Foolography Community

Another feature request is that the Quick Settings Menu is extended with the information not only coming from the internal (smartphone) GPS data (the "sending location data..." message), but also with the information coming from the external (Unleashed+external GPS receiver) GPS data, so that the user quickly can see if all camera's/Unleasheds are still receiving the location data. Especially when the camera's are not in direct reach / visual contact of the camera operator, but the smartphone is in direct contact with the camera operator.
Nowadays it is not clear to WHICH Unleashed data is sent using the Quick Settings Menu overview. I would like to see that per Unleashed location data is being received. Not just the message "Sending location data...", because that does not tell me, which camera/Unleashed is actually receiving the location data, and from which source: internal data received or external data received. In other words: there is no feedback coming back from the Unleasheds that the data is actually being received, only that the smartphone is sending location data, but to whom? And which of these "to whoms" is actually receiving the data? Is that acknowledged by the receiving party?

What's the Quick Settings Menu?

You can connect your GPS receiver to your smartphone and set all your connected Unleasheds to get their GPS data from the smartphone. It is not possible to share a GPS receiver between multiple Unleasheds, unless your GPS receiver supports more than one connection at a time.

When you pair a GPS to an Unleashed, the GPS connects directly to the Unleashed, not to the smartphone. Therefore if the GPS is already connected to someone, it won't be available to connect to anybody else.

Damn I'm sorry, I clicked edit instead on quote on your post and accidentally overwrote your post. I'll check if there's an edit history so that I can reverse it.

Andy wrote: ↑

October 5th, 2020, 2:55 pm

Damn I'm sorry, I clicked edit instead on quote on your post and accidentally overwrote your post. I'll check if there's an edit history so that I can reverse it.

Newbie! ;-p

Edit: there must be a database record of it somewhere. Better reverse it, because I have no copy of my version on my computer :(

Andy wrote: ↑

October 5th, 2020, 2:52 pm

You can connect your GPS receiver to your smartphone and set all your connected Unleasheds to get their GPS data from the smartphone.

Yes, I already figured that out. From the smartphone is easy. That is internal GPS data. From an external GPS to the smartphone, is not (yet) possible.

Andy wrote: It is not possible to share a GPS receiver between multiple Unleasheds, unless your GPS receiver supports more than one connection at a time.

That's the problem. I would like to use the external GPS provider and put that one near the window of the concrete-building I am living in. There is not always a GPS fix within my house due to the building structure (blocking satellite signals), so I would like to forward the external GPS data received by the GPS receiver that is placed on the balcony to the smartphone and broadcast that GPS data to ALL Unleasheds, just using ONE SINGLE QStarz Bluetooth Low Energy GPS receiver.

Andy wrote: When you pair a GPS to an Unleashed, the GPS connects directly to the Unleashed, not to the smartphone. Therefore if the GPS is already connected to someone, it won't be available to connect to anybody else.

Yes, I believe that the QStarz BLE BT-1000ST only allows ONE BT connection between devices, so just one Unleashed can be paired/bounded with a single QStarz BLE BT-1000ST.

Well, that is exactly the problem. I can't use the smartphone to be the 'broadcaster" of the external GPS receiver signal when the smartphone itself is being used inside the building which blocks the GPS satellite signals. Bummer!

I hope you design/develop this feature in the near future as well: making the Unleashed App a broadcaster forwarder for ALL Unleashed using a single external source for the GPS devices. You could pair an external GPS receiver to the smartphone or pair another smartphone to the smartphone on which the Unleashed App is running, making the other smartphone the GPS provider. Thus going from smartphone to smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy.
Or increase the number of satellites in space, so I have better reception of GPS signals in house ;-)

It would be a nice to have feature.

Greetings,
Unfoolishly

Unfoolishly wrote: ↑

October 5th, 2020, 4:40 pm

I hope you design/develop this feature in the near future as well: making the Unleashed App a broadcaster forwarder for ALL Unleashed using a single external source for the GPS devices. You could pair an external GPS receiver to the smartphone or pair another smartphone to the smartphone on which the Unleashed App is running, making the other smartphone the GPS provider. Thus going from smartphone to smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy.
Or increase the number of satellites in space, so I have better reception of GPS signals in house ;-)

That's what I said is already possible, or at least I remember reading about people doing in this very forum. They connect a GPS receiver (doesn't even need to be one of our officially supported ones) to their smartphone and that basically overrides the GPS data of the operating system. The GPS data sourced to the Unleashed app then is the GPS data from your receiver, which in the end gets transmitted to any Unleasheds connected to your smartphone.

I haven't ever tested this, so take it with a grain of salt.

Andy wrote: ↑

October 6th, 2020, 9:53 am

Unfoolishly wrote: ↑

October 5th, 2020, 4:40 pm

I hope you design/develop this feature in the near future as well: making the Unleashed App a broadcaster forwarder for ALL Unleashed using a single external source for the GPS devices. You could pair an external GPS receiver to the smartphone or pair another smartphone to the smartphone on which the Unleashed App is running, making the other smartphone the GPS provider. Thus going from smartphone to smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy.
Or increase the number of satellites in space, so I have better reception of GPS signals in house ;-)

That's what I said is already possible, or at least I remember reading about people doing in this very forum. They connect a GPS receiver (doesn't even need to be one of our officially supported ones) to their smartphone and that basically overrides the GPS data of the operating system. The GPS data sourced to the Unleashed app then is the GPS data from your receiver, which in the end gets transmitted to any Unleasheds connected to your smartphone.

I haven't ever tested this, so take it with a grain of salt.

Here it gets tricky: I have read people doing so, using some Android App that mimics the GPS receiver as if the data is coming internally from the device itself, but actually the data from the external GPS device over Bluetooth (Classic or Low Energy) is used instead, BUT...
Is it possible to redirect this incoming data to two Unleasheds and have a third Unleashed use the internal GPS data of the smartphone instead?

I have been playing with the user interface, figuring everything out, but to me it seems that you can only set the options "external GPS straight to the Unleashed" and "external GPS straight to the Unleashed OR smartphone as backup" when you have paired an external GPS device (BT Low Energy only!) to an Unleashed. That is logical, I know, but that way you can't use an external GPS device rerouting over the smartphone per Unleashed, so that some Unleasheds use the internal smartphone GPS data and other Unleasheds use the external rerouted GPS data.
In other words (question): Is is possible in the Unleashed App to setup PER Unleashed an externalized GPS reciever that works through the smartphone, but have the option to not override the internal GPS data coming from the smartphone but also use different sources per Unleashed?
I haven't tested this out yet, but my ASSUMPTION is that it is either one out of two options you have: either ALL Unleasheds use the external GPS device data OR ALL Unleasheds use the smartphone internal GPS data???

Why do I think this? Because you get two extra options available in the UI/UX when an BT Low Energy external GPS device is paired directly to the Unleashed in the smartphone Unleashed App.
I would expect that a fifth and sixth option would be available too: "external GPS device rerouted over the smartphone only" and "external GPS device rerouted over the smartphone PLUS fallback/backup of the internal smartphone GPS data". And these options are available when you have paired any external GPS device directly to the smartphone itself, not directly to any Unleashed as an accessory of a specific Unleashed.

I hope you understand what I want to accomplish? Selectable GPS data providers in the smartphone: either directly paired to any Unleashed (as it is now) or indirectly reroute incoming GPS data from any external GPS receiver paired to the smartphone first and forwarding that data to ANY Unleashed of choice.

Maybe this is already possible? Or maybe not? But I find the UI/UX options somewhat confusing for this case: rerouting over smartphone + rerouting over smartphone AND smartphone as backup. These options are not specifically differentiated in the UI/UX. Only when you have paired an external BT Low Energy device directly to a specific Unleashed (as an accessory) are those options extra in the Unleashed specific UI/UX screen.

I would like to have an overal configuration screen (UI/UX) that manages all GPS providers and that within each Unleashed specific screen(s) the choice is acknowledged which GPS providers you want to select. That way you have more options available in the Unleashed App. Example: what if I set a external GPS device as the source of 2 Unleashed GPS providers, but I set the interval of the first Unleashed to 1 and the interval of the second to 5? That is not possible, because it is the GPS provider itself that is configured this way or not. So somehow - if I had to design it - I would move the GPS Provider settings outside the Unleashed screens and then within the Unleashed screens only do the selection of which GPS providers that specific Unleashed would use, with one exception: you must pair the external BT LE GPS receiver to a specific Unleashed, otherwise it would work, ofcourse).

In other words: a GPS management/configuration screen would help a lot, giving the user an overview of all the GPS providers available. Because you can pair an external GPS receiver PER Unleashed directly OR pair an external GPS receiver PER smartphone and distribute to EACH Unleashed individually, if that is what the user wants.

Greetings,
Unfoolishly

Do you have a use case for this? It doesn't seem useful to me.

Andy wrote: ↑

October 6th, 2020, 12:16 pm

Do you have a use case for this? It doesn't seem useful to me.

I have one for you: in the current designed houses, no GSM-signals, no satellite signals can penetrate into the houses anymore. This is a problem due to new designs and materials used in these new houses. That means: inside your own house, no connection with your mobile phone provider network and no connection with GPS satellites.

This is a serious problem in the new designed houses. Isolation is also a problem, isolated too well, which heats up the house to temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius. Not really healthy temperatures in the baby room, is it? Same as with network and satellite signals. They overdone themselves in designing 'better' houses. These are the 'new' problems of today: designed so well, that other problems rise up from it, which nobody had before :-(

I am not kidding! It's true!

See: https://gsmversterkers.nl/blog/slecht-m ... ouwwoning/ (in Dutch)
See: https://www.gsm-repeater-shop.de/blog/h ... erstaerken (in German)
See: https://www.howtogeek.com/204961/how-to ... l-at-home/ (in English)

I have had several situations in which I had to go outside, wait for a satellite fix on the external GPS signal and then had to go inside. And a hour later the signal was lost again. That's a bummer! Same with smartphone Cellphone-network connection. The more concrete in a building or new isolation materials are used in the walls, the worse the signalling is!

I can easily overcome all this by placing ONE single GPS receiver on the balcony and let it reside there and forward its GPS data towards the smartphone and broadcast it further over all the Unleasheds. That way I do have reception inside the house/appartment/building block. And ALL Unleasheds have GPS reception inside the house!

Yes, it's a pain in the b*tt, I know. But this is caused by the new way of building houses. Not much you can do about it. Except make it possible in the Unleashed App to forward the external GPS signals towards all Unleasheds at once, or only those that have subscribed to that specific GPS provider configured within the App.

Greetings,
Unfoolishly

I understand the problem of not having GPS data inside your house, and I understand the use case of needing a GPS receiver sitting by the window, that can relay GPS data to your phone. My question was more about, what is the use case of having some Unleasheds using data from the phone and others using GPS data from a receiver? You said that those GPS receivers wouldn't have data inside anyway.

And why would you want this?

[...] that some Unleasheds use the internal smartphone GPS data and other Unleasheds use the external rerouted GPS data.