Guest Simon O Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Very strange. Since I set ACCURACY_THRES=5000 it at least puts me in the right city straight away, with ACCURACY_THRES=0 it'd often put me in Skipton at first. Maybe you're in too built up an area & it cant see gps. If you leave google maps open does it get your real location after a few seconds? At home indoors it took a minute. Outside it was literally seconds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oh!dougal Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) ... Anyway, my phone seems to find it's location in about 2 seconds indoors with these settings, it could sometimes take much longer with the defaults. Yes, location works beautifully INDOORS. Because it can gets its location from locating your wifi network -- see Seb's Santa Cruz in London remarks above! But GPS itself works very poorly, if at all, indoors! With wiper turned off I started Navigation indoors and before I could access the destination select page, it was overlaid with an "obtaining location" message. Even though I had wifi active at that point. The message persisted for maybe a minute as I moved towards the front door. But that message cleared in about 5 to 10 seconds maximum after I walked outside. Pretty good. I selected a local destination (its close to 50/50 whether its best to turn right or left). It gave me a route. I turned off wifi. No change. Then (with wifi off) I walked in the opposite direction to that directed, and was promptly rerouted to go round the block in that direction - it had detected my 20 metres or so of movement without access to wifi. This time it never put me at the cell-tower... My conclusion - it seems like this works on 2.2 after altering the setting to wiper=0 While I was editing the .conf file (on the phone with Astro), before reflashing, I also changed to the uk nts server. The previous comment about Clockwork 3 made me wonder if the zip's script might be in the oldest style, which v3 refuses to support. Edited February 4, 2011 by oh!dougal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 I must admit I'm still confused. Is it a good idea to use this fix, or not? ;) Do you have a problem with gps taking a few seconds to find your location? If so, use it. Would you have a problem with it not showing a very accurate location for a few seconds (probably for less time that it'd take to get a gps fix before)? Then don't. If anybody's interested I can do a zip with the original gps.conf in, if you want to switch back to how it was before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Its excellent if you live near Skipton like me though and suddenly forget where you are ;) Just won't have to go anywhere else or it could get confusing. Good job us northerners don't get out often ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oh!dougal Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 I must admit I'm still confused. Is it a good idea to use this fix, or not? ;) With 2.2 the file would be MUCH better if altered. It might be fine with 2.1 - I don't know. If you are using Clockwork v3 - for now, it seems its not for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) Yes, location works beautifully INDOORS. Because it can gets its location from locating your wifi network -- see Seb's Santa Cruz in London remarks above! But GPS itself works very poorly, if at all, indoors! With wiper turned off I started Navigation indoors and before I could access the destination select page, it was overlaid with an "obtaining location" message. Even though I had wifi active at that point. The message persisted for maybe a minute as I moved towards the front door. But that message cleared in about 5 to 10 seconds maximum after I walked outside. Pretty good. I selected a local destination (its close to 50/50 whether its best to turn right or left). It gave me a route. I turned off wifi. No change. Then (with wifi off) I walked in the opposite direction to that directed, and was promptly rerouted to go round the block in that direction - it had detected my 20 metres or so of movement without access to wifi. This time it never put me at the cell-tower... My conclusion - it seems like this works on 2.2 with the setting wiper=0 While I was editing the .conf file (on the phone with Astro), I also changed to the uk nts server. The previous comment about Clockwork 3 made me wonder if the zip's script might be in the oldest style, which v3 refuses to support. I suppose it depends on your indoors, how thick your walls are, etc. My phone can see 9 gps satellites right now, in my house (close to a window) & it found them very quickly, according to gps status from the market. Prior to this fix it was lucky to find any, in exactly the same location. It wont work with clockwork 3, because it uses the old update-script style which clockwork refuses to support. I tried to use the newer update binary from one of Frankish's themes, but I couldn't get it to work at all in ra-recovery, not sure what I did wrong, it was 2am & I don't use clockwork 3. If anybody would like to fix it for me, then I'll edit the first post with a clockwork 3 compatible version. I'll turn wiper off too & see if that helps. Usually for me, if it reports a wrong location then it'll correct itself quite quickly, your mileage may vary. Edited February 4, 2011 by wbaw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oh!dougal Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 I suppose it depends on your indoors, how thick your walls are, etc. My phone can see 9 gps satellites right now, in my house (close to a window) & it found them very quickly, according to gps status from the market. Prior to this fix it was lucky to find any, in exactly the same location. ... Usually for me, if it reports a wrong location then it'll correct itself quite quickly, your mileage may vary. Are you testing with wifi off? For me, with wifi off and wiper=1 it located me at my cell-transmitter-tower ... But with wiper=0, like I said, its sane, AND pretty snappy. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) Are you testing with wifi off? For me, with wifi off and wiper=1 it located me at my cell-transmitter-tower ... But with wiper=0, like I said, its sane, AND pretty snappy. ;) If I turn wifi off then google maps gives me a warning that I wont get accurate location, tells me to turn wifi on & then it puts me a few hundred yards down the road, in somebody else's back garden, I think it maybe close to a tower. It left me there for a while, then when I picked the phone up it must have found gps & it got my real location. My fix would be to turn wifi on, then I don't have that problem. Seb (or anyone else with the wrong location problem) does turning wiper off fix it? Dougal, how good is it at finding location indoors with wifi on & wiper off? I didn't test every setting in isolation, just tried setting them all & it seemed to work better for me... Edited February 4, 2011 by wbaw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pellonet Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Do you have a problem with gps taking a few seconds to find your location? If so, use it. Would you have a problem with it not showing a very accurate location for a few seconds (probably for less time that it'd take to get a gps fix before)? Then don't. If anybody's interested I can do a zip with the original gps.conf in, if you want to switch back to how it was before. That's a good idea, then everyone can make a decision without having to commit or re-flash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oh!dougal Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 If I turn wifi off then google maps gives me a warning that I wont get accurate location, tells me to turn wifi on & then it puts me a few hundred yards down the road, in somebody else's back garden, I think it maybe close to a tower. ... Dougal, how good is it at finding location indoors with wifi on & wiper off? With wifi on (wiper off), hand-held in a south-facing ground floor bay window, within about 10 seconds GPS Status reported a fix on 5/5, and after another 10 secs or so 6/6. Reported error (uncertainty) came down from 100 metres to about 40 metres (constantly varying!) Away from the windows GPS doesn't work indoors here! Try Antennas (free from Market) to show you where it thinks you are getting your signal from (and see if that is a few hundred yards down the road...!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oh!dougal Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 If I turn wifi off then google maps gives me a warning that I wont get accurate location, tells me to turn wifi on & then it puts me a few hundred yards down the road, in somebody else's back garden, I think it maybe close to a tower. It left me there for a while, then when I picked the phone up it must have found gps & it got my real location. My fix would be to turn wifi on, then I don't have that problem. .. But the whole point of GPS is to give you your position, when you are out of wifi coverage! (And that can be simulated by turning off wifi, I believe.) Sure, let it use whatever assistance it can to put GPS "in the right ballpark" so that it can get its first fix faster, but it seems to me that wiper prefers the network location to the gps one! And my guess would be that if it can't get a network location (for whatever reason), then wiper puts you in the 'middle' of your country ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Krain Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Just to change your ntp-server you can use Faster Fix from xda. I am using "de.pool.ntp.org" (Germany) which reduced the time to get my position close to zero. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) But the whole point of GPS is to give you your position, when you are out of wifi coverage! (And that can be simulated by turning off wifi, I believe.) Sure, let it use whatever assistance it can to put GPS "in the right ballpark" so that it can get its first fix faster, but it seems to me that wiper prefers the network location to the gps one! And my guess would be that if it can't get a network location (for whatever reason), then wiper puts you in the 'middle' of your country ... I'm not sure that anybody else cares where it gets it's location from, as long as it works & is fast. I know I don't. It looks like the mobile phone/3g location part of wiper doesn't work well & will put you next to your nearest transmitter. However the wifi part does work & it'll (often) find your location from a wifi network if you're indoors & can't get a good gps fix. Outside it should help to speed things up a bit by finding your rough location, even if it's just the closest mobile transmitter. In most cities I think it'd be hard to find a place with absolutely no wifi networks in range, you don't need access to the wifi networks for it to help your phone to find it's location. From my experience gps will override any location that wiper gives, if you can get a gps fix & as soon as you get one. Wiper should also help you to get a gps fix faster, if it already knows roughly where you are & what time it is, it can find the gps satellites faster. The point of wiper & wifi location is to give you your position when you are out of gps coverage (or before it can get a fix)! I don't think wiper causes the Skipton bug, I think that only happens with wiper turned off, intermediate position on & accuracy threshold 0 when you can't see any gps satellites. Did you try wiper on & INTERMEDIATE_POS=0 with wifi turned off? I'm sure it is the INTERMEDIATE_POS=1 that causes an inaccurate location to be shown quickly, but maybe it's just for gps location, rather than the wiper location. I'm not sure wiper can report it's accuracy (correctly) so it might only affect gps & leave you with the wiper supplied location for longer. Needs testing. I just stuck with settings that worked well for me, I had a few failed attempts that brought up the Skipton bug, but I didn't test every possible combination of settings & possible locations. Edited February 4, 2011 by wbaw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest oh!dougal Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) It looks like the mobile phone/3g location part of wiper doesn't work well & will put you next to your nearest transmitter. However the wifi part does work & it'll (often) find your location from a wifi network if you're indoors & can't get a good gps fix. Ummm. Its the tower you are using, which is not necessarily always your nearest - and can change unpredictably, as Antennas demonstrates. The important thing though is that you don't need wiper to get positioning by wifi! It seems that Google does that for you. With wiper on, it seemed unshakably determined (in the open air) that I was at the transmitter tower (when I know for certain I was over a mile away). With wiper off, everything works pretty damn well. Did you try wiper on & INTERMEDIATE_POS=0 with wifi turned off? I'm sure it is the INTERMEDIATE_POS=1 that causes an inaccurate location to be shown quickly, but maybe it's just for gps location, rather than the wiper location. I'm not sure wiper can report it's accuracy (correctly) so it might only affect gps & leave you with the wiper supplied location for longer. Needs testing. Indeed but for now, turning off wiper does seem to work. Try it! (First! ;) ) Edited February 4, 2011 by oh!dougal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Simon O Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Turning wiper off works for me too. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) The thing is, I haven't ever got that problem at all with wifi turned on, not saying it couldn't happen, but I've used these settings for a few weeks & it hasn't happened to me so far, except if I turn wifi off & stay in a place where I can't get any gps coverage. It seems to use the cell tower location as a last resort. I think having wiper on does have benefits & it only seems to cause a problem if you turn wifi off. I'm testing with wiper=0 now anyway... The problem that I was trying to fix is that widgets, like news & weather were struggling to find my location (to the nearest city) before. I don't mind if it gets it up to a few miles out & I'd rather it didn't turn gps on for long every few hours. Edited February 4, 2011 by wbaw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) turning wiper off does seem to disable network positioning on google maps if I have gps turned on (but it works with gps off), it seems to wait for a gps fix to report my location, although it still gets the gps fix quite quickly. can you test it somewhere where you can't get any gps, dougal? I live in a small house with thin walls. these settings also need testing... INTERMEDIATE_POS=1 ACCURACY_THRES=100 ENABLE_WIPER=1[/codebox] [codebox]INTERMEDIATE_POS=0 #ACCURACY_THRES=5000 ENABLE_WIPER=1 I've only tried ACCURACY_THRES=0 (Skipton) & ACCURACY_THRES=5000 (seems to be right city, for me). I'm not sure what units it's in or anything, I'd guess metres, but it's only a guess. Edited February 4, 2011 by wbaw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) Ummm. Its the tower you are using, which is not necessarily always your nearest - and can change unpredictably, as Antennas demonstrates. The important thing though is that you don't need wiper to get positioning by wifi! You do need wiper to get positioning by wifi, that is the app that does it. If you disable wiper in gps.conf, then you'll still use wiper if you turn gps off & have network positioning turned on, because then your phone wont use any settings in gps.conf & wiper is the app that does network positioning. If you turn wiper on in gps.conf & have gps enabled, then it'll use the network position until it can find gps, otherwise it'd just say 'waiting for location'. As soon as you get a gps fix, it reports your correct location. It may also help to get a proper gps fix a little faster. If you disable wiper in gps.conf & have gps enabled, it doesn't seem to report any position if it can't get a gps fix, it'll only use (a)gps for position. Obviously network location by cell tower doesn't seem to work correctly & puts you next to whichever one you're using (which will usually be within a couple of miles). If you have wifi turned on, in a built up area, then it should be almost as accurate as gps, before you get a gps fix. It may also help to get a gps fix a little faster. So, I'm leaving it as is, I'd suggest turning wifi on, rather than wiper off. Edited February 4, 2011 by wbaw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Just noticed these settings in the latest Orange UK rom, maybe this will speed it up if you're in the UK, especially if you're still on Orange... SUPL_HOST=agpss.orange.co.uk SUPL_PORT=7275 I'm trying that out next. It seems a few different versions of gps.conf are in different roms, the unmodified orange rom even has it under a different name, gps_ouk.conf. So it's not really possible to do a one size fits all undo zip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Sebastian404 Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 It seems a few different versions of gps.conf are in different roms, the unmodified orange rom even has it under a different name, gps_ouk.conf. So it's not really possible to do a one size fits all undo zip. the orange SUPL server is only accessable if you are on orange's network... not much use if you have a different SIM card.... in terms of a new udate zip, you could include the library that accesses that gps.conf file too.. I forget what its called but do a 'grep -r 'gps_ouk' in the /system/lib directory and you'll find it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 the orange SUPL server is only accessable if you are on orange's network... not much use if you have a different SIM card.... in terms of a new udate zip, you could include the library that accesses that gps.conf file too.. I forget what its called but do a 'grep -r 'gps_ouk' in the /system/lib directory and you'll find it. You might be right, I cant telnet to that port over my cable connection. I'd just updated it too ... I'd better remove that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest cbarb Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Might be a stupid question... I am currently using Pauls Modaco Rom R3, I am waiting for R12 from the kitchen before I re flash the phone but in the meantime I noticed you mentioning "wiper", I am guessing this is some sort of routine for wifi connectivity? but is this related to an apk which I deleted, called wiper.apk? I couldn't find any info on it so I deleted it. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wbaw Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 Might be a stupid question... I am currently using Pauls Modaco Rom R3, I am waiting for R12 from the kitchen before I re flash the phone but in the meantime I noticed you mentioning "wiper", I am guessing this is some sort of routine for wifi connectivity? but is this related to an apk which I deleted, called wiper.apk? I couldn't find any info on it so I deleted it. ;) Wiper gets your location from wireless networks. That probably wont work if you remove the apk, try turning gps off & see if you can still get a location in google maps from the network. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Martin Watson Posted February 4, 2011 Report Share Posted February 4, 2011 I don't have any cell coverage at home in our village near Skipton, but both my phones show a similar thing. My San Fran on wifi indoors behind thick walls (no GPS) first places me in a field near Airedale Hospital, before picking up a correct position based on my wifi. Now if I go down the road with my old K800i running the java google maps, no wifi, no gps, that does the same - first puts me in the field, then gets my position reasonably accurately, I'm guessing by triangulation. Since the field in question contains a tower, might it be possible that the first 'fix' I get is the last tower my phones were registered with? Would make sense, seeing as I pass that tower on the train just before getting home. Martin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rapidone Posted February 5, 2011 Report Share Posted February 5, 2011 Here's a list of local time servers http://www.pool.ntp.org/zone/europe For Germany it's NTP_SERVER=0.de.pool.ntp.org Maybe that speeds it up a little bit. What about using the SUPL Server from the internet provider like SUPL_HOST=supl.vodafone.com SUPL_PORT=7275 or is it 7276 And what about the Nokia SUPL-Server that is used by its navigation system... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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