Creation of a 405th Spartan tracker app

I would be interested. I have an older Android phone. There are a few cons near me that I would likely go to, but the usability would be great for meet ups.

I'm very new here (and so far I have yet to see others in Utah) but I would definitely get the app.

As an aside note why hasn't anyone done a build incorporating a built - in pocket for their smart phone with extra batteries so it doesn't die while you're wandering the floor and speakers inside their helmet for answering calls? Hell, I'm already thinking about how I can incorporate active hearing protection and microphone into my helmet when I start (once I figure out scaling and begin trial builds that is) - but that's another matter, point is, an app like this would be awesome, but it has a flip side: once we have it in all it's awesome glory, how will we use it in full regalia at a convention? Just a thought...

jkrende said:

...why hasn't anyone done a build incorporating a built - in pocket for their smart phone with extra batteries so it doesn't die while you're wandering the floor and speakers inside their helmet for answering calls?...

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I don't know about including extra batteries, but people have made tacpads into which they place their phones.

I'd be in for this

TheOneWithNoName said:

I don't know about including extra batteries, but people have made tacpads into which they place their phones.

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That makes sense I guess. To me it just seems like a logical "next step" - what's the biggest problem with android and iPhone? Battery life. So we strap on pounds of fiberglass, rondo, pepakura shaped and painted, and I'm not seeing folks doing things like incorporating battery packs into the breastplate. You can go online or to Wal Mart or almost any electronics store and find "battery extenders" for your cell phones - so my thinking (and intention) is "Why not add hours and hours of battery life?" For an app like the one proposed here that would require you to keep your phone on for an extended period broadcasting? It could nullify the Achilles heel of battery drain.

Plus, wouldn't it be cool to have a helmet that incorporated omni-directional microphones and bluetooth and all that? Granted, fit may be an issue, and I admit I'm still playing with pepakura myself, but since we're already spending hours and hours and hours doing custom work...

Sign me up for this!

But needs to be available for windows phone users for sure, i'm so sick of all the apps out there only for iphone or android, some of us don't want to use them!

Also, for a permanent radar, you could always use and arduino with a tini screen, throw in the gps card and power card and you're good to go for a permant radar, add a blue tooth card so it links to your phone and you could have your phone just display to that tiny screen your radar data inside your helmet. Those new tiny screens are only 1" x 1" ! There's also a compass card you could throw on there if you really needed.

Yes back up phone power sources are great, but you could always just get one big $200 laptop one that could power everything in your suit for a whole day!

jkrende said:

...

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I'm not saying it would be bad. I actually do own one of those quick charger extenders, and if I was working on a Spartan, or even an elite, I would probably include it into my build, even if my phone has a 5-7 hour battery life with everything turned on. I may still design some rudimentary tacpad device for my Yanme'e I'm working on, since their history was mostly tech repair.

transmut1 said:

Sign me up for this!

[SNIP]

Yes back up phone power sources are great, but you could always just get one big $200 laptop one that could power everything in your suit for a whole day!

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Agreed! But you would have to watch your voltages closely to make sure you didn't inadvertently fry your phone - not all lap top batteries push the same voltage. standard USB voltage is 5.00 ± 0.25 volts... I bet there's someone on this forum who could tell us how to implement some fairly stout batteries. Heck, most RC cars use sub-c cells pushing about 1.2 volts a piece, so a fairly robust battery with a LOT of mAh could be made with a little electronic know-how, those batteries are really common. But I am hijacking this thread.

IN-helmet screens... NOW someone's talking high-speed!

jkrende said:

Agreed! But you would have to watch your voltages closely to make sure you didn't inadvertently fry your phone - not all lap top batteries push the same voltage. standard USB voltage is 5.00 ± 0.25 volts... I bet there's someone on this forum who could tell us how to implement some fairly stout batteries. Heck, most RC cars use sub-c cells pushing about 1.2 volts a piece, so a fairly robust battery with a LOT of mAh could be made with a little electronic know-how, those batteries are really common. But I am hijacking this thread.

IN-helmet screens... NOW someone's talking high-speed!

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Very true on the voltages, luckily the laptop units i was looking into, come with usb ports on them, so you just plug your phone with your normal charging adapter and run it for like 5 days or more.

Yeah, i preordered on kickstarter some of those screens, but like 50 bucks a piece, so helmet screen upgrades won't be cheap. The one i got to play with is for my one prop gun, i want it to have a real sniper zoom screen on it.

Yeah it's very easy to whip up a external battery pack of your own. You would want it to be right around 5 volts and no more than 1 amp (don't know if phones take all that they can?). But for an Iphone you would also have to apply a small current to the data pins in order for it to accept a charge (it's an apple thing).

But yeah this is hijacking the thread.

transmut1 said:

Sign me up for this!

But needs to be available for windows phone users for sure, i'm so sick of all the apps out there only for iphone or android, some of us don't want to use them!

Also, for a permanent radar, you could always use and arduino with a tini screen, throw in the gps card and power card and you're good to go for a permant radar, add a blue tooth card so it links to your phone and you could have your phone just display to that tiny screen your radar data inside your helmet. Those new tiny screens are only 1" x 1" ! There's also a compass card you could throw on there if you really needed.

Yes back up phone power sources are great, but you could always just get one big $200 laptop one that could power everything in your suit for a whole day!

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Android will be the first platform, then we will go from there. I know this isn't optimal for everyone, but because i'm using the Google glass, it means that's the system were testing various functionality with. Once we get it working with one platform we will carry it over to others in short order.

I'm using a BeagleBone Black rather than Arduino, but definitely Arduino is a great option and there are so many resources for how to hook up an arduino to do various tasks (LED control tutorials, for example). Realistically, incorporating these types of 'tech' features into our suits are not that impossible. For someone who will pour 96 man hours into just scaling, marking, cutting, and gluing together a single piece of pepakura, looking up a couple of good arduino tutorials and having some fun with a soldering kit isn't much of a leap.

I have considered those laptop chargers for my build, they pack a lot of bang for your buck. Unfortunately for the mAh requirements for the peltier cooling system I have to resort to custom li-po battery packs.

TheOneWithNoName said:

I'm not saying it would be bad. I actually do own one of those quick charger extenders, and if I was working on a Spartan, or even an elite, I would probably include it into my build, even if my phone has a 5-7 hour battery life with everything turned on. I may still design some rudimentary tacpad device for my Yanme'e I'm working on, since their history was mostly tech repair.

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The technology in the Halo-verse definitely lends itself to having your own device, even if it isn't part of your suit. Some of the charge extenders are quite small and surprisingly resilient (saw one the size of a lighter that held 6 hours of charge).

jkrende said:

Agreed! But you would have to watch your voltages closely to make sure you didn't inadvertently fry your phone - not all lap top batteries push the same voltage. standard USB voltage is 5.00 ± 0.25 volts... I bet there's someone on this forum who could tell us how to implement some fairly stout batteries. Heck, most RC cars use sub-c cells pushing about 1.2 volts a piece, so a fairly robust battery with a LOT of mAh could be made with a little electronic know-how, those batteries are really common. But I am hijacking this thread.

IN-helmet screens... NOW someone's talking high-speed!

Click to expand...

Yes, definitely ask around to make sure your batteries are working at the correct voltage and current. Especially if you are using lithium polymer batteries that are somehow incorporated into your suit. If those batteries surge, or suffer catastrophic failure they can ignite. If that happens YOU WILL BURN! Seriously, look up a video of those battery packs burning, you do not want to have that happen while you are wearing them.

transmut1 said:

Very true on the voltages, luckily the laptop units i was looking into, come with usb ports on them, so you just plug your phone with your normal charging adapter and run it for like 5 days or more.

Yeah, i preordered on kickstarter some of those screens, but like 50 bucks a piece, so helmet screen upgrades won't be cheap. The one i got to play with is for my one prop gun, i want it to have a real sniper zoom screen on it.

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That zoom screen sounds awesome.

GeekGuardianDee said:

Android will be the first platform, then we will go from there.

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I could definitely do something with Android (still would prefer windows phone support) There is a version of Android that will run on Rpi, which runs off of 5v@700mamps.

As for if I do add some device to my Yanme'e build, that will come at a later date, but if I do, I feel like it should look like it was pieced together out of scraps.

As a suggestion for the app, it would be interesting if users could specify weather they were unsc forces or covenant/separatists, and if covenant/separatist, display their info using one of the forerunner/covenant glyph fonts instead of a normal font.

Yes, definitely ask around to make sure your batteries are working at the correct voltage and current. Especially if you are using lithium polymer batteries that are somehow incorporated into your suit. If those batteries surge, or suffer catastrophic failure they can ignite. If that happens YOU WILL BURN! Seriously, look up a video of those battery packs burning, you do not want to have that happen while you are wearing them.

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Yes, Lithium is one of the greatest oxidising agents I think, also the greatest reducing agent. So a fire like that would take off super fast and would be extremely hard to extinguish. And I don't think you are going to find copper-based class D fire extinguisher at a con. So, yeah, you would definitely want to avoid a lithium fire.

Master Builder said:

Yeah it's very easy to whip up a external battery pack of your own. You would want it to be right around 5 volts and no more than 1 amp (don't know if phones take all that they can?). But for an Iphone you would also have to apply a small current to the data pins in order for it to accept a charge (it's an apple thing).

But yeah this is hijacking the thread.

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Okay, yeah, SERIOUSLY hijacking this thread, perhaps we need to start another thread? I can't, I'm still an FNG.

On an unrelated note: amperage is actually irrelevant. Voltage is how "hard" a power supply pushes electricity - but a battery will only give a device the amperage it wants until the battery's own internal resistance won't let it push any more amps. Milliamp hours (MAh or mAh on your battery) is a measure of how long the battery can push how much energy. For instance, a car battery may be rated for 12 amp - hours, meaning it could push 1 amp for 12 hours, or 12 amps for 1 hour, or 24 amps for 30 minutes, et cetera.

But, the important thing is that your cell phone's USB connection has 5 volts. So if a phone will live for 6 hours on say a 2000 mAh battery, and we turn around and plug in a laptop battery with a USB terminal and that laptop battery has 10,000 mAh - then we can realistically expect to get at least 24 hours out of that battery because there will be some loss for the electronics / transformers that convert the voltage around to something the phone won't fry on. For instance, I found one on Amazon with a hair over 15,000 mAh. That could run a phone for a *while* even with the screen always on and all the bells and whistles running - i.e. our tracker app! The flipside is we're going to have to be real careful with cooling both that battery and the phone as we're putting some unintended strain on those devices.

Now, conversely, what about an app to run on a smart watch? Or potentially on a small 7 inch tablet? Those devices are more intended for being used with everything active for a bit longer than the average smart phone. There's all kinds of potential for this app in that case.

Here's another idea, integrate this app into Yahoo instant messenger, AIM, Trillian, et cetera - so that if you happen to be at a con or wherever and you see someone's 405th call sign pop up nearby you can just tap on the icon, and drop them a message? I don't remember reading if that as an intended feature of this app, I need to go back and double check.

Hey there I love this idea. I think it is awesome.. But we would only be able to use it outside of most conventions or limited. Most convention floors i have been in have scarce mobile service. with all the tech and other devices being used at them. But I would still try to work this app into my suits if it were made available.

I'd definitely use an app like this. as far as the battery issue just charge up to 100% before the con. It shouldn't kill your battery in less than 5 hours from full, & it's not like you can't turn gps on and off at any given time right? I mean if you're at a con it won't be all that hard to spot a group of 405th members and follow them if you've turned your gps off.

Yeah this would be great if we could make this happen!!

Before going whole hog reinventing the wheel, this app functionality already exists in a free app. In the Google Play store look up Airsoft Force Tracking. Everybody playing signs up in the roster. I think you can even divide up teams to track friends and foes. Overlays positions on satellite map. It also allows objective locations to be dropped. Sadly didn't do iPhone or Windows last I checked.

Food for thought.

Redshirt

I'm more than happy to opt in for this, I've got an iPhone though so I realise my testing of it will be limited to after the development has been mostly completed. I can see where the issue of battery life and such may become great problems but as there are specially created external battery packs for mobile phones, I do not see it being too great an issue at this point.

If I may make a suggestion, why not have it so that you can switch the ping from automatic (timed) and manual (tap your own marker). You could also make it so that the last known locations of other Spartans, Marines, and even Covenant are left on screen so you can do some 'tracking' based on that, and a lot of hoping that they're still around there.

Hey all! Did this app get finished/made? Haven't been able to find it if it is done.