App request: GPS to enable Wifi

guerillatwang · 08/11/2009, 07:11 AM

I was thinking about this earlier today as I was leaving my house, everytime I leave i find myself shutting off my wifi so it's not draining the battery while i'm driving around. My work also provides wifi and i'm wondering if there's a way to use GPS to bookmark your "hotspots" and enable and disable the wifi everytime you enter and leave that bookmarked location automatically. Any thoughts?

phwelo · 08/11/2009, 08:17 AM

a profiles app would be nice, but i don't think it would save much battery to have gps always on in order to possibly turn wifi on/off for you based on location

rc46 · 08/11/2009, 08:48 AM

This would be useful except for the fact that the pre WiFi radio will not drain your batteries and is designed to be left on. Its not like older smartphones where the WiFi radio would constantly search and drain your battery.

Besides leaving the GPS on will have way more drain (even though that is also quite small) than leaving the WiFi on.

Les Anderson · 08/11/2009, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rc46

This would be useful except for the fact that the pre WiFi radio will not drain your batteries and is designed to be left on. Its not like older smartphones where the WiFi radio would constantly search and drain your battery.

Besides leaving the GPS on will have way more drain (even though that is also quite small) than leaving the WiFi on.

Is this 100% confirmed? Can you point me to something legitamite that states this re wifi? I just dont see how this is possible- but will admit I am conditioned with "older smartphones".

dirtygreek · 12:16 PM

Surely the Wifi is using at least some power, and I actually think this is a good idea - but I'd also like to be able to set a timer to enable/disable wifi based on time of day. Turn it off at night when I'm most likely asleep and turn it back on in the morning. Maybe do the same with gps and evdo, actually, so I'm not polling any services at night. It can probably be done with a cron job on a rooted pre, though, and that's the first thing I'm going to try. The same is probably true of the gps option, though that would be more complicated.

dirtygreek · 08/28/2009, 01:56 PM

Just thought I'd point out that there is one way to sort of implement this if your device is rooted and you're comfortable in linux. The script at the bottom of this page

Patch webOS Roam Control - WebOS Internals

shows you how to check for a certain wifi access point. So, you could do a script like that, set it up as a cron job, and tell your wifi to disable if it sees that it's connected to your own access point, using

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 down
to disable wifi

Then you have 2 choices - periodically have it re-enable wifi and see if you're still home, just re-enable it manually, or maybe re-enable it at certain times of day...

barkerja · 08/28/2009, 02:16 PM

The offset of this would be you're consuming a lot more power using the GPS to frequently check your location as opposed to just leaving the wifi radio on.

08/11/2009, 07:11 AM	#1 (permalink)
guerillatwang Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Kansas City, MO Posts: 340 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 97 Thanked 50 Times in 35 Posts	App request: GPS to enable Wifi I was thinking about this earlier today as I was leaving my house, everytime I leave i find myself shutting off my wifi so it's not draining the battery while i'm driving around. My work also provides wifi and i'm wondering if there's a way to use GPS to bookmark your "hotspots" and enable and disable the wifi everytime you enter and leave that bookmarked location automatically. Any thoughts?
	Liked by

08/11/2009, 08:17 AM	#2 (permalink)
phwelo Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 534 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 18 Thanked 16 Times in 11 Posts	a profiles app would be nice, but i don't think it would save much battery to have gps always on in order to possibly turn wifi on/off for you based on location __________________ http://phwelo.mobi for any questions or to send a donation: phwelo@gmail.com
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08/11/2009, 08:48 AM	#3 (permalink)
rc46 Member Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 1,650 Likes Received: 1 Thanks: 186 Thanked 203 Times in 133 Posts	This would be useful except for the fact that the pre WiFi radio will not drain your batteries and is designed to be left on. Its not like older smartphones where the WiFi radio would constantly search and drain your battery. Besides leaving the GPS on will have way more drain (even though that is also quite small) than leaving the WiFi on. __________________ Pilot 1000 -> Pilot 5000 ->Palm Pilot Professional -> HP 620LX -> TRG Pro -> Palm V -> Palm Vx -> Palm M505 -> Palm i705 -> Palm Tungsten\|T -> Samsung i500 -> Treo 600->Treo 650 -> Treo 600-> Treo 700p ->Centro ->Treo 800w + Redfly C8n -> Palm Pre -> HP Touchpad R.I.P Palm 1996-2011
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08/28/2009, 12:08 PM	#5 (permalink)
dirtygreek Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 334 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 20 Thanked 22 Times in 9 Posts	Surely the Wifi is using at least some power, and I actually think this is a good idea - but I'd also like to be able to set a timer to enable/disable wifi based on time of day. Turn it off at night when I'm most likely asleep and turn it back on in the morning. Maybe do the same with gps and evdo, actually, so I'm not polling any services at night. It can probably be done with a cron job on a rooted pre, though, and that's the first thing I'm going to try. The same is probably true of the gps option, though that would be more complicated. Last edited by dirtygreek; 08/28/2009 at 12:16 PM.
	Liked by

08/28/2009, 01:56 PM	#6 (permalink)
dirtygreek Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 334 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 20 Thanked 22 Times in 9 Posts	Just thought I'd point out that there is one way to sort of implement this if your device is rooted and you're comfortable in linux. The script at the bottom of this page Patch webOS Roam Control - WebOS Internals shows you how to check for a certain wifi access point. So, you could do a script like that, set it up as a cron job, and tell your wifi to disable if it sees that it's connected to your own access point, using /sbin/ifconfig eth0 down to disable wifi Then you have 2 choices - periodically have it re-enable wifi and see if you're still home, just re-enable it manually, or maybe re-enable it at certain times of day...
	Liked by

08/28/2009, 02:16 PM	#7 (permalink)
barkerja Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 2,479 Likes Received: 41 Thanks: 184 Thanked 311 Times in 215 Posts	The offset of this would be you're consuming a lot more power using the GPS to frequently check your location as opposed to just leaving the wifi radio on.
	Liked by

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