The new web interface is a real huge step forward in comparison to the old pure SMS communication. Mostly cause it can be completely invisible and I don’t have to fear to send my access code to the thief by SMS commands. Besides that the communication to a stolen device might be more reliable because there are two ways - WLAN and mobile connections.
But thinking of possible theft scenarios it is still limited and do not make the most of this advantage. Biggest problem is I have to know WHEN my device is reachable by a Internet connection and especially without mobile security installed I can not see the last contact date/time.
So idea - would it be possible to send commands to the device ONCE it is contactable automatically. And ideal would be a confirmation email when contact is possible so I can start sending more commands to the stolen device. That would make the web interface perfect!
this week we’ll release a new completely reworked portal version. it shows last contact date.
Usually when Anti-Theft connects to the server, it pulls all commands not yet executed. However Anti-Theft connecting to server is not very frequent so it might take a long time until the command gets executed, usually commands are being PUSHED to the device.
Do I understand that correctly, that when a command “timed out” in the Web portal AntiTheft fetches this command nevertheless later on automatically and execute that command?
However looking forward testing the new version!
What did I do. I started the test yesterday with the most recent version of AT (build 4681). I issued a message command to display a test text.
Before I send the command I checked communication within AT to be OK and switched the phone off. So the command was send in OFF state and expired with “Command timed out”, naturally.
After rebooting the phone no text was displayed. I started the AT manually and no text displayed. I checked communication manually and no text displayed (at least at this point it should have being when I understand you correctly)
I let the phone switched on since then and no text displayed. Today I found out you launched the new web portal (looks great btw.) and now I see last communication was 21 hours ago - the time point when I did the test above. But still no text.
I issued a second test text with the new web portal in switched off state to expire again. After switched phone on no text displayed (nor the first neither the second one).
I checked last communication - it says 6 mins ago.
Now your turn
btw, executing commands is fine when phone is switched on!
ah my fault actually we do not send timed out commands in that case. reason is that e.g. users send a lot of commands (e.g. for testing the solution) which time out and then phone connects after some time it might perform all possible different tasks completely confusing the user…
In this case the timeframe is about seconds - not even minutes and we are at the beginning of my idea. Commands to be executed with delay/when AT comes online/starts.
If you ask me the solution would be very easy. AT need a new option to setup its own communication interval in minutes/hours. In default it may be very high/disabled. AND expired commands need to executed - perhaps with enable/disable in web portal in order not the “confuse” new users. Possible?
no we do not want to have intervals because of high server load.
however maybe we can introduce some special “resend” option where user can specify to keep the command in queue for a certain time.
In order to keep server load low it would be OK when commands are transmitted once AT is started (with the phone), cause that is exactly the point I like to know when stolen and offline.
And yes, a resend option for a selectable count of hours would catch the idea. Hope to see this improvement, soon 8)
