GPS Tracking

[PCTech]

Just curious is this a good idea?

At a the hospital where I work at we have a problem with computers comming up missing! I guess you could call it theft because none of them that have disappeared have been brought back yet.

Now to my idea, why not put in GPS tracking devices, and have a program to connect to a server if it regains internet connection and see if the item(s) have been marked stolen, and if they have, then the program would transmit live longitude and latitude to the server or administrator. Just a few questions, though what would prevent the end user from ending task on the gps tracking program? Is there a way to prevent this? I was just thinking and I thought it would be cool to be able to pinpoint the location of a computer on an internal company website.

IE:

you could click a link and bring up stolen computers, and it would give you a live feed of where the computer is, how fast its traveling, long. & lat., etc... Would anyone find this useful in a real world application? Just was thinking and wanted to write and see what others thought also.

~PCT

[JacKDynne]

http://www.lojack.com/



Not one for pc's yet and it would have to be built onto the motherboard - you might be better off with the mac address but those can be changed

Nice thought though

/JD

[PCTech]

I know it would be possible to hard wire it to the motherboard using a usb connection, it would still be visible through device manager, but however, you have to have administrator rights to view that in windows XP, also , I guess it could be run as Administrator, that way the end user wouldn't be able to shut it down (as a system service that the administrator would have start on startup everytime?)?

JD, would it be possible to have something so that if the harddrive was formated or fdisked that the program would rebuild itself? I heard of a program that has been able to do what I'm asking, but I can't think of its name! any ideas JD or b1 family? How cool would it be to have your computer recovered by the police using a gps program to track it

[PCTech]

the computers it would be used on would have the domain logon, so if they happened to get the logon, then they would have to know the administrator password to stop the service from running! just thought I'd give that little bit of background information.

Also, you could take one of those pci slot usb adapters that plugs into the MB, and clip it off and wire the USB gps to it and stick it between the harddrive or stick it in the Powersupply, so that they would never see it, just a cable from the MB to the PS (which would seceretly house the USB and GPS unit!)

Also, I need background on if its possible to a program that is resistant to a low level format and fdisk and I normal format. Thanks

~PCT