Device FAQ's:

FAQ:

  • What is the license, is Watchee completely free to install and use?

    The basic features (real time tracking, xSMS and track-photos) are completely free! The only none watchee license is the web based map from google and its partners. Please read the google license (the link on the map and additionally here) carefully and respect all details of it. Watchee is not extending this license in any manner.

  • Where do i get a GPS device?

    Buy a GPS-receiver in your local electronic store or over the internet. You can purchase good receivers for ~60 Euros/US-Dollars. Examples are the 'blumax'- or 'DIMP3'-receivers. Prosperous Watchees can probably afford to buy a mobile phone with integrated GPS device (for example the competitive Sony Ericsson C702 or Nokia 6650, or the more expensive Nokia N95).

  • I don't want to buy a GPS receiver

    Than you could still write and receive Watchee-xSMS or watch the GPS details of your buddies in real-time. But you can't do tracking yourself or check out were you are, only if ...

    ... if your phone delivers the CellId to the Watchee application we lookup the position at http://www.opencellid.org and add the latitude and longitude from there. Most modern Sony Ericsson phones (like k550i) deliver this information. More details at faqj2me.

  • What other hardware do I need?

    You only need a mobile phone or a PDA (Windows Smartphone/Mobile/PocketPC) with internal GPS or bluetooth support for external GPS receivers. There is a good chance that the phone you have already can run Watchee, just download Watchee and try it. You can also buy a cheap phone like Sony Ericsson k320i for about 90 Euro/Dollar to use all features of Watchee.

  • Which mobile phone provider/carrier/operator do i need?

    Usually any provider supports access to the internet. You can test this by starting the web browser on your phone. Most providers provide a service on their web site to send you a SMS (free of charge) which configures your phone properly. The internet connection typically goes over GPRS, EDGE or UMTS.

  • What are the mobile phone provider/carrier/operator costs during tracking?

    This depends on your contract. Some providers charge 10Cent per 10kByte while some more advanced providers charge 24Cent per MByte. Others offer flat rates for a fixed monthly amount of money. Each track transfers ~40 bytes of data.
    Example: Tracking 1 track per minute nonstop day and night for one month will add up to approximately 2 MB of data transfered which is, with the above contract (1MB/24Cent), below 1 Euro/Dollar per month.

  • What is special with Watchee?

    You can show your friends in real-time were you are and send them messages (also long ones) for typically less than 0,1ct to their mobiles or to the Web-Browser watching you. So you have your little community of friends always with you. Further, other people can watch your track on the internet in real time if you give the permission. Watchee has a revolutionary high compression format during transmission of data. This saves GPRS costs dramatically.

  • How much does Watchee cost?

    Besides the above GPRS costs of your provider/carrier/operator there are no additional costs, the basic features of Watchee are free. Especially, all web mapping features are free as requested by google. Our need of traffic is so small that even if you have a very expensive provider an xSMS is typically cheaper than 0.1 Cent. However we plan to add additional Watchee features (like the history of tracks, photos or server stored xSMS) which will be sold for probably 2 Euro/US-Dollar per month. These services are backend services and not related to the google web display. This will finance the service to keep running.

  • Why is it so cheap?

    That's because of our revolutionary high compression rate. Everything Watchee is sending through the GPRS connection is so compressed that it needs least traffic. That makes it so cheap.

  • What is, if I temporary loose the GPRS connection?

    Than the position-tracks and data will be saved locally on your phone and are send out when the connection comes back. So the tracks are always fluently without gaps on the internet or in your company intranet.

  • What is the server IP and port for tracking?

    The server IP is 88.198.105.108 and the port is 3412. You can enter this on your PDA or mobile phone in the configuration section.

  • Why am i not publicly watchable?

    Because you have not added the user 'public' as your buddy. Go to the buddy configuration menu and add the user public as your buddy and set the permissions you want to grant. On new Web-login you will be listed as a buddy of public and you can be tracked (if you have granted the permission).

  • Can i download my tracks/photos somewhere?

    You can download your track data in the very common GPX or KML format from our WebService. First you need to download the free curl.exe somewhere, it should contain SSL support for save operation (available for Linux/Windows/Mac etc).
    From the command line you can now get the list of your tracks:
    curl --insecure --user jack:xxxxx https://watchee.net/io/rest/tracks
    Please replace the loginName 'jack' with your login name and the password 'xxxxx' with your password.
    To access a specific track named '2008-08-24' try (in one line):
    curl --insecure --user jack:xxxxx https://watchee.net/io/rest/track/2008-08-24/kml
    Please replace the '2008-08-24' token with your track name. If the track name contains blanks (' '), you need to encode them with %20. For example to access the track named 'summer hay harvest' you need to type:
    curl --insecure --user jack:xxxxx https://watchee.net/io/rest/track/summer%20hay%20harvest/gpx

    The last token is the output format, supported is "gpx", "kml", "nmea", "enmea" and "watchee".

    Note: curl has the option '-o filename.gpx' to specify the file for the downloaded data.

    Photos are geotagged with EXIF tags by watchee. A separate WebService download is not yet available. Howsoever, you can see your photos on our tracking site at any time.

  • Where do I get help, if I have more questions?

    You could go to the Watchee-forum or you send your question to info@watchee.net. We try to answer it as fast as possible.