4 ms·

The key line in this article: "The disadvantage with this is that you wouldn’t get your location in real-time – it’s processed later." The viability of this se

The key line in this article: "The disadvantage with this is that you wouldn’t get your location in real-time – it’s processed later." The viability of this seems tied to how long 'later' is. Most consumer uses of GPS require quick response times or you'll see a huge dropoff in usage.

sliverstorm 14y ago
But for a lot of purposes – e.g. tracking the locations of animal migration, this could be a huge development. This is where it would really come into its own. From what I've worked out in the past, best-case for battery life today for trackers is to record a coordinate roughly every 4 hours and sleep. Longer than 4 hours, and you have to do a cold lock, which as discussed takes significantly longer. With my GPS unit, this translated to around 3-6 months of battery life with 1000mAh capacity, depending on how good you are at optimizing power.
floppydisk 14y ago
Yes, for products we usually think of us consumer GPS products such as phones and navigation units this won't change much--unless you're willing to listen to your navigation unit's voice yelling at you to make a U-turn onto that road you drove by four hours ago. On the other hand, this will open up new uses for GPS and potentially let you utilize it in a range of applications that just need to record time/position instead of immediately report it to an app/user. In exchange for lack of immediacy, users acquire higher fidelity data. I'm expecting to see this be more relevant in scientific fields than consumer electronics.
wtallis 14y ago
At the very least, I'd love to be able to put my handheld GPS receiver into a low-power "track-only" mode for the times when I'm not actually checking my coordinates. This would also be a nice thing to have integrated into fitness gadgets given that it wouldn't require massively increasing battery size.
StavrosK 14y ago
From the article, it seems to me that "later" is "when you get an Internet connection".
fudged71 14y ago
If I'm running, or plotting a path in general, I don't need the GPS immediately. I think instantaneous GPS is mostly used for navigational and augmented reality purposes. So, I could see there being some consumer uses for it, if you could demonstrate that the power saving was worth the wait.
- 7952 14y ago
  Post processing requires the GPS to store much more data than just a lat/lon pair. It may need more power not less to store the extra data.

sliverstorm 14y ago

But for a lot of purposes – e.g. tracking the locations of animal migration, this could be a huge development. This is where it would really come into its own. From what I've worked out in the past, best-case for battery life today for trackers is to record a coordinate roughly every 4 hours and sleep. Longer than 4 hours, and you have to do a cold lock, which as discussed takes significantly longer. With my GPS unit, this translated to around 3-6 months of battery life with 1000mAh capacity, depending on how good you are at optimizing power.

floppydisk 14y ago

Yes, for products we usually think of us consumer GPS products such as phones and navigation units this won't change much--unless you're willing to listen to your navigation unit's voice yelling at you to make a U-turn onto that road you drove by four hours ago. On the other hand, this will open up new uses for GPS and potentially let you utilize it in a range of applications that just need to record time/position instead of immediately report it to an app/user. In exchange for lack of immediacy, users acquire higher fidelity data. I'm expecting to see this be more relevant in scientific fields than consumer electronics.

wtallis 14y ago

At the very least, I'd love to be able to put my handheld GPS receiver into a low-power "track-only" mode for the times when I'm not actually checking my coordinates. This would also be a nice thing to have integrated into fitness gadgets given that it wouldn't require massively increasing battery size.

StavrosK 14y ago

From the article, it seems to me that "later" is "when you get an Internet connection".

fudged71 14y ago

If I'm running, or plotting a path in general, I don't need the GPS immediately. I think instantaneous GPS is mostly used for navigational and augmented reality purposes. So, I could see there being some consumer uses for it, if you could demonstrate that the power saving was worth the wait.

7952 14y ago
Post processing requires the GPS to store much more data than just a lat/lon pair. It may need more power not less to store the extra data.