Lost Pandora Phone Home


lingenfr

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2009
Messages
418
They have apps that will allow you to track a lost ipod if someone plugs it in via USB. http://www.gadgettrak.com/ I am wondering about something similar for the Pandora. Certainly don't want to lose it and if i do, I want to be able to send out my attack ninjas to retrieve it. Any thoughts?
 
The Angstrom demo they had going had an "If found please return to:" display on the login screen. If things stay as they were shown, a login screen will be an option, and the "please return to" feature would also make sense. Without logging in, the Pandora would be somewhat useless (unless the thief searches the web to find out how to re-flash it back to factory.)

Interesting, though.
 
Maybe after so many failed login attempts it tries to autoconnect to unsecured wireless networks and e-mail you?

I don't know exactly what a thief would do to something like the Pandora. Probably try to get any personal info from the SD cards, then sell them.

If they can't get into the device itself, they'll probably just sell it to someone one way or another, possibly over eBay, possibly not.

I think I would leave a guest account open and have it try to message me behind their back somehow. Any sort of alert will probably just make the situation worse for the Pandora, since most people are assholes.
 
It should be easy enough to make a simple command-line based (say, a Perl script) thingy that automatically runs as soon as the network comes up. Put it in, say, /etc/networks/if-up.d/ or equivalent. The script could send the current IP address (a GPS location would be handy, but it'll unlikely to be be available very often) to your mail address of choice. Set up a dedicated gmail account for this, for example. The number of bytes transmitted would be small, so you wouldn't even have to mind that it'll send whenever you go online through your phone (and if you do mind, then make the script slightly more intelligent).

And if your device never gets stolen, at least you'll have a superb account of how often you go online with your Pandora! :D
 
It could, but I think it can be made simpler than that. Linux systems can automatically run scripts when the network comes on. The example in that link would run only at bootup, which definitely isn't good enough (with a Panda you're normally not online until somewhen later, maybe days later). So, it would have to run at all times and regularly keep checking the network interface. It's much easier to just drop a simple one-shot script into that aforementioned directory.
 
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