Data Hacking

192 Part III — Data Hacking
RoboGEO is really clever because it can use the time-stamp information on your digital photos
(applied by the camera) to sort out which waypoints belong to which image. This means
that you should ensure that the time on your camera is correct (set it to the time shown on the
GPS — unfortunately, you’ll have to do this manually).
Now, information about where you took your image, along with when and how, will be stored
along with the image so that you can view the information or even use it as search criteria for
photographs.
Lightning Detector and Plotter
If you are at sea or in the air, then having information about lightning storms is invaluable. By
combining your GPS with a lightning detector, you can do just that. There aren’t many low-cost
lightning detection systems (about $700) on the market, but one of the best has to be the LD-250
Lightning Detector setup. Okay, $700 seems like a lot to spend for a device that detects lightning,
but if you sail or fly, then accurate, up-to-date storm information can mean the difference
between life and death. On a less dramatic front, businesses find accurate weather information
critical to many key decisions they make, so for up-to-the-second information, $700 is cheap.
This hardware plugs into your desktop or laptop via a serial port and it has a port for input
from a GPS receiver. On the PC, you need to load software that communicates with the detector
and plots the lightning storms on a map that is displayed. An antenna also forms part of the
setup. This is placed outside, of course, and detects the lightning and feeds the information to
the device, which processes it before sending that to the PC.
Once set up, it is ready to detect lightning storms. As soon as the external antenna picks up the
electromagnetic pulse from a lightning bolt (within milliseconds after it occurs), its position is
displayed onscreen.
Background maps are available of the United States and other locations worldwide. With a
setup like this connected to a laptop (currently, there is no version for mobile devices such as
the Pocket PC but they are planned), you have a mobile system that can warn you of bad weather
as soon as it happens. By plotting the movement of the storm, you are in a position to take action
to avoid it, whether on land, sea, or in the air.
For more information, visit www.geneq.com/catalog/en/ld_ld250.html.
Wardriving
Another activity that GPS plays a key role in nowadays is wardriving. Wardriving is the name
given to the activity in which individuals drive around with a PC or Pocket PC set up to detect
WiFi networks that are broadcasting signals.
There are many variations on wardriving — warwalking, warriding (bike or motorbike), and even
warflying, which uses light aircraft or helicopters. The idea is to find wireless network spots,
log the location, and then find another. As the popularity of WiFi grew, so did the popularity
of wardriving. If you go wardriving to pick up active hotspots, the addition of a GPS to the
system will enable you to store pinpoint location information about the hotspots that you discover;
so rather than manually storing information such as street names and building numbers,
all of which is prone to change or susceptible to input errors, the software picks up the location
from the GPS automatically, eliminating errors and simplifying the process.