Need a quick mobile prototype? Tasker to the Rescue!

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing the Tasker ChangeLog when I noticed this entry:

event: Steps Taken (Android API 19+)

Interesting. I checked, and sure enough the pedometer on my Galaxy S5 is now wired into Tasker. Specifically, you can have Tasker perform some action when you hit a particular step count (at which point, the step count resets, and you start approaching it again).

I found this functionality terrifically cool, but for the life of me I couldn't think of a practical use for it. After much brainstorming, a half baked project came to mind. What if I plotted my location every 1000 steps. Would results be of interest? (Either as useful personal metrics or maybe just as art).

The more I thought it about it, the more I became curious: would the trail of digital breadcrumbs I left over the weeks and months be of value?

Now that I had my idea I had a new problem: when the heck was I going to find time to implement this bad boy? Probably never.

So I've decided to punt. Yesterday, I setup this new Tasker task:

Profile: Step Loc (41)
Event: Steps Taken [ Number:1000 ]
Enter: Anon (42)
  A1: Get Location [
    Source:GPS Timeout (Seconds):100
    Continue Task Immediately:Off
    Keep Tracking:Off
  ]

  A2: Write File [
   File:Documents/steploc.txt
   Text:%TIMES,%LOC
   Append:On
   Add Newline:On
  ]

Now, every 1,000 steps a two line task is triggered. First the GPS location is calculated, and secondly, this value (%LOC) and the current Unix time (%TIMES) is appended to a data file.

This allows me to start collecting the location and time data now, and if I choose, I can play with it at a later date. If there's a trend there, I can make a more formalized app.

While it's not a slick, real-time visual based solution, it did have the benefit of taking me all of two minutes to write.

Will this little project, if you excuse the pun, lead me down a useful path? I don't know. But I know that I love Tasker for it's ability to quickly prototype concepts just like this one.