Direction of compass, Orientation device?

21

It would be way easier to turn options like that on and off sans-smartphone if we had more buttons. Has anyone thought about adding support for an I2C keyboard?

This one puts out ASCII:

(Cardkb mini keyboard module mega328p grove i2c usb isp programmer for esp32 development board stem python Sale - Banggood.com)

1 Like
22

So, looking into this further, I have a couple of thoughts:

  1. I think the main problem here is that we wait a long time between GPS reads. Waiting a full minute or 10 meters between GPS updates is probably good enough for sending position updates, but itā€™s not enough for updating the screen. When the screen is showing an arrow, we should probably update the coordinates we use for ā€˜dead reckoningā€™ at least once per second.
  2. The ublox M8N GPS module has a built in magnetic compass. Do any of the others? If any of our supported devices have magnetic compasses, we should be using them.
3 Likes
23

I was actually thinking about picking up a compass module and seeing if I could get it to jive with the current system. Might be nice for me to have a real time heading.

Once I get all of my hardware in and start field testing a bit more Iā€™ll see what I can come up with. Iā€™ve got a dozen 18650 batteries and Iā€™m not afraid to use them :joy: So Iā€™ll be cranking all of the power hungry settings to the max to try and keep track of my dog.

3 Likes
24

Maybe we could use a mixture of methods.

It sounds like the current implementation works well when there is good GPS lock and the other node is further away. This makes sense when you consider how much even small movements could change the angles between two points when they are close together. Maybe we can adjust how we handle the bearing calculation when we are at closer distances by either doing what @android606 talks about and increasing the GPS reads or switching from an arrow to the heading in degrees to try to improve the experience. We could also use the PDOP/HDOP accuracy value to try to determine if we have accurate GPS coordinates at these closer distances and maybe just get rid of the arrow and put up an icon to show when we donā€™t know.

I was looking at the UBloxGPS class in the device code and thereā€™s a comment about the M8N chips having heading available, but it says the 6Ms donā€™t have it. So incorporating a magnetic compass reading could be an option but it would need to be written specific to devices with the M8N chipset.

Having other sensors would definitely help. Smartphone map GPS tracking is almost spot on these days but they can make use of GPS, Wi-Fi networks, cell towers, accelerometers, magnetic compasses, and probably a few other tricks.