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GPS Slowly Changing How Things Are Done
Hemos forwarded me a link to a story at Fast Company about how GPS is changing the way people do business. Several good examples are used, from farmers in Alabama to anti-theft devices. Some notes on GPS' military origins as well. Also worth noting is how GPS, like computers, wasn't adopted overnight, but rather over time as applications were found.
"I'm working late tonight, don't wait up..."
..err, I meant to say, cool!
"Oh really? Then how come your cell phone is in Joe's Tavern with your secretary's pager bobbing over your coordinates?"
"...*dialtone*..."
.unsigged
I have a Garmin GPS V and LOVE it. The turn-by-turn routing has been a huge help. We started looking to buy a house and would print out a ton of MLS listings. Without the GPS we'd have to spend a lot of time planning our route. With the GPS we just punch in the address of the next house and off we go. Very accurate.
Maybe SCO can use GPS to locate *nix code in Linux. So far they sure don't seem to have found much of it otherwise.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
search ebay for the visor prism, - color palm handspring unit - $150 with shipping - used - 65000 colors
nice organizer with handspring expansion slot
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staples, etc. - handspring unit GPS magellan - 12 channel - $49 - new on clearance - software for moving map, location, speed, etc.
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this unit with good mapping software for $29 rivals dedicated color moving map GPS units costing thousands.
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get the spint phone module from ebay for $20 for the visor handspring and now it is a phone too.
Comparable to DirectTV (see slashdot article about them). The signals would be scrambled unless you paid $9.99 per month for a "license fee". They could use the stupidest encryption around, and anybody who broke it would be put in jail and fined. Scramblin it for a military purpose makes sense, but scrambling it to protect "intellectual property" is just stupid. Unit cost for one more person to use it is zero. Like America's Army game, an example of good use of government to keep things sane. A libertarian might argue for donation-based entities, but either way it gets done.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
We worked on a turn-key project over a year ago (before matters got screwed by an acquisition), and one aspect of the product was to track GPS position and record it every so often with a few other real-time parameters, such as speed, direction, and average MPH. The project completed the first product phase of deployment, but actually using the GPS data (while recording WAS working) was slated for phase 2. Unfortunately, I think the whole thing got mothballed because the company receiving the product was not technically inclined one bit. Such a waste of effort. It would have helped cut their yearly expenses down a lot.
As a long-time sailor, I have heard more stories than I can count about vessels lost or damaged because skippers entered bad coordinates for a buoy or harbor entrance. Are rogue tractors next?
"For the moment, they've managed to resist the hottest new GPS tool: tractors that steer themselves. The price is still too high, but the idea is appealing, because with an auto-steer tractor, they would be able to work at night."
without paying an outrageous monthly fee akin to protection money, or calling a company to do it for me for a fee, then gps will have arrived for me.
One stolen car, recovered by my family, not police.
One van, stolen twice, recovered by my family twice, not police.
One 4x4, stolen, never recovered, $10,000 loss, insurance settlement was a joke after months of haggling and threatening to sue.
My father and I use GPS receivers as often as possible. We are both Geocachers.
For those of you that don't know what Geocaching is, here is a quote from the geocaching.com FAQ:
"What is Geocaching?
Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache. "
Wardriving is a perfect example of how GPS has changed the way we look at computer security, especially where wireless LANs are concerned.
Check out wifimaps.com to see if your wlan has been scanned.
Can someone enlighten me as to why a farmer driving a tractor would need to know their location to a 1' accuracy?
The mind boggles. How many people are going to accept a system that lets their insurance company track everywhere they drive? Yes, I'm surely more obsessive about this kind of thing than Joe Average, but surely you don't have to be a privacy nut to have some issues with this.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Not to shoot you down or anything but I work specifially with GPS. The GPS C/A code broadcast on L1 (1.57542 GHz) has never been encrypted. The military simply encoded ephemerides for the GPS satellites that were inprecise (this was called "Selective Ability") onto the L1 signal. This led to a user range error of ~30 meters. After this was turned off in 2001 the error went down to ~3 meters. There has always been the PPS ("Precise Positioning Service") P-code signal on the L2 frequency (1.22760 GHz). This is actually encrypted, and is what the military uses in its. Acurracy with this service can be in the range of centimeters (low dynamics case). Working with the L2 signal requires a security clearance and a bunch of goverment red-tape. In the next 10 years there is going to be an explosion of GPS tech. First off the EU is putting up Galileo, which will double the number of SV's orbiting the earth (more satellites in view = better positioning accuracy). Althought the signal structures are not the exact same, because they will be broadcasting at similar carrier frequencies designing a dual use receiver will be a piece of cake. Also GPS is being heavily upgraded. They are adding a third signal with M-code(L3), and adding C/A code on L2. There is also talk about increasing the signal strength, which is a great boon to indoor GPS and using the GPS signal for remote sensing applications. All in all it is a great industry to be in.
I would think most cellphones are (or at least will be) this way. GPS is something that is already there (due to the E911 thing), so why not make it available to the cellphone users so they can use it and you can claim it as a feature and say "our phone is better because theirs doesn't let you see where you are with our IntelliGPS HyperLocater technology." If it's not common now, I think it will be. I for one would prefer to buy a phone that would let me see the GPS data over one that wouldn't, all else being equal. Wouldn't you?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
which is a great boon to indoor GPS
Fantastic !! I will always be able to locate the TV remote no matter where it hides on me. Now wheres that fscking GPS receiver.....
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
That's "GNU Public Slayings".
Look, if it hadn't been for France bailing your asses out 250 years ago, you'd have continued to have your "country" run by some unelected idiot called George whose only qualification to the job was that his father did it.
Thankfully the French were there to help you defeat King George III, and you avoided that situation.
What will ever happen to human progress if we start all being nice to each other?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I hate to sound pessimistic but since when is something this glaringly obvious considered "worth noting"?
Or maybe, given the topic, my pessimistic little note should be restated to ask how accurate would your GPS unit have to be to measure the size of the rock you'd have to be living under to not know that GPS wasn't adopted overnight?
Goodness. I'm starting to sound as biter as those people who post about the newsworthiness of new articles.
Like utility infrastructure. I work at a water company, and before a contractor burries pipeline, we use RTK (realtime kinematic) GPS to record its location down to 0.04' (or 1cm). So when line locators need to mark facilities its much more accurate. Normal GPS isnt that accurate, but we use base stations and radios to send correction data in real time out to the GPS collection devices.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Look, if it hadn't been for France bailing your asses out 250 years ago, you'd have continued to have your "country" run by some unelected idiot called George whose only qualification to the job was that his father did it.
Hmmm.... let's look at today
unelected? check
idiot? check
called George? check
his father did it? check
Looks like we need France's help once again. LIBERATE US, FRANCE!
FWIW, what cellphones use is generally not GPS, but good old fashioned triangulation. Which, interestingly, means it's probably more accurate than GPS too.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Several good examples are used, from farmers in Alabama to anti-theft devices.
Up here in Canada, farmers have been using it to level their fields for years now. Canada is usually pretty quick to pick up new technologies.
"...because with an auto-steer tractor, they would be able to work at night."
Most tractors these days have headlights. Some of the larger tractors come with enough lights from the factory that it almost feels like daylight when they're all on.
You're not going to see a lot of GPS guided tractors any time soon. There are too many random factors to consider, like random patches of soft soil (mud or sand), animals (my grandfather accidentally ran a lame deer through a combine once... Ick.), debris in the field (rocks, tree limbs, etc), etc.
We'd need optical recognition systems to be good enough to steer around the junk you don't plan for using GPS. Also, some stuff you don't want to steer around, you want to remove it from your path.
GPS is useful with farming, though. Plotting soil samples, and then using that data when applying fertilizer is faily nice.
One of the principle uses of GPS which I have seen in farming is doing year to year yield mapping. Thats where you have sophisticated equipment on your harvester that does realtime yield analysis (ie. figures out how much corn/soy/etc. you are pulling off the specific patch of land you are harvesting) and associates that number with the GPS coordinates the harvester is currently at. That way not only does a farmer know their per acre yield but knows where each of their good/bad yield spots are quantitatively and can either cross reference that with soil maps or other data to determine the reason for the different yields and if possible increase yeilds.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
One university's avionics department put a GPS receiver in each wingtip of an airplane and used them as a bank angle indicator. They just compared the altitude of one wingtip with the altitude of another wingtip.
If you have a ham radio license, you can hook your GPS to a transmitter and experiment with tracking yourself and things. The telemetry standard used for this also allows flagging your position with status information (e.g. "on duty") and weather information. See http://www.findu.com to track hams who are doing this, or google for "APRS".
Just mark your car, ride miles away, and when you're ready to go back, just follow the arrow. No parking near landmarks to remember where the car is.
"Imagine," he says, "the end of property crime. Everything that has any value and could be stolen -- a car, a laptop, a piece of construction equipment" (not to mention every ship, plane, truck trailer, and toddler) -- "everything like that will know its location and be able to report it. We can go even further: You tell your laptop that it should only find itself at your office or your home. And if it finds itself in a car trunk, it wakes up, notices that it's in the wrong place, calls your cell phone, and says, 'Hi, this is your laptop. I'm at this location on this map you see. Is that okay?'"
That instantly made me think of the Phrack article on the Low Cost and Portable GPS Jammer. Never know when that baby's going to come in handy.
If these walls could talk they'd probly still ignore me. --MF DOOM
You can add your "buddies", and then do things like "where is joe" (down to around 2 blocks) or "find nearest friend" amongst them all. Still haven't really found a practicle use for it, but I guess that's also part of the point of the article: Give users the option, and eventually they'll figure out innovative uses for it.
One of the things that I love about GPS data is that they've pretty much decided on a standard -- the NMEA data format. When I first got my Navman GPS for my iPAQ, I thought it was cool. I thought that the included navigation software was cool, and I thought that seeing my exact coordinates was cool. That could have been the end of it, and I would have been happy.
However, most GPS devices dump their data out in a standard CSV format. This makes it very easy for 3rd party software developers to treat a GPS device as a commodity. Rather than dealing specifically with Garman / Navman / etc, they just read the standard. It's great.
It also makes it trivial to write your own apps that interface with a saved data file. I wrote a really small app to overlay a car trip on a map, including red dots where I stopped. Now you can really say, "I'm serious -- look at how bad traffic was!" I've heard of other innovative programs, too, like correlating the timestamp on a picture from a digital camera with the GPS log to give you the coordinates where the picture was taken.
The most useful GPS data is the "RMC" string:
If you're interested, the data format is here.
It all goes downhill from first post
We had to pay $60,000 for a rack mount GPS unit for the research ship I was on. We only got 2 or 3 satellite fixes and even then that was for only a handful of hours a day because the constellation wasn't complete. But by cracky we loved it! It was good enough then and by god ... by god... what we wouldn't have done for one of those modern sub $200 contraptions. Oh yea and a full constellation of satellites.
Navigation for scientific research (gravity & magnetic surveys) was interesting. We'd post process and combine a few hours of GPS a day, Transit Sat Nav (crude sat fixes + dead reconing), plus ARGO ranging navigation. The cool thing about ARGO was that it required shore stations where someone had to be by the transmitter for several weeks. And since the cruises were in the Carribean and off Brasil, sitting around a shore station (aka "the beach") for several weeks was pretttty fine.
Sure, as long as my wife can't use it to hunt me down. :)
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Actually, the PPS transmits the P(Y) code on both L1 and L2. That's how the military gets better accuracy: the 2 different frequencies experience slightly different amounts of ionospheric delay, and by measuring this difference it's possible to correct for the delay.
more satellites in view = better positioning accuracy
This is not strictly true, since the position accuracy depends a lot on the relative position of the satellites you are taking a fix from (if they're all bunched up then you will experience significant dilution of precision). More satellites in view may increase the likelihood that you'll get a favorable geometric configuration. But it doesn't always, which is why the current GPS constellation is optimized to provide good geometric configurations, instead of to maximize the number of sats in view.
To make matters worse, some cheaper GPS receivers just grab data from the first 4 satellites they detect, and satellites that are directly overhead will have (slightly) stronger signals than their counterparts near the horizon as a result of the smaller amount of propagation loss and atmospheric loss their signals will experience. So there's a good chance that a cheap GPS receiver will take a fix from a bunch of satellites directly overhead (particularly with many more satellites in the sky to form that bunch), even if a more favorable configuration is in view, and end up with a much lower accuracy than they should. That said, I believe that most newer receivers look at all of the satellites in view, and pick the best 4.
Also GPS is being heavily upgraded. They are adding a third signal with M-code(L3), and adding C/A code on L2.
This isn't entirely accurate. M-code will in fact be on transmitted on both the L1 and L2 frequencies, not on L3. You're correct about the extra civilian signal on L2 (designated L2C), although I'm not sure if it's identical to the L1 C/A code. There's also another civilian signal that will be broadcast on L5 - this one will be primarily for aviation use and "safety-of-life" applications. I don't remember what L3 is being used for, but I'm fairly sure it's not going to have any kind of navigation code on it. Check out this article in the Aerospace Corporation's online "Crosslink" magazine for a nice overview of GPS modernization.
You can't seriously tell me you would want Gore running the war against terrorism? We would all be dead by now...
May be we will be more successull finding the weapons of mass destruction. really think that We would all be dead by now...? Some soldiers may be alive. The US external image would be not so bad and US citizens may have keept the right to a judgement in cases of terrorism.
I can't say that GORE would have been better, but I' sure that somewhere there must be a better president.