GPS module, sense of direction

[Vladimír Lapáček]

I can understand the motion - orientation principle, but you still
need some practice with that because it cannot know if you moved it
pointing forward or rotated 90 degrees. So you would really need to be
very careful about that.

I know that every mm of space and every mA of current counts, but this
would be a really cool feature for Neo. Not speaking about that IPhone
does have accelerometers (at least in some sense). Accelerometers for
GUI are completely different (and very interesting) chapter. If there
is a chance for Neo1973 to accept such change, count me as +1 in the
poll.

These are my 2 cents.

Vladimir


On 5/1/07, Jim Thompson <jim at netgate.com> wrote:
> Vladimír Lapáček wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am quite currious about the GPS module planned in Neo 1973. For me
> > it is one of the really nice things about Neo. I don't have much
> > experience with GPS, but this really makes me thinking about buying
> > the device.
> >
> > My question is if in Neo will have sense of direction in much similar
> > way a compass has. This would be very handy for orienting the map
> > overlay that every one would most like to use in connection with such
> > device.
> >
> > Any ideas explaining this are more than welcome.
>
> GPS only gives you position (assuming 4 satellites, in 3-D space).
>
> If you're standing absolutely still, the GPS can't tell you which
> direction you're facing.
>
> You can take the vector of the last motion as an approximation, of
> course, and as soon as you start to walk/run/drive again, you can
> correct any errors.
>
> If the cell towers would give the phone the angle of arrival (a
> side-effect of beamforming) from two or more towers, then you could make
> an estimate of which direction the phone is facing.
>
> There are electronic compass chipsets, but the Neo1973 doesn't have one.
> The addition of something like Honeywell's HMC 1055 could provide not
> only a tilt-compensated electronic compass, but the accelerometers could
> make for interesting additions to the GUI(s).
>
> Jim
>