Show GPS coordinates on TTGO mini display

Hello @geeksville .
I was thinking if it was possible to show GPS coordinates in the TTGO mini display. sometimes they can be useful, perhaps to write them on a sheet of paper if the phone for example has a dead battery, “TTGO battery lasts longer” with the possibility of marking points of interest.
I think it would be nice to add it to the TTGO menu to be scrolled with the key in the middle

1 Like

I also thought about it. Especially useful when it is an emergency, to see the last coordinates without a smartphone can be useful for your own and other subscribers. For example, if there was no connection with the subscriber for 30 minutes, show his last coordinates.

1 Like

In addition (extra page) or next to the battery bar the battery voltage in say 2 digits also feels useful to me as the bars just give kind of a rough estimate. The app is not always in tune with the %.

1 Like

You are absolutely right, it would be very useful.
It would be ideal to add (Power on device Time in minutes and hours under the GPS coordinates and the battery percentage)
I think it’s not so complicated for @geeksville to implement.
I also think adding a screen in the TTGO menu with technical parameters of the radio would be great.

1-GPS coordinates
2- Power on Time
3- Battery status in “mV” and “%”
4- Transmission mode selected
TX - ( “Fast Low~ Range” )
TX - ( “Fast Med.~ Range”)
TX - (“Slow Long~ Range”)
TX - (“Slow V-Long~ Range”)
5- Bluetooth “on” - “off” status

With some abbreviated strings everything can stay inside a single menu of the TTGO

4 Likes

I think this is a great idea and fairly painless to add. It would be a great first issue for anyone with basic C/C++ programming skills that wants to become a developer on the project. (I’m willing to do it - but realistically my queue of other things (1.0 bug fixing and major 1.1 features) means this is 2-3 mos off at my current rate)

I’m making an issue here to track it. If anyone wants to give it a go, I’m happy to provide development pointers in the issue (essentially you’d be adding a new method/screen in screen.cpp):

2 Likes

First, thanks for your time and for tracking the thread on GitHub.
Obviously it was a suggestion to make meshtastic radio richer with useful information, but it doesn’t mean that you have to spend time. I believe you must do what is right to do right now, in the future we will see.
I am not able to program in C because I am a bit rusty.
I have not been programming for ten years, but since there are many interested people in the project we hope that someone has the time and the desire to help in programming.
Good continuation and good work.
Obviously if I come up with new ideas to make the Meshtastic radio more functional I will always propose them here.

2 Likes

Think I suggested an app for the PI/Linux in the past but with all these (great) upcoming options and features in the android app it feels to me that it makes more sense to get a cheap android box and plug the board in on the go. Most of these boxes are also low power running of 5v.

I’ve started working on this as my second contribution to Meshtastic.

Below is the sample screen I’ve come up with.

The first PR (I hope by Monday) will be fairly straight forward to get the new screen distributed, tested and to get feedback.
Second PR will be a refinement. I’m thinking of having stats refresh every few seconds and toggle between some related data.

Possible updates:
Line 1 - Rotate between Coordinates, GPS time, Satellite Lock information, etc.
Line 2 - Rotate between Tx Mode, Channel settings, Tx Power, etc
Line 3 - Rotate between Battery, Power Source, etc
Line 4 - Rotate between On time, Number of Nodes on Network, etc

Other ideas are welcome. The code in the project is very easy to read, I’m just also relearning to program proper C along the way. It’s been a very long time.

5 Likes

Great update…

Lat/Lon are great but when out walking there is a challenge converting this to map locations. How easy would it to add a conversation option?

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=592429.0

This would be great for the UK not sure what other nations use

Wow Nice.
You were very quick to make the idea come true, I’m more than happy, good job.
Returning to the screen tips.
I will hand draw a layout that may seem more organized and with some abbreviations if you are interested
(what you showed in the ttgo oled is just what I thought and you expressed it perfectly only that I had some slightly different layout ideas)
For the 1-2-3-4 ideas you listed would be very nice

I’ll display what’s available by the libraries just to get started and if it’ll fit into the screen.

If it’s there I’ll do it. :slight_smile:

That would be awesome. Hand draw it and I’ll put it in as a proof of concept to see how it fits.

1 Like

Excellent work, thanks @mc-hamster for your valuable contribution!

Please help me understand this use case a bit more.

While walking with the device, how would you use the coordinates? I’d assume that most if not all mobile devices already has a GPS. Are you suggesting you’d write it down on paper?

I do know that there are Tablets (iPads) that don’t have GPS, so it may be useful there.

Thanks for the request.
I wanted to inform you that I am working to draw the layout by hand, and with a little work it will be ready for tomorrow or the day after, I’m a bit busy but I think I can do it.
Returning to the question, the idea was that every time you go to the parameters screen where the coordinates are the radio shows the coordinates at that moment in order to write them on a sheet of paper, since the telephone paired with the ttgo could die before ttgo. in the mountains it is sometimes useful for marking points of interest in a notebook.

(Or report the coordinates by radio if you carry a PTT voice communication radio, to communicate locally with groups or ski centers.)

A bit of work done but for reasons of time I only did the upper part, tomorrow I finish everything :wink:

In the future I would also like to slightly change the meshtastic icon, like with small radios here and there and meshtastic with radio waves on the “i” and some animation when the radio turns on, showing the mesh network bring to live.
But I’m sure the people on the project won’t like it.:sweat_smile:
However I will try to propose it, let’s see if someone rebels :smile:

Awesome!

Something to consider …

We have 4 lines to work with. Each line is 14 pixels high. We don’t have to stick to these “lines” for text, but that’s the easy thing to do.

There is a 5th line, but the existing UI uses that for the pagination display. I’d rather not redo the existing design language.

It is possible to place anything on the screen, but let’s keep this informational.

1 Like

Thanks for the advice, very helpful :wink:
I had taken it into consideration anyway, but if there are any problems I will modify the layout according to what you will do to implement it if obviously you have difficulties.
I will stay in the limit of 10 ~ 12px to leave two pixels of space between the lines and I will use the four lines only.

When I finish the layout work, I will prepare the battery icons with its (10px) charge variables for you.
The bluetooth icon(12px) with its variable “on” with active radio waves and “off” with deactivated radio waves.
You just have to wait a while because redoing the icons with its variables requires triple the work to finish everything.
Anyway first I’ll show you the finished layout without variables to give you an idea what it will look like.

Here is the finished layout design with the icons included.
I think I did a good job, let see what @geeksville think :grin:
Now I have to do the icons separated from the text and their variables, like the battery half full or the bluetooth icon “on” with the radio waves active …
It will take a lot of work, I have to do everything by hand :sweat_smile:

Gps coordinates layout By TitanTronics

3 Likes

I have not yet looked into how icons are handled, can’t guarantee I’ll be able to get that in, but will try.

Nice layout! You’re a pro!

1 Like