This is my case. when the mobile signal is too weak one or two bars. The phone will connect to wifi automatically. After that, when the app try to acquire location. The location is always incorrect. is that gps signal issue?
Rather than trying to use your GPS chip to find your device, Google’s servers “remember” the GPS locations of devices connecting through your router (presumably by associating your location to the router’s MAC address), and “assumes” that all devices connecting through that router are at the location which it remembered. The complete details can be found via below link.. http://redoubtsolutions.com/android-reports-wrong-location-when-connected-to-wifi/
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I have an Android application that accesses the device's location and then queries the WiFi parameters. Everything typically runs smoothly.
If I turn off the Location permission for the app (as I can do in Android 6) I no longer get the device's location (as is expected). However, I also get a modified WiFiInfo object when I try to query the WiFi parameters. In particular:
getScanResults() normally lists all of the networks available, but with Location turned off it only contains the network the device is connected to.
If I look at the capabilities of the network that is found, the string is empty. Normally it contains information such as the wireless encryption information.
Has anyone else seen this? I've verified it using the same code with the Location permission turned on/off on 2 different devices. Any idea on what's happening?
Update: On further review, I was wrong when I said that getScanResults() returns information about the AP that the device us connected to. It in fact returns an empty list. This would support the idea that Google doesn't want us to have any information about the local APs if Location permission is denied.
WiFi-based location is basically a lookup of WiFi access point information in a giant database of known APs and locations to discover where a device is. This is what services such as Google, SkyHook, and Apple use when you enable WiFi or network location.
I suspect Google is trying to prevent an application from accessing information from which location can be derived when location is disabled. They have previously blocked access to Google Play location services when location is disabled, but this does not prevent a device from doing a scan, collecting the same data that would be sent to Google, and sending this data to a different service to discover location.
Is it possible to get the device location of an android device (mobile phone) in cordova using it's MAC address?
Example: If we send the MAC address of a device, then will we able to get the longitude and the latitude of that MAC address's device, assuming that the particular device's "Access to my location" is "on"?
I think you're a bit confused about what the relationship between MAC addresses and geolocation is. They aren't used to track individual devices this way--the functionality in the Play Store for tracking down a lost device doesn't even use it (directly). It contacts the device over the Internet (provided it's reachable) and asks the device where it thinks it is.
The only relationship MAC addresses have to geolocation is that, in the absence of a good GPS signal (i.e., one that results in a high-accuracy location measurement) the addresses of nearby (within communication range) wireless APs can be used to attempt to determine the device's location. While this isn't as precise or as simple as GPS, it's generally much faster than more accurate and than relying on information from cell towers alone.
It's basically not possible to contact a device over the Internet by MAC address because of IPv4/v6 being the protocol necessary to go from one broadcast domain to another (i.e., one little network to another) and MAC addresses being a layer below that in the protocol stack.
I am trying to get the location information of Android phones connected to a particular wifi access point/hotspot which is another Android device. I know how to obtain location information for a particular Android device using the Location API as well as the signal strength information of the access points in vicinity. Actually I am trying to send the location information of all the nodes connected to the hotspot. For that maybe I need to open different sockets. After that based on that information I have make some decisions. Can anyone give me a good approach to solve this.
You can't get location direction from WiFi hotspot (actually WiFi spot itself doesn't know where it's located).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless
there are databases which contains mapping between WiFi hotspot MAC address and locations. So, your application should get info about WiFi hotspot and after go to one of this databases.
To know more about that u can refer this one http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/location/strategies.html
We have an interesting use case where the intended device does not have GPS embedded in it. Nor will it be connected to any cell towers.
The only connection the device has to the outside world is through the web. But there is a high probability that the network location is in different city showing the wrong address...for example user is in CA but the network being accessed is located in MI (thus showing the user's location in MI).
Does the Android SDK contain an API that can serve as a workaround to this scenario?
IP Geolocation should work, unless when you say "network being accessed" you mean that the Android device creates a VPN tunnel to MI.
The Google Maps Geolocation API will also work off of wifi towers that the device can detect, so local wifi signals may be able to pinpoint the device location.
Wanted to know how Lat/Long info will be retrieved for specific location where my mobile device is connected to one of the public WiFi hotspot AP. So, my program gets the data and pass on to find location info to originate E911 calls or sending location info for any calls made?
if this possible, let us know how this can be done? are there any specific Android APIs to do so? Please provide the details if possible.
You can't get location direction from WiFi hotspot (actually WiFi spot itself doesn't know where it's located).
However, there are databases which contains mapping between WiFi hotspot MAC address and locations. So, your application should get info about WiFi hotspot and after go to one of this databases.
As example, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless
Location can be retrieved using various ways in android from GPS or from your internet access ( whether its wifi or 3G) the great thing is that in android the last location that was retrieved from any application on the device will be saved and you can actually compare your currently retrieved location with the previous to see if its better or more accurate.
Here is a link that can let you understand better how location works with android.