203. Big props to the author. And how the software survived a hard reset: The regcreate tool makes a dll file, that can be launched when the device starts up for the first time, the file has all the config in it, so things such as the number any command should be sent to is kept. Mike. EDIT: The thing is, most people would just turn the device on and use whatever sim in it as it would be at the least cost to them. Not many people know how to do hard resets on these devices. So my question is, are there many programs out there that use the GPS to find out the location and then send an SMS/email once a device is turned on? Or is this the only one? Does this send emails as well as SMSs? The program can do both SMS and email, although currently to only 1 recipient for each. Edited July 23, 2008 by Mike1002 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest robt Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 Devils advocate for a second ... Supposing your Kaiser were nicked ... and you found out where it was ... would you actually go and knock on the door and say "Oi gimme my phone back?" The police are able to track phones via triangulating the signal, and yet will only do it in cases of child abduction/kidnapping. A mate recently was burgled, and she knew exactly whom it was, and they took her mobile. The police wouldn't triangulate the signal to even give them due cause to get a warrant for the persons property for a search! pathetic! Actually, its because the mobile networks wont supply that kind of info to the Police unless its a life and death matter. Quite right too. How would you like the Police to be able to track everyone that had a mobile phone in their pocket? Think about it.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Confucious Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 Developer is also very active, and extremely open to suggestions, I miss read that as "Developer is also very attractive, and extremely open to suggestions," which got me a bit confused :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Leaskovski Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 Well i tried to install it on my stock tmobile diamond rom and it failed due to .net! I guess my rom doesnt have the right version installed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alex (nedge2k) Posted July 23, 2008 Report Share Posted July 23, 2008 I miss read that as "Developer is also very attractive, and extremely open to suggestions," which got me a bit confused :D lmao! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest highlorddave Posted July 24, 2008 Report Share Posted July 24, 2008 I been playing around with this software since yesterday and it works very well changing the sim sent the alert to my other phone with the new number so i could send commands, all of which seem to work fine. Only problem i found is getting results via e-mail instead of sms, i dont get them untill my phone does a send/recieve email (every 2 hours) have to wait a few more days to see what the effect on battery life (if any) is going to be excellent software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Joubert Vasconcelos Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Hi people! I'm the author of this small project and I found this thread unintentionally. I'm very happy with all comments :D I must confirm an information that some users already have reached: RT does not survive after a hard reset. It should be a miracle :D But, I made a solution for ROM cookers. RT can be safe after a hard reset, but it must be cooked inside a new custom ROM. The difference from others solutions is the tool called RTRegCreate you can use to make a DLL with the configurations you need. All configurations are encrypted and stored in registry. You should be able to add these settings without any help. Just copy the RT registry to your new ROM. My idea with RTRegCreate is make this step easier. There is a lot of solutions like RT available. So, why I'm writting another one? At first I need to learn C# :angry: And I didn't find any free solution good enough for my two needs: 1 - Get the phone back; 2 - If first goal was not possible, get your informations back. I have a long way to go yet, I'm just in the beginning. Please let me know everything you think about this project. This project must be participative. :( Cheers, Joubert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Ok so maybe I was slightly misleading in saying it could survive a hard reset. What it can do however is to re-establish itself from ROM. The only problem would be that the phone would have to use the same ROM. If it were flashed with a different ROM then you would lose all information. At the moment I think it might be the best way of doing it. Short of keeping something in ROM that cannot be erased without a password that not even a ROM image could destroy. I would assume unless you were a developer of some sort that this would be very hard to erase, without the password. Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Joubert Vasconcelos Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Ok so maybe I was slightly misleading in saying it could survive a hard reset. What it can do however is to re-establish itself from ROM. The only problem would be that the phone would have to use the same ROM. If it were flashed with a different ROM then you would lose all information. At the moment I think it might be the best way of doing it. Short of keeping something in ROM that cannot be erased without a password that not even a ROM image could destroy. I would assume unless you were a developer of some sort that this would be very hard to erase, without the password. Phill After a Hard Reset everything is erased. There is nothing we can do. But think with me. If you lose your device, you will try to get it back as soon as possible. If someone find it and he is a good person, he will not change anything and try to give it back to you. If not, and if he know a lot of this kind of devices, he will do a hard reset and start to use it. The chance of a thief make a ROM reflash is very small I think. I think you will have time to find your device in most cases if you use a custom ROM with RT inside. Some time ago I tried to contact MS and ask the possibility do keep some softwares and registry after a hardreset and explained how RT works. No answer. So surprised :D Cheers, Joubert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted July 30, 2008 Report Share Posted July 30, 2008 After a Hard Reset everything is erased. There is nothing we can do. But think with me. If you lose your device, you will try to get it back as soon as possible. If someone find it and he is a good person, he will not change anything and try to give it back to you. If not, and if he know a lot of this kind of devices, he will do a hard reset and start to use it. The chance of a thief make a ROM reflash is very small I think. I think you will have time to find your device in most cases if you use a custom ROM with RT inside. Some time ago I tried to contact MS and ask the possibility do keep some softwares and registry after a hardreset and explained how RT works. No answer. So surprised :D Cheers, Joubert Hmm I am confused now. You say on one hand that it cannot survive a hard reset per se, however if it is in a custom made ROM, it can. Is this correct? For me it was a given that if it should be flashed with another ROM then indeed there is nothing you can do but if it is a custom made ROM that keeps a registry setting as part of its customisations in the ROM held on the device, theoretically, it should restore itself on a hard reset of the device. (All getting a bit confusing for me now!) :D Cheers Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paul (MVP) Posted August 1, 2008 Report Share Posted August 1, 2008 OK, so I've thought long(ish) and hard(ish) about the whole surviving-hard-reset problem, and baking into a ROM is the only answer, however it's no good if you have to bake a different from for each user. I propose that one of these applications should use your devices unique ID or a derivation of it (easily retrieved) as it's 'authorisation code'. Thereby each device has a unique number that needs to be sent in authorisation SMS, but you don't need individually cooked ROMs. I guess some parameteres would need to be set on a website. e.g. - Install remote tracker app - Select about box (or similar) to get device unique ID - Go to www.remotetrackerwebsite.com and enter code to register the device to you - Phone stolen, can be commanded by SMS using unique ID to your phone no - Phone hard reset with your SIM still, no problem - Phone hard reset and SIM changed, remote tracker app should post new phone number to website to let you still command it etc. Thoughts? P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Confucious Posted August 1, 2008 Report Share Posted August 1, 2008 Isn't it easier just to not get your phone stolen? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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