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@Blueman @Damein Dear all, I couldn't find anything that related exactly to what I'm trying to achieve although I did find some examples from the two people I've tagged in which has gotten me so far. I understand this topic could be a contentious issue and perhaps that's why there's no threads that I could find that relate directly to it. If the subject is taboo then I'll completely understand it if this thread is deleted. I want to write a program that periodically posts the IP address and Geo/GPS location data to me some way e.g. ftp/POST/email - the back-story is below. Ok so recently I had a computer stolen from my office, the actual value of the computer is very low as it was 10 years old and just for basic office tasks. Whilst the important files were backed up I never got around to automating this process so I lost a couple of weeks work when it was stolen. Anyway, this computer was used mainly by one employee and as I wouldn't be at the office a lot of the time I would use VNC to help when they got stuck with a particular task. As the IP was dynamic I found the dynamic DNS solutions supported by the router not to be very reliable so I wrote a small AutoIt program that called the dynamic DNS update link every 15 minutes, this program was in the Start Menu -> Programs -> Start Up folder and worked fine. This computer was a desktop box with no Wifi so was connected via Ethernet. As the accounts on the machine are password protected, whoever ends up with the box is likely to format the HD and put a fresh OS on there so this program is unlikely to run again which is a shame because as it's a desktop box with no Wifi I could use the IP address to give to the Police who could get the users name and address by matching who that IP was assigned to at that time. This is very unlikely to be a coffee shop etc. So I'm a lot more security and disaster recovery minded now and have replaced that box with a laptop that the staff member can take home with them each day and it automatically backs up to OneDrive upon log in. I've put VNC and the dynamic DNS AutoIt program on there but as this is a laptop with Wifi it's obviously very portable and can be used to get online from more locations. What I want to do is create another program that gets the device location as well as the IP and sends it to me every 15 minutes or so. I'd plan to put this program in a Guest account that has no password so if this laptop were ever stolen the next user would actually be able to log in and this program would run. Even better would be for this program to be started as a service so it runs before logging in to an account, just like VNC does. Being a laptop it could be used by a thief or other unauthorised user in a coffee shop etc. The solution I have explored so far is have a local .htm file that is opened via AutoIt program which when it has loaded displays the latitude and longitude of the machine, the program then saves this to a file with IP address and date/time stamp and sends it to me somehow (I'll probably implement multiple ways of it notifying me just in case of firewalls). The instance of IE would load minimized and quit after the lat/long is read; as it is such a small page running locally this all happens very quickly so is hard for any user to detect and cancel/intercept. My only problem with this implementation is I can't find a way for the page to start the script and obtain the location without user interaction (clicking Allow). I know why this is like this, because it could be used to spy on peoples location so could be open to mis-use. So perhaps there is a better way, programmatically within AutoIt using Google Maps API (which I haven't looked into properly yet) to do this where there is no user interaction required? There are probably commercial applications to do just this (similar to FindMyiPhone) but I've not investigated the availability of those for Windows and don't see how such a commercial application would be any less open to mis-use so why not create my own little app if possible and avoid the cost.

Another project idea that I am trying to get working. A USB GPS device needs to be assigned COMM Port 25 when it is plugged into the computer. It obviously gets the first open port when plugged in the first time and if I manually change it to 25 it will get a new port again if somebody plugs the device into a new USB port. So I want to make a script that can detect the device, and move/configure its port automatically. I started off finding this UDF: https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/128546-serial-port-com-port-udf/?page=32 It was useful for finding the device is plugged in and what port its on, but it does not have the ability to actually change the port. I think that will have to be done via registry, or perhaps via Objects. I just want to double check my facts here and get a grip on what I need to do. Registry has the following keys that change: HKLM\HARDWARE\SERIALCOMM - \Device\ProlificSerial0 This key just lists the COMM Port for the device, it changes based on its current port. HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\VID_067B&PID_2303] Under this key is a subkey that will duplicate every time the device gets a new port, I have not figure out quite yet how to determin what that subkey will be named, but it has the "FriendlyName" key and also the Device parameters\PortName key Both of those are unfortunately SYSTEM level permission so that makes scripting a change even harder. Last is HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\COM Name Arbiter This contains the record of what comm ports are occupied or vacant via binary to hex. I would have to find a way to read its current value and change it to show port 25 taken and if possible free up the port taken by the device before the change. Not sure how to write something like that. Has anybody done something like this before? If so what was your best approach?