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Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool
- maartn 5y agoWow! But which editor approved to place an iPhone while it’s only available for Android?
- hansel_der 5y agoi suspect most ppl don't know the difference anyway. mvp is still the name of the game.
- yohannparis 5y agoYes, but the designer should know, and that's not professional. Even on the APP website, they use an SVG shape of an iPhone5 (5s, SE 1st Gen).
- dylan604 5y agoIn this context, what does mvp mean?
- mh- 5y agominimum viable product.
- kappuchino 5y agoSeriously, that was an interesting question to research for a moment - is it really an iPhone (from the visual) and if: what type? I think its the version 6 regular size or an SE 2020, because the button until version 5 had a symbol on it and some like the 6s seems to have a different postioning of the power button, others don't seem to have the proportions. And then again, its probably a digital rendering (search for "mockup iphone"). Last but not least the visuals of apple iPhones have been copied countless times to cheap android knockoffs.
- mshockwave 5y agoI'm glad I am not the only person found this amusing.
- DarthNebo 5y agoWe don't even have apps to turn an Android/iOS device into a proper native webcam using UVC over USB2.0 & all attempts at RTSP/other sttreaming protocols just feel hacky & laggy.
- detaro 5y agoand that's relevant how?
- feymese 5y agoandroid dev here. afaik newer device kernels in android implements f_uvc function for it's usb gadget interface but i'm not sure you can use this without root. so, apps can't create this functionality without root. also i'm not sure it's works even apps can get root. i didn't tried yet because my phone not support f_uvc and released kernel sources sucks. src: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/android-5.0.2_r0.2/drivers/usb/gadget/f_uvc.c https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/android-5.0.2_...
- charcircuit 5y agoscrcpy + an app like opencamera works great for me
- DarthNebo 5y agoThat's great for monitoring & setting up shots but still doesn't show up as a native device. What I usually do is hook a stream upto OBS or join via video on the phone & stay muted+silent on my laptop.
- charcircuit 5y ago>still doesn't show up as a native device Yeah it does. You send it to a v4l2 loopback (scrcpy --v4l2-sink) and then it shows up in stuff like Firefox or chrome as a webcam.
- DarthNebo 5y ago
- ochrist 5y agoOff-topic, but why are they showing a graphic of an iPhone, if it's an Android app? (on-topic: I'll install this and try it out)
- lfkdev 5y agoYeah, classic editor who probably doesnt even know the difference and just search for a phone template
- nomercy400 5y agoThe fact that they can use the delay of the satellite signal to predict rainfall, is pretty impressive. It immediately links this app to more data for weather prediction, which might lead to better weather predictions. I wonder how they would measure that on an android phone. Does android expose such low-level delays to the user? Is this not handled by a GNSS chip in hardware, or the OS driver/kernel?
- detaro 5y ago> “The combination of Galileo dual band smartphone receivers and Android’s support for raw GNSS data recording Newer Android versions have fairly low-level APIs - not supported on all phones, but some expose quite a lot of detail.
- imhoguy 5y agoHere is an example of pretty stunning amount of visual detail provided by one of popular GPS data app on Android: https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/lT3TpHarUx89Z7HIf043aUaNDxGqadjgTaORIlGVSjGOKYhWI_UMtJL0cIFa7j82_Uwb=w2134-h1458 https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/lT3TpHarUx89Z7HIf043aU... At least I can confirm it works will all navigation constellations on Samsung S10.
- _Microft 5y agoThis looks a lot like "GPS Status" and it used to be really good. Recent comments on the Play Store do not sound good though.
- joshvm 5y agoIt used to be, but a lot of data got pay/subscription walled I think. I would recommend GPS Test, it's open source, no ads and does just as much. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.gpstest&hl=en&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.gp...
- Melatonic 5y ago
- peter_retief 5y agoDoesn't seem to be finding any data for me?
- michelreij 5y agoApril fools joke?
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoDo explain how you think this is a joke. Genuinely curious.
- Aachen 5y agoThere have been tons of fake apps that claim to do everything from microwaving food to measuring blood pressure. Not everyone knows everything about how things work in principle. I could imagine that GP doesn't know whether this is anywhere near realistic and just assumes it's a joke, maybe?
- mdrzn 5y agoInteresting project, can't wait to help ESA out a bit. Seems like the phone will just track the satellites via GPS, so it's not even that battery intensive. Overnight left charging could provide a lot of data. The fact that there's a leaderboard makes it even more gamified.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoDon't phones use a combination of various global positioning systems these days, including glonass and galileo? Actually how much detailed GPS information can phones access? Most 'common' apps will use the wider 'location services', which combine GNSS data with things like known wifi points and 3/4/5g radio towers to provide better accuracy.
- edent 5y agoIf you install this app, you'll see exactly what GPS data your phone is picking up. https://github.com/barbeau/gpstest https://github.com/barbeau/gpstest I can see GPS, Galileo, Chinese, Russian, and Japanese ones.
- operator-name 5y agoInterestingly the app is made in Unity. A couple of oddities, but having this leader board function was definitely an interesting idea. Sadly either my old phone's GPS is not great or my windowsill's viability to satellites just isn't great. It'll be very interesting to see the data pipelines they have to clean up the mountains of data they're going to be receiving.
- peter_retief 5y agoProbably why I cant get any connections to my phone, from the windowsill!
- punnerud 5y ago
- skbohra123 5y agoCan become very popular if they link it with some kind of crypto mining, just keep your mobile phone at window and earn crypto!
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoSigh. You're putting your processing power to work for a wealthy corporation in the hopes they will give you scraps in return, and / or that those scraps will become worth more in the future. Crypto idealism is long dead, it's all about making money now.
- arlort 5y agoWhat wealthy corporation?
- tempodox 5y agoAlmost as good as having a crypto miner in your anti-virus software, which is practically a contradiction in terms.
- hansel_der 5y agoanti-virus software adds so much attack surface that the joke of it beeing a contradiction in terms is almost overdone. no crypto needed.
- nullref 5y agoReally interesting project.
- aembleton 5y agoLink to install the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iiasa.camaliot https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iiasa.cama...
- Aachen 5y agoOnly on Google store, and an open source google store client (Aurora) just says "failed to fetch app details"... why is it so hard to just put an apk on your website if you actually want people to use your app? > As well as helping to create new Earth and space weather forecasting models, participants are also in with the chance to win prizes They seem to be quite keen on getting users and I'd be interested in the data myself (don't care for prizes), but then they make it a Google ecosystem exclusive? Edit: sent them an email using the address on the contact page. Let's see.
- onion2k 5y agowhy is it so hard to just put an apk on your website Then you'd have to field all the "How do I use this file?" and "Why doesn't this work on my phone?" questions yourself.
- mritzmann 5y agoand _how can i update my app?_
- nmstoker 5y agoOr you just put the apk behind a big obvious button saying "Advanced users" and a checkbox for users to affirm they are comfortable installing/working with APKs themselves, which is required before the download can start. You might still get the questions but at least then support teams can legitimately say that kind of advice is not provided as the users agreed to handle such matters.
- simion314 5y agoYou put a GIANT Google Play link , and a smaller link for alternative stores that will open a plain html page dense of information and with big warnings to scare away the non-tech people.
- weugek 5y agoAndroid GPS API is quite a bit more low-level than in iOS. You can get data about visible satellites where as (to my understanding) in iOS you can't.
- kkfx 5y agoA small personal note: I totally favor scientific crowd-experiment, but ONLY if done in FLOSS and public terms. SmartPhones these days are surveillance devices maintained and paid by the formal owner while they serve far more their vendor and other player behind, with the formal owner as the last in the pyramid. In that sense I have to refuse because I have to refuse the device used even by a formally FLOSS and public experiment. Of course asking to buy or buy and offer sensors devices to the masses is unfeasible BUT it's perfectly feasible, just, needed, asking to IMPOSE open hardware without lock-ins, FLOSS code on them and services with public APIs as a State law, gradually growing to exit actual extremely dangerous and sorry situation. Scientific institutions are among those best qualified to took such public statements. Avoiding them means avoiding part of the Scientific duty, witch is doing their best to improve the society.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoit’s fairly hard to find research participants
- kkfx 5y agoAnything "new" and "that demand a substantial social change" is hard, at least for start and for a not so short period of time... If no one start change never happen, if someone start...
- micromacrofoot 5y agoSoftware developers having been calling for FLOSS for decades at this point, and it's clear that the average person will only use FLOSS if it's mandated or clearly a better product in some way. Posing a fringe ethical dilemma alone will not get it done... the vast majority of people (including people collecting data for research) do not even care a little bit. They have a long list of other problems to solve first, and if FLOSS gets in the way of any of those they'll gladly forgo it.
- kkfx 5y ago
- joecool1029 5y agoIf you really want to get low-level data (past what the GPS status apps give you) Google built their own GNSS logger for android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.location.gps.gnsslogger&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... I recommend turning on Force Full GNSS measurements in android developer settings if you're going to try messing with it.
- mdrzn 5y agoInteresting, I'm wondering why they didn't even mention this availability in their website, I would have turned on that setting just to farm more data for their app.
- throwaway54976 5y agoWhy is the satellite range restricted to a meter? Are the mobiles not capable of better accuracy or is it the limitation of the satellite?
- JaimeThompson 5y agoThe get higher accuracy requires more precise hardware / additional hardware on the receiving end which drastically drives up the cost. Systems like this [1] which you may have seen being used on construction sites allow much higher accuracy. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS
- anfractuosity 5y agoIs it possible to get close to centimetre accuracy without using ground stations like DGPS? Would you get finer resolution if a GPS receiver also used an atomic clock? I thought this was interesting - https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/#difference https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/#differ... the difference between military GPS and civilian GPS sounds like it uses 2 frequencies.
- lallysingh 5y agoEffectively the problem is that the atmosphere (mostly ionosphere) distorts the ranges a bit. Different frequencies distort differently so you can use data from two to compensate. IIRC, used to work in a gps accuracy firm many many years ago
- dghughes 5y agoThis reminds me of something I read long ago when I was just a child. A computer magazine had a project where you used an FM radio, a computer probably a Commodore, and a plotter (who had one of those?!). The FM signal could detect meteor strikes in the atmosphere, you wrote a bit of code, the plotter mapped the strikes.
- omarhaneef 5y agoUsed to be everyone had an FM radio and no plotter. Now everyone has a printer, but no FM radio.
- Moru 5y agoForget the FM radio, people hardly have commuters any more.
- antognini 5y agoTangentially related, but there's another cool app that turns your phone into a cosmic ray detector: https://cosmicrayapp.com/ https://cosmicrayapp.com/ It turns out that cosmic rays pass through your phone more frequently than you might expect.
- lucb1e 5y agoInteresting! How it works: > The application works by detecting lit pixels in the phone’s camera when no light is entering. These pixels are lit as result of cosmic rays, local background radiation, or sometimes just noise.
- aero-glide2 5y agoApp Login page is absolutely terrible.
- lambic 5y agoI miss seti@home.
- luxuryballs 5y agoI had an idea a few months ago that this just made me remember. I was thinking that I could come up with some way of mining crypto but instead of guessing hashes I would be proving that I was actively sending weather/sky data. So people actively participating in the sensor network would get rewarded. Proof of… sky?
- dantodor 5y agoInstalled it, ran it once, found no way to close the app but phone reboot. True, old one, Pixel 3. Next step, uninstall. Pretty neat idea though.