GPS Input

[pauladdison]

Hi Folks

Within MapRun6 the GPS Input setting gives several options:

Phone GPS (Standard)
Phone GPS Supplementary
Phone GPS (Std) & Suppl

and also Bluetooth GPS and Test Data.

I would imagine that Phone GPS (Std) & Suppl would give the best GPS tracking? Is this a correct assumption?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of the first three options?

Thanks in advance,

Paul

[MichaelRaz]

Paul,  I don't think I can give you a full answer on this but this might clarify some things.  
https://maprunners.weebly.com/supplementary-location-service.html provides a technical description and it also came up in another thread http://maprun.308.s1.nabble.com/Do-you-need-a-simcard-td1192.html#a1194 .  

I leave the setting as both std and supplemental but, with some simple testing, I have not really seen any impact with my iPhone and suspect the main advantages would be with Android.  If I recall I tried it with just Supplemental and a GPS diagnostic tool but saw no difference.  This would not surprise me as the iPhone handles all the GPS stuff and offers it to the application without the flexibility of Android.  To further show this, with a bluetooth GPS connected to the iPhone, you still do not set the App to bluetooth GPS as the iphone does not allow a direct connection - it handles it and presents the data to the app by determining which source is best.

Again - a bit of speculation here so take it with a grain of salt.

[Peter Effeney]

Paul,

Thanks to Michael for the helpful response and links to reference material.

Standard & Supplementary
These settings switch between a couple of software libraries that sit between the location service in Android/iOS and the MapRun6 App. These libraries handle things like starting and stopping location feeds, frequency of updates, quality control of location data, tracking in the foreground (App displaying on the screen) and background (screen blank or another App on the screen).

We were finding some compatibility questions and so decided to use two such libraries. We use them both concurrently, by default... but you can switch either off to experiment. At the current time, the supplementary service is not as sophisticated as the main service. In more recent times, there appear to have been fewer issues ... so we may revert to a single software library in the future.

Bluetooth GPS
Mappers, who use MapRun to assist with their fieldwork, often prefer to use hi-accuracy GPS receivers rather than the GPS hardware in a phone. These GPS receivers connect to MapRun in one of two ways (typically on Android):
- the Bluetooth GPS device connects to an App that receives location data and then makes locations available to other Apps on the phone (like MapRun6), OR
- MapRun6 takes the bluetooth stream of locations directly. This is what happens when you select "Bluetooth GPS"
The first option is recommended as often the GPS App recommended for a particular Bluetooth GPS will have added features, such as RTK (real-time GPS error correction).

Test Data is simply as small track used for auto-testing of the MapRun6 App.

Unless you want to use an external Bluetooth GPS, the default setting is recommended: Phone GPS (Std) & Suppl

Peter

[pauladdison]

Michael Peter

Thanks both for the explanations and links. Very helpful.

Your answers are appreciated.

Paul