LittleBrother for BlackBerry® Devices
with OS 4.5 or higher

LittleBrother [β] Homepage

The "ZERO-power consuming" tracking solution

CellTower based - supporting CDMA and GSM Network

[Overview]|[Download]|[Changelog]|[Manual]| [Send β Feedback]

LittleBrother is for all BlackBerry® devices with OS 4.5 or higher (sorry no support for 4.3 devices) [like 8310, 8700, 8800, 8820, 9000, 9500, 9520, 9530, 9550, 9630, 9700 and all new BlackBerry devices that will be released in the future].

Automatically inform friends and family members when you are around - so they can be prepared when you arrive (can save you some embarrassing moments). Keep informed right in the moment when your loved once are leaving a previous defined sector (radius around a location). Doing all this without almost none additional power consumption and data transfer.

There are various applications available that track your location all the time (and send this information to a central server) or they can on demand request the location of your device - both solutions have their disadvantages (concerning power and data usage) when it comes to the fact that you would like to send/receive notifications only if your device is leaving a previously defined area/sector.

LittleBrother Core Features:

Automatically send eMail and/or SMS notification when the device is leaving a certain area. This can be used to:
- Keep notified if your children are leaving the area (in which they normally allowed to stay) - e.g. when they take by accident the wrong bus on their way to school.
- Theft detection - if your device will be moved into an area where you normally never would going too [could be ideally combined with other applications like SmrtGuard to wipe your device remotely]
Automatically send eMail and/or SMS notification when the device is returning into a certain area. Useful to:
- Let your loved once know, that you are coming home soon (e.g. returning from work)
- To be relaxed again when you previously received an LittleBrother "Out of Sector" Notification.
See an overview map of the last 25 CellTowers you have been connected too - IMHO very informative just to realize how much information about ourselves we are leaving every single day.
Export the local CellTower Database (locations) to a KML-File and send it via eMail [to be used with GoogleEarth to get an overview of all the CellTowers you have recorded so far].
Support for device 'Backup & Restore': Keep all your LittleBrother CellToer Records when you updating your OS or change your BlackBerry® device!

Background information

Theory of Operation

It's CellTower based

No matter if you are using CDMA or GSM - LittleBrother will work with both Network types

Why not using GPS?

Using the GPS antenna of the device is power consuming - LittleBrother is designed in a way to be running 24h a day - 7days a week. Using permanently the GPS-Signal would simply drain down the battery way too much and with that the the application would had been very unattractive. E.g. if you tried to use Google Latitue on your BlackBerry® device you know which negative impact this have concerning the battery life.

That's why LittleBrother does not make use of the GPS Antenna - this will make LittleBrother the almost zero power consuming tracking application.

CellTower locations are inaccurate?

That's true for sure - the location of the CellTowers is not 100% correct - also true: being connected to a specific CellTower does not reveal your exact location. On the other hand this information is sufficient enough to be able to tell in which area you around.

Data Transfer

LittleBrother needs to know the location information for the CellTower to which the device is connected. Unfortunately the device itself does not provide an reliable API for doing so. That's why LittleBrother is requesting the location information from a central server.

This requests & responses are very small, nevertheless this is data transfer and with that (depending from your providers data plan) costs will arise while you use LittleBrother.

But as soon LittelBrother have requested the location information for a CellTower this data will be cached locally on the device - so when you are moving in the same area each day you will notice at the beginning a little data transfers - but once all CellTowers of your area are cached at the local device no data transfer is required.

Please note that you can turn of the local CellTower data base updates - so when you are traveling (e.g during your vacations) you don't have to pay for additional data traffic (since new locations always implies new CellTowers and with that LittleBrother tries to update the location information).

Want to know more?

Please take a look at the additional documentation provided in the 'Manual'-Section of LittleBrother.

Where to find the LittleBrother Options?

Since LittleBrother is some sort of system application there is no own user interface. When you like to configure LittleBrother then this can be done within the BlackBerry® Options dialog itself. Simply open the default options and select the 'LittleBrother Options'. Alternatively you simply can launch the Options by using the LittleBrother Icon on your BlackBerry® Homescreen.