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Posts: 716 | Thanked: 236 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#11
Some interesting experiments.

Get socat (or something that can connect to unix sockets).

Start (/usr/sbin/) gpsdriver, in background

This will create a listen unix socket at /var/lib/gps/gps_driver_ctrl

Connect with "socat /var/lib/gps/gps_driver_ctrl stdio"
Typing "P 3\n" (P space 3 enter_newline)
resulted in:

Got Power Management level request
with argument
gps status received
gps status received
inject customer conf
inject recv conf
P 3

at which point NMEA sentences started emerging from "/dev/pgps". strace on gpsdriver is also interesting.

Send "P 0\n" and it shuts down.

There may be some way to do this via dbus or a library.

There is probably more interesting stuff, but this at least activates (and shuts down) the internal GPS.
 
Posts: 155 | Thanked: 69 times | Joined on Apr 2008
#12
AFAIK this is the official GPS API:
http://maemo.org/development/documen....html#Location

I have wrapped it in pure python with a ready-to-run example here:
http://brewer123.home.comcast.net/~b...projects/nokia
Scroll down to "Python GPS Library".
 
Posts: 69 | Thanked: 10 times | Joined on Nov 2007
#13
slha89:

"I don't want to know my neighbors thinking if I pray and point my tablet to south before enter my car"


Hey. You might start a new religion and make millions.
 
Posts: 52 | Thanked: 22 times | Joined on Apr 2008
#14
Today it's working faster for me. Not TTFF though, but if it's just been running.
I built the Maemo gpstracker demo and use that to turn the GPS on - it does clever stuff like restarting gpsd if it dies etc. - and cgps from the official gpsd site to listen to gpsd (netcat works too, e.g. " nc localhost 2947", you can type things like "p" to get
a position or "r" to see raw NMEA).
About 9 seconds for gpsd to start from when I start the tracker, and another 3
seconds for a fix to show up. So that's a bit more reasonable - about 12 seconds.

As reported in https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2877, gpsdriver loads files
from /var/lib/gps/ when the GPS starts and saves them when it stops.
It ought to be possible to update these from an approximate position (guessed, from
Google Maps, from your cellphone cell ID via Bluetooth/Gnokii, from nearby WiFi ESSIDs
as per Google's projects...) to address the appalling TTFF seen when arriving at the airport
from another country.
 

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tabletrat's Avatar
Posts: 481 | Thanked: 65 times | Joined on Aug 2007 @ Westcountry, UK
#15
Originally Posted by brontide View Post
Hmmm I might be onto something. I've managed to get a lock on the first floor of my 2 story house 10' from any exterior walls. Yes, it took a few minutes, but that's kinda incredible from my understanding of GPS.
My tomtom 510 will routinely get a lock inside the house, I haven't got the 810 to do it except right in the window.
Cold start on the tomtom is close to the warm start of the 810. I knew it wasn't supposed to be good, but I didn't realise any GPS was that poor nowadays (it is like my first navman on a pocketPC)

Bug voted for anyway
 
Posts: 227 | Thanked: 53 times | Joined on Feb 2008 @ Lyon, France
#16
Originally Posted by oldmancoyote1 View Post
Try holding it vertical and facing the south.
I confirm that facing the south improves first-fix time a lot: Yesterday I was surrounded by a few buildings, only 3 satellites were visible and I couldn't get a fix after several minutes. Then I moved a bit, with more building around me but a hole to the south, and my N810 could see 6 or 7 satellites, and I got the fix after about 10 seconds!
 
Posts: 2,102 | Thanked: 1,309 times | Joined on Sep 2006
#17
As reported in https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2877, gpsdriver loads files
from /var/lib/gps/ when the GPS starts and saves them when it stops.
It ought to be possible to update these from an approximate position (guessed, from
Google Maps, from your cellphone cell ID via Bluetooth/Gnokii, from nearby WiFi ESSIDs
as per Google's projects...) to address the appalling TTFF seen when arriving at the airport
from another country.
Indeed, but the format of the file needs to be ascertained.

I confirm that facing the south improves first-fix time a lot: Yesterday I was surrounded by a few buildings, only 3 satellites were visible and I couldn't get a fix after several minutes. Then I moved a bit, with more building around me but a hole to the south, and my N810 could see 6 or 7 satellites, and I got the fix after about 10 seconds!
So are you saying that facing a gap in the surrounding buildings produces a faster fix, and that said gap was to the South.....?
 
Mara's Avatar
Posts: 1,310 | Thanked: 820 times | Joined on Mar 2006 @ Irving, TX
#18
I just learned that Nokia is working on software fix to improve this...

Not sure if it will be ready for first Diablo release, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem since with SSU the update should be easy. (No reflashing...)
 

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Posts: 4,930 | Thanked: 2,272 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#19
With regards to Southiness (by which I mean facing the equator), perhaps the reason this works involves which region of the sky you're attenuating by standing. After all, since the satellites are in 55 degree inclined orbits, you'd expect more satellites to be south; so a view of zenith to South horizon is more helpful than zenith to North horizon.
 
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Posts: 2,535 | Thanked: 6,681 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ UK
#20
Originally Posted by Mara View Post
I just learned that Nokia is working on software fix to improve this...
I'll get excited when I see results.

Not sure if it will be ready for first Diablo release, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem since with SSU the update should be easy. (No reflashing...)
SSU will be mana-from-heaven, indeed :-)
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