Jesse Newland

The following instructions will setup your Jailbroken iPhone to update your FireEagle location every 5 minutes. While Navizon provides this same feature, I’ve been less than impressed with it’s accuracy . This method uses both Skyhook and the Google Maps ‘Locate Me’ cell-tower-triangulation method, which are much more accurate than Navizon in my recent tests.

Prerequisites

• Jailbroken 1.1.x iPhone
• OpenSSH installed on iPhone
• A computer on the same subnet as your iPhone
• FireEagle invite
  • If you don’t have one, ask @firebot nicely.

Step 1: Disable Sleep

• Settings -> General -> Set Auto-Lock to ‘Never’
  • This is to ensure the SSH connection we’ll establish in Step 3 isn’t terminate. You may revert this setting after following these instructions.

Step 2: Determine your iPhone’s IP Address

• Settings -> Wi-Fi
  • Tap the blue arrow to the right of the wireless network with the check by it

Step 3: SSH into your iPhone

Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and run the following:

ssh root@YOUR_IPHONE_IP

Your password is ‘alpine’ unless you’ve changed it

Step 4: Download needed files

mkdir -p bin/fireeagle
cd bin/fireeagle
curl -O http://ericasadun.com/ftp/TUAW/findme/authcheck
curl -O http://ericasadun.com/ftp/TUAW/findme/authtoken
curl -O http://ericasadun.com/ftp/TUAW/findme/firefindme
curl -O http://ericasadun.com/ftp/TUAW/findme/pingwifi

Step 5: Create wrapper script

cat > /var/root/bin/fireeagle/firewrapper << EOF
date > /var/log/fire.log
/var/root/bin/fireeagle/pingwifi
/bin/sleep 7 
/var/root/bin/fireeagle/firefindme -g -d -F >> /var/log/fire.log
/var/root/bin/fireeagle/firefindme -k -d -F >> /var/log/fire.log
exit 0
EOF

Step 6: Set executable bit on all files

chmod a x /var/root/bin/fireeagle/*

Step 7: Authenticate with FireEagle

/var/root/bin/fireeagle/authtoken

This will open a MobileSafari window. Login to your FireEagle account and allow TrackMe to update your location. Then run:

/var/root/bin/fireeagle/authcheck

Step 8: Test!

/var/root/bin/fireeagle/firewrapper

After several seconds, you should be returned to a shell prompt. Now visit FireEagle’s My Location page and login. You should see:

Fire Eagle last spotted you less than a minute ago at LOCATION using TrackMe.

If not, please start over at Step 4. Something’s gone wrong.

Step 9: Steup LaunchDaemon to ping FireEagle every 5 minutes

cat > /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.fireeagle.ping.plist << EOF
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.fireeagle.ping</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/var/root/bin/fireeagle/firewrapper</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <false/>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>300</integer>
  </dict>
</plist>
EOF
launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.fireeagle.ping.plist

You’re Finished!

That should do it! Please let me know via twitter (@jnewland) or in the comments if you have any problems / suggestions! Big thanks to Erica Sadun for writing the iPhone tools used to make this happen!

UPDATE: These instructions are out of date. See here for instructions that work with the new Fire Eagle!

A couple days ago, a friend of mine sent me an invite for Fire Eagle, Yahoo! Research Berkley’s nifty closed-Alpha location storage and query engine, and I’ve been hooked ever since. For the rest of you without access, here’s a brief overview of what FireEagle does, straight from the FAQ page:

Fire Eagle is a site that keeps track of your current location and helps you share it with other sites and services safely. There are hundreds of potential applications.

Fire Eagle allows you to share your locations with other sites and services safely, through a secure server – you are always in control. You can decide to share your location with any application that can use it, and even choose how much detail to give that application (exact point, neighborhood, city, state, country).

So, I whipped up a quick Fire Eagle Rubygem to make it easier to deal with Fire Eagle’s API. The next logical step? A twitter bot.

Fire Eagle, meet Danger Day

If you’re lucky enough to have an invite to Fire Eagle, here’s how you can use it on Twitter:

1. Follow Danger Day on Twitter
2. Sign in to Fire Eagle
3. Authorize Danger Day with your FireEagle account
4. Get a mobile token to confirm your authentication with Danger Day
5. Send a direct message to Danger Day with your token.

Once that’s done, you can update your location with a direct message to Danger Day like so:

• u Atlanta, GA
• u Belize
• u 30022
• u 123 Anytown USA
• etc

If you’d like to do this via your mobile phone, make sure your mobile is setup with Twitter, then send the following text massage to 40404, Twitter’s short code:

• d dangerday u Atlanta, GA

To look up the location of someone else using Danger Day:

• q jnewland
• q cjmartin
• q plasticbagUK

or from your mobile:

• d dangerday q jnewland

What’s next?

I’m getting married in a week, so I leave the creation of cooler Fire Eagle apps as an exercise to the reader. Extra bonus points if you use the Fire Eagle Rubygem. If you’ve got a great idea for a Fire Eagle app and don’t have an invite, get in touch with me – I might be able to make that happen.

PS: If you hack up a Fire Eagle javascript sidebar widget that works on pages served as application/xml (preferably using the brilliant wedje technique) AND embraces the draft geo microformat, I’ll buy you a pony. Seriously. Here’s my location in XML – go to town.