Tag: GPS

Using High Accuracy GPS with Mobile Apps

There are times when the built-in GPS simply isn’t good enough for your Android or iOS app. Built-in GPS is good for finding a general location of a geographic feature such as a pond, field, or parking lot. If you need to locate a specific parking space, or a geographic feature within a field, or an inlet to a pond then you’ll need much greater precision of a commercial GPS unit.

Examples. Here is a more specific example to illustrate the concept. Let’s say the application users are mapping insect infected trees in a densely forested urban park. If you are using a smartphone GPS, with an average accuracy of 30+ meters when standing under the tree cover, the latitude/longitude coordinates may end up being unusable for future follow-up because there are dozens of trees within a 30+ meter radius. If you are using a commercial GPS with sub-meter accuracy you can have a much higher degree of certainty that someone will be able to locate that exact tree again.

I’ve seen entire days’ worth of data collection get thrown out the window because of significant location inaccuracies caused by using smartphones and dedicated hand-held consumer GPS units that are well known to outdoor recreational folks. I’ve accidentally sent a backcountry trail maintenance crew to a totally wrong location (they got really mad). All I had was a smartphone GPS and my location coordinate was over a thousand meters off even though the Android Location API returned an “accuracy” value of less than 50 meters. Oops — that’s the difference between precision and accuracy.

Good news. The good excellent news is there are small, handheld commercial GPS units that you can tether to your smartphone via Bluetooth such as the Trimble R1. Units like the R1 are able to override the onboard GPS and when configured correctly work just fine with the browser’s JavaScript-based Geolocation API or native iOS/Android geolocation.

The only downside can be cost. Some of these commercial units cost several thousand dollars and that may be outside the budget of many organizations.

Surprise, Surprise. I spend a ton of time talking to customers about this topic. Many people are very surprised because they regularly use GPS fitness tracker apps or Google Maps and the location information almost always seems very close to reality. The hidden trick is these apps use proprietary software algorithms that attempt to slightly improve accuracy, minimize location fluctuations or even intelligently snap your location to geographic features such as roadways, buildings or trails.

When you are building a custom mobile application, you will be forced to deal with raw, unfiltered geolocation data. And the coordinate data is coming from consumer-grade GPS units mass produced at the lowest possible cost. The antennas are tiny and usually on the back of the device rather than pointed towards the sky. The chipsets are designed to minimize battery usage, because GPS can be extremely battery intensive and generates a lot of heat. They have minimal ability to resolve communication difficulties between your device and GPS satellites, and GPS signals are already relatively weak.

Decisions, decisions. If your budget can’t handle several thousand dollars for a commercial GPS and you only have short term needs you can always look into renting a bluetooth unit. Just make sure to ask if it overrides the onboard GPS chip. You can find GPS rental companies online. There are also consumer-grade Bluetooth GPS units that only cost several hundred dollars. The consumer Bluetooth units aren’t nearly as accurate as commercial units; however, they offer a significant improvement over built-in GPS.

Advanced geolocation plugin for Cordova and PhoneGap for Android

The W3C’s browser-based, JavaScript Geolocation API is excellent as a one-size-fits-all interface, but that approach comes at a price and it can cause some serious limitations when it comes to implementing more stringent professional, commercial and government use-cases.

Challenges with the default Geolocation API. One of the primary limitations is the Geolocation API does not tell you how it got a location. All locations are lumped together in a black box. Let me explain. On a smartphone or tablet, location data comes from one of three places: the GPS chipset, the cellular provider’s Location Service, or the browser’s Location Service. The W3C Geolocation API simply lumps these data points together. The end result is typically seen by the end user as significant and disturbingly wild jumps back and forth in the reported location, sometimes over large distances. A key to minimizing these fluctuations is to gain back control and understand which location provider created the latitude and longitude point.

Cordova-plugin-advanced-geolocation. The good news is that Android, in particular, has a very detailed API called LocationManager for examining geolocation data that comes from the device.  And, even better news for JavaScript developers is that the API, along with its access to all on-device GPS and Network location providers, has been exposed thru a Cordova plugin that is available here: https://github.com/Esri/cordova-plugin-advanced-geolocation.

What geolocation data is available? With this plugin you’ll be able to programmatically differentiate between the following geolocation data as well as get access to GPS satellites meta data:

  • Real-time GPS location – This is data from the on-board GPS or some devices will allow it to be the location data from an external GPS that is connected to the device via bluetooth.
  • Cached GPS location – Most devices cache the last-known GPS location and it’s persistent even when the device is restarted.
  • Real-time Network location triangulation – this is completely dependent on devices and cellular service providers. It may require WiFi to be turned on. It also may not be available in all countries or regions.
  • Cached Network location – Most devices cache the last-known network-based location and it’s persistent even when the device is restarted.

Use cases. With this plugin, you can now use your JavaScript skills to implement the following use cases and much more. For example, I’ve always wanted to play with the Satellite data to make a 3D map of the satellites using JavaScript. This plugin provides a huge advantage to developers building applications for capturing a single location such as field survey work as well as the following use cases and others that I haven’t thought of:

  • Determine a static outdoors location and only use GPS.
  • While indoors turn on only network location. Do not use GPS.
  • While in an urban area, use network location to get initial location before the GPS warms up and then turn off network location and only use GPS
  • Compare the differences between GPS and Network locations
  • …???

How does this plugin help minimize location fluctuations? This plugin comes with a configuration option for turning on a buffer. You can set the size of the buffer, each new geolocation from the device will be added to it, and then plugin will determine the geometric center based on all the locations in the buffer.

Are there any other advanced plugins? Yes, some Cordova plugins are focused on being activity based and will detect if you are walking, stopped, moving, etc. These plugins tend to work as apps that can be backgrounded. Feel free to browse the Cordova plug-in directory here.

Does using PhoneGap improve geolocation?

No, using PhoneGap or Cordova doesn’t change how you retrieve geolocation information from within a mobile application and it doesn’t improve accuracy. You still use the W3C HTML Geolocation API coding pattern.

The reason why is because PhoneGap runs the HTML/CSS/JS code in a native OS WebView. This is a chrome-less browser with mostly similar functionality as Chrome (Android) and Safari (iOS). There isn’t any additional functionality that would improve accuracy.

Some people have asked me if cordova-plugin-geolocation provides additional functionality. That plugin only works for devices that don’t already support geolocation and then it abides by the W3C Geolocation API spec.

The HTML Geolocation API in the browser also works offline. Yes, it’s true. You can use a web browser offline to get geolocation and even view a map without PhoneGap, here’s an example project that demonstrates the functionality in a number of ways. As long as the GPS on the device is enabled and working, and the user opt’s in at the geolocation-approval prompt then the application will receive GPS location data.

Are there any advantages to using PhoneGap for geolocation?

Yes, there are several potential advantages to using PhoneGap for geolocation. You can retrieve geolocation information while the device screen is locked and/or when the application is running in the background. You cannot do this with a typical web app. As soon as a browser is minimized a web app will stop running even if the GPS is still running.

Another advantage is you can write a PhoneGap plug-in to tap directly into the native OS location API. Taking this approach will give you a greater level of control over the information you are retrieving. And, you have coding tools and access to APIs to better manage the device’s battery life in a way that the HTML Geolocation API cannot deliver. In the case of Android you can tap into significantly greater information such as details on GPS satellites, granular information on device’s internet connection, as well as NMEA strings and more.