GPS Essentials Update

[Michael Schollmeyer]

The last update of GPS Essentials in 2021 was mainly to bring everything up to date with the ever tightening permission model of Android. I was pretty busy on my daytime job since then, but there are news:

I'm working on a new version of GPS Essentials and I will roll out a Beta on Google Play shortly. This version will be compatible with KitKat (Android 4.4) and later devices.

I made a few adjustments that I believe are beneficial to mostly everyone, but I'm eager to get your feedback:

1. I removed the mapfinity.com sharing feature. This has been used by just a small number of users and at the same time it was expensive both in terms of hosting cost and maintenance.

2. I integrated the Android Document API, with this API you can save data directly to external providers such as Google Drive.

3. I improved the GPS Essentials file format (MFT) for lossless data transfer.

Putting 2 and 3 together, you can now write data directly to Google Drive and open exported files on a different device. The new file format is based on Protocol Buffers which makes it quite efficient both in terms of speed and size. My entire local database saves to a 588MB file, less than 5% larger compared to ZIP compressed data. The total export and import process takes less than a minute on a Nexus 6!

I hope this is a good deal for everyone! Please bear with me while I'm rolling this out slowly. I will send out another announcement here as soon as the new version is available on the Beta program. (Here is how you can load apps from Beta programs: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7003180?hl=en)

Enjoy!

Michael

[Thomas Trickel]

I've been wondering for sometime about the possibility of a check box to stop recording 0s for latitude longitude and altitude.

Would it be possible to put this in the pending update?

Is there a features request location?

Thanks for an excellent application Michael. I've been enjoying GPSE for year now.

[mic...@mictale.com]

Is this still happening on your device? Which device is this? Which Android version? Do you have the fused location provider enabled? Is there anything else to reproduce? I cannot see this bug on my Nexus 6.

Regards, Michael
mictale.com/ms
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[Thomas Trickel]

Yes, this is still happening on my device.

GPSE version 4.4.64

Samsung Galaxy S8 (SM-G950U1)

Android 9

One UI version 1.0

Kernel version 4.4.153

Fused Location Provider is Off

What else would you see to help you reproduce this phenomenom?

I'd say most of the tracks start with a 0, 0 and your tip of editing the file in GPSE works well. Sometimes in the middle of the tracks I'll get 0, 0 recorded which are the more difficult to deal with as those require me to open the file with a text editor.

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[Gonzalo Ortega]

Greetings, I am a user of this beautiful program since 2012, congratulate you on the great development that it has had, however, with the mobile phone that I currently have, when I take the pictures they come out blurry, I don't know if it is due to my camera is 64 megapixels, or the android version, I would like you to correct this problem please, because it is very important to be able to obtain clear georeferenced photographs with the application. The model of my cell phone is tecno camon 17 pro. https://phonesdata.com/es/smartphones/tecno/camon-17-pro-5459312/

[mic...@mictale.com]

The autofocus may not work very well with the current camera implementation. Pressing the shutter button actually starts autofocus and releasing it starts capturing the image so so may have success by waiting a little longer between pressing and unpressing the shutter button.

I'm working on a new camera that is using a new API to support more camera features such as area focus.

Regards, Michael
mictale.com/ms
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[tempg...@gmail.com]

Hello Michael,

The 0 problem has been happening since April 2021 (GPSE 4.4.64) and it continues to this day (GPS 4.5.5), but in a different form.

I first reported the problem in April 2021 here:

https://jagbev.ca/_temp/gpse/err2.html

With GPSE 4.5.5, it still records (0,0,0) values, but now they are written out to the KML file as (NaN, NaN, NaN).

I have updated the err2.html page (link above) with that information and I have supplied as much detail as possible to fully describe the problem.

I don't think this is related to exporting to KML or any other format. I think the bad values are being written to the database, as is evidenced by the GPSE display which shows nonsense values, e.g. for speed and distance.  Perhaps the best solution is to discard (0,0,0) values on acuisition and not write to the database.

The new NaN placeholder seems to indicate that you are doing a floating-point calculation that is failing. Here is some discussion of testing for the presence of NaN by using the .isNan() method:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1456566/how-do-you-test-to-see-if-a-double-is-equal-to-nan

Perhaps:

if(x.isNaN() || y.isNaN() || z.isNaN()) then don't write to database.

I would be more than happy to send my entire database if you want to look at it. It's not that big.  I offered to do that in 2021, but didn't get a response.

jag

[tempg...@gmail.com]

GPSE 4.5.5

I just tried exporting to GPX 1 and GPX 1.1. In both cases, there are numerous "rtept" points. When I import into Google Earth by dropping the file onto Google Earth, it doesn't report any errors, but it also doesn't draw the track. Same negative result for GPX1 or GPX1.1

However, I did notice that if I export to KML, the file contains one "NaN" point. But that point is not contained in either the GPX or GPX1.1 file.

[Michael Schollmeyer]

That's a confirmed error, will be fixed in the next release which I will roll out sap. Apologies for the inconvenience!

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[Kris Buelens]

I wrote a small REXX script using W32PIPE to fix an exported GPX. Simply change 

     '!change "<rtept"<trkpt"',
     '!change "</rtept"</trkpt"',
 and then the .GPX can be used by for example GeoSetter