[MOD] [ALL ROMS] GPS Fix

[Guest Gargan]

"Wiper" is a feature of Qualcomm, this "feature" does what google does and scans local wifi-spots and uploads to their servers for later use in "indoor gps performance" find the settings in /etc/wiperconfig.xml

This also works in conjunction with other Qualcomm apks and libs, check /etc/location.ini. I removed them all, and gps works pretty good with only googles coarse location, gets me 20m from my real position at home. Ofcourse both technologies needs to have help from us users to do the crowdsourcing. The more people that connect their (or other) routers mac / ip-adresses to true gps fix the better ;) That's what we all accept when we enable the "use wireless networks" in location settings.

Edited February 5, 2011 by Gargan

[Guest oh!dougal]

"Wiper" is a feature of Qualcomm, this "feature" does what google does and scans local wifi-spots and uploads to their servers for later use in "indoor gps performance" find the settings in /etc/wiperconfig.xml

This also works in conjunction with other Qualcomm apks and libs, check /etc/location.ini. I removed them all, and gps works pretty good with only googles coarse location, gets me 20m from my real position at home. ...

Went 3 miles away this morning.

Wifi off. GPS off. But "Wireless location" left enabled.

On arrival, used Antennas to locate the tower being used.

Turned on Google Maps, was prompted to turn on GPS, did so, and GPS located me correctly within about 10 seconds.

No Yorkshire, not at the tower, no nonsense.

Seb's DX2, + Wbaw's fix edited to use UK nts and set wiper=0.

Works perfectly as far as I'm concerned.

DX2 on its own was distinctly slower to get a GPS fix.

With Wiper=0 and set to UK nts, I believe that Wbaw's 'fix' makes a great improvement to GPS time-to-fix with Seb's DX2. Without any accuracy compromise.

Edited that way, I highly recommend it.

I used Astro (free in Market, and great), and nothing else, to edit it.

I 'copied' the gps.conf file out of the zip to the sdcard.

Then edited it (with Astro), and saved it.

(I re-opened it to ensure the changes had 'stuck' - they didn't when I tried to edit it inside the zip!)

I then copied the edited file and pasted it back where the original was in the zip, clicking OK to the warning about replacing the existing file.

Then reflashed with Clockwork.

There are LOTS of other ways of doing it; this way isn't hard, has minimal requirements and works for me.

...

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.

Just turn GPS off! ;)

News & Weather's automatic location determination has worked beautifully for me with GPS turned off and wifi turned on (with DX2, JJ7, HH ... ) and, for the avoidance of doubt, even with the modded (wiper off) fix with DX2.

News & Weather, in a town, should not need GPS. Or Wiper. Google's wifi and cell location is perfectly adequate on its own.

But actually, unless you are moving around a lot, my optimisation is to turn off N&W's auto-location and preset my home town into its settings!

And if I'm going to visit somewhere, I'd like to know what weather to expect there, rather than, after I arrive, getting a forecast for what it'll be like there later, probably after I'm on the way home! Auto-location is no good for a forecast for anywhere other than present location. No use for forecasts for a future location.

I'm struggling to remember any app or widget that wanted coarse location (like what town) EVER asking me to turn on GPS (and go outside).

Even Compass shows my street address from wifi.

Edited February 5, 2011 by oh!dougal

[Guest wbaw]

Went 3 miles away this morning.

Wifi off. GPS off. But "Wireless location" left enabled.

On arrival, used Antennas to locate the tower being used.

Turned on Google Maps, was prompted to turn on GPS, did so, and GPS located me correctly within about 10 seconds.

No Yorkshire, not at the tower, no nonsense.

Seb's DX2, + Wbaw's fix edited to use UK nts and set wiper=0.

Works perfectly as far as I'm concerned.

DX2 on its own was distinctly slower to get a GPS fix.

With Wiper=0 and set to UK nts, I believe that Wbaw's 'fix' makes a great improvement to GPS time-to-fix with Seb's DX2. Without any accuracy compromise.

Edited that way, I highly recommend it.

I used Astro (free in Market, and great), and nothing else, to edit it.

I 'copied' the gps.conf file out of the zip to the sdcard.

Then edited it (with Astro), and saved it.

(I re-opened it to ensure the changes had 'stuck' - they didn't when I tried to edit it inside the zip!)

I then copied the edited file and pasted it back where the original was in the zip, clicking OK to the warning about replacing the existing file.

Then reflashed with Clockwork.

There are LOTS of other ways of doing it; this way isn't hard, has minimal requirements and works for me.

Just turn GPS off! ;)

News & Weather's automatic location determination has worked beautifully for me with GPS turned off and wifi turned on (with DX2, JJ7, HH ... ) and, for the avoidance of doubt, even with the modded (wiper off) fix with DX2.

News & Weather, in a town, should not need GPS. Or Wiper. Google's wifi and cell location is perfectly adequate on its own.

But actually, unless you are moving around a lot, my optimisation is to turn off N&W's auto-location and preset my home town into its settings!

And if I'm going to visit somewhere, I'd like to know what weather to expect there, rather than, after I arrive, getting a forecast for what it'll be like there later, probably after I'm on the way home! Auto-location is no good for a forecast for anywhere other than present location. No use for forecasts for a future location.

I'm struggling to remember any app or widget that wanted coarse location (like what town) EVER asking me to turn on GPS (and go outside).

Even Compass shows my street address from wifi.

I don't mess around turning gps on & off. Any app or widget that wants any location info when you have gps turned on will try to use gps, if that fails it gives an error. With these settings it never seems to fail & it's always fast. If you have gps turned off, they wont ask you to turn it on, but they'll try to use it if it's turned on.

Edited February 5, 2011 by wbaw

[Guest wbaw]

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...

Google's supl server seems fast & providers may limit their servers to users on their network. Orange UK has a supl server, but you can only use it on Orange UK.

I did a search for other supl servers, didn't find much, I found the Nokia one but it was in forum posts advising people to switch to Google for speed.

[Guest cbarb]

I have tested this out on my phone, I removed the wiper.apk ages ago and didn't realise what it did. I assumed that location was only available through GPS.

I had become really frustrated with the GPS not connecting in the house at all and taking literally 10 minutes when moving in the car. I uploaded this fix and it takes about forty seconds in the house, accuracy is about the same. It's almost instant in the moving vehicle, saving me lots of time and stress.

Hopefully the wiper.apk is part of all the roms as standard so it will go back on when I reflash to add the wifi location that everyone is mentioning.

[Guest oh!dougal]

...

Hopefully the wiper.apk is part of all the roms as standard so it will go back on when I reflash to add the wifi location that everyone is mentioning.

You already have location-by-wifi (and transmitter mast) - thanks to Google.

It'll be interesting to see if you think it works as well after you have restored Wiper ... ;)

[Guest wbaw]

You already have location-by-wifi (and transmitter mast) - thanks to Google.

It'll be interesting to see if you think it works as well after you have restored Wiper ... ;)

When GPS is turned on there is no network location, it seems to turn it off unless wiper is enabled in gps.conf.

For me, with wiper enabled, it gets the correct location from wifi as soon as the gps icon starts flashing, with wiper disabled & gps enabled I have to wait for a gps lock & for the icon to stop flashing before I get my location shown on Google Maps.

I can't understand why you would want to have wifi turned off & gps turned on, that seems to be almost the only situation which causes your problem. Maybe in a rural area, indoors with no gps signal & no wifi it could cause a problem, but you're going to struggle to get any kind of location in that situation anyway.

I'm a professional developer & linux server admin, I get paid well to optimise linux config files, this is a really simple one & I've tested the settings for two weeks. It's like you're constantly trying to find any possible fault to criticise any of my work I've posted here. I'm going back to getting paid for what I do, nobody complains more than the man who got something for nothing.

[Guest popoyaya]

I've been testing this indoors with gps on & wifi off (as i always use 3g) with wiper=0 and wiper=1.

With wiper=1 google maps would quickly locate me at the nearest tower several streets away and refuse to budge (even with gps on).

With wiper=0 i was located at my exact street within a few seconds but then would jump around the neighbouring streets, (probably due to indoor satellite connection issues).

What was interesting to me though was that if i ran GPS Status just prior to maps, it would quickly lock onto 8-10 satellites and then running maps would give me the exact precise location instantly, every time (with wiper on or off).

What I don't understand is why running GPS Status first makes such a big difference. Surely the GPS should work just the same with maps?

[edit] just noticed assisted gps was unticked. it gets a perfect fix now withn 10 seconds with wiper on or off.

Edited February 6, 2011 by popoyaya

[Guest oh!dougal]

I've been testing this indoors with gps on & wifi off (as i always use 3g) with wiper=0 and wiper=1.

With wiper=1 google maps would quickly locate me at the nearest tower several streets away and refuse to budge (even with gps on).

With wiper=0 i was located at my exact street within a few seconds ....

[edit] just noticed assisted gps was unticked. it gets a perfect fix now withn 10 seconds with wiper on or off.

Aha!

I'm running Seb's DX2. Which has no assist GPS on/off setting.

And it behaves EXACTLY as you describe with wiper=1 ---- which is pretty bloody useless for navigation and consequently why I reckon it needs to be set to 0

The interesting point being that DX2 (the Chinese X880 production rom) is EITHER turning AGPS off (over-ruling the conf file setting) OR its AGPS (if its there) is non-functional. (I had actually ASSumed that the .conf setting would just turn on AGPS ... doh!)

Hence the learning point is that the posted 'fix' file is NOT equally suited to "[ALL ROMS]".

If you have an AGPS option and turn it on, then the wiper setting doesn't matter.

But if your rom (like DX2) doesn't have an AGPS setting, then the conf setting of wiper becomes very important (and you really should edit the file to set it to 0 !)

Thanks to Popoyaya for the clue to this conundrum!

What was interesting to me though was that if i ran GPS Status just prior to maps, it would quickly lock onto 8-10 satellites and then running maps would give me the exact precise location instantly, every time ...

What I don't understand is why running GPS Status first makes such a big difference. Surely the GPS should work just the same with maps?

Anytime GPS starts up, the better that it already knows whereabouts it is, the quicker it can get its "fix". This is what AGPS, wiper, and Google's wifi/tower location estimates are all about.

By getting a very recent accurate fix (40m or better, probably) from GPS status, when Maps goes to GPS, it already has a VERY good approximation of where it is, (better than any 'coarse location' estimate), so the fix is basically instant.

Edited February 6, 2011 by oh!dougal

[Guest deepmenace]

id love to know whats up with the gps in this phone. some very strange errors.

at home i get a great gps fix.

when im in the car i get a great gps fix.

when im at work it pushes me around the town with a very wide fix area.

at my brothers it fails to fix and puts me somewhere using cell location i think.

bizarre.

im not THAT bothered as it works in the car mostly

[Guest oh!dougal]

id love to know whats up with the gps in this phone. some very strange errors.

at home i get a great gps fix.

when im in the car i get a great gps fix.

when im at work it pushes me around the town with a very wide fix area.

at my brothers it fails to fix and puts me somewhere using cell location i think.

bizarre.

im not THAT bothered as it works in the car mostly

From here, I can't quite make out which rom you are running, whether or not you have applied wbaw's "faster fix", or whether you have edited it as I have suggested for best use with DX2 and possibly some other roms ... :P

The Blade's GPS can work brilliantly.

[Guest 90180360]

The Blade's GPS can work brilliantly.

Mine does, without any fix.

I've used MyTracks when going jogging and on a few hikes and it was always very precise, no problems with forests, gorges, etc. even though I put it in airplane mode to conserve battery.

[Guest Ficus]

faster fix app (not done by me): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=825717

[Guest mankulito]

how to uninstall this crap?? my gps apps does not work anymore!! shows me i'm in different state!

[Guest oh!dougal]

...

I'm a professional developer & linux server admin, I get paid well to optimise linux config files, this is a really simple one & I've tested the settings for two weeks. It's like you're constantly trying to find any possible fault to criticise any of my work I've posted here. I'm going back to getting paid for what I do, nobody complains more than the man who got something for nothing.

how to uninstall this crap?? my gps apps does not work anymore!! shows me i'm in different state!

I actually think its very helpful indeed -- BUT -- for at least some roms, it may be necessary to disable Wiper to get GPS to work properly when away from wifi.

The unedited version is NOT ideal for ALL roms in ALL locations worldwide.

It is definitely helpful to edit the commenting so that the only uncommented-out (the one NOT starting with #) nts line is for your nearest nts server.

I also think it may need to be pointed out that there is a need for either 'mobile data' or wifi to be turned on (and connecting) for assistance to work.

Just look at the .conf files at the beginning of this thread - a lot of it is about using web resources! You can't access them without a working datalink! (And that might be what confuses Wiper.)

But of course, after you have got a good fix, even once with that rom, that data can be used in future (lacking anything newer) as a first guess to start GPS's progressively refined estimates of your position.

It rarely starts with absolutely no idea at all, but I think that might be when it puts you in Yorkshire, or the centre of your own country,

Edited February 10, 2011 by oh!dougal

[Guest Ricey155]

bookmarked for later options, anyone had major success with this ?

reading through a few pages still in development

[Guest miguel23]

sorry for noob question, how do I flash this, tried searching but got a bit confused. Do I need to reboot into recovery mode or is this just an install rom?

Many thanks

Michael

Right, managed to reboot into recovery mode, flashed zip but it comes back with:

'amend scripting is no longer supported. Amend scripting was deprecated by Google in Android 1.5. It was necessary to remove it when upgrading ClockwordMod 3.0 Gingerbread based recovery. Please switch to Edify scripting (updater-script and update-binary) to create working update zip packages.

Installation aborted.'

So is this a problem with my phone or with the zip file?

Again, many thanks

Edited May 20, 2011 by miguel23

[Guest camille1462]

Hi

have you managed to make it work for Clockwork v3?

[Guest ultron]

does this work with CM7? if yes how to install it

[Guest chun]

ok ,thank you

[Guest Yuccaman]

This sort of file cannot be flashed with Clockworkmod 3 and above as I assume its based on the old scripting style.

So, choices are:

1 - Downgrade to CWM 2.x and flash

2 - Manually edit / copy the file using some form of Root tool - I did this yesterday using a combination of AntTek Explorer, which lets you browse to the system directory if you're rooted and Remount, which lets you mount System as a RW partition....

Note: Couldn't get the file on System to EDIT within AntTek, so simply copied it to the SD card, edited from there, and used AntTek to copy the file from SD back to System.

Have only briefly experimented with GPS since, but I do seem to get a faster fix - so all is good....

Cheers to wbaw for his work with this !!!!!

[Guest Len Ash]

This sort of file cannot be flashed with Clockworkmod 3 and above as I assume its based on the old scripting style.

So, choices are:

1 - Downgrade to CWM 2.x and flash

2 - Manually edit / copy the file using some form of Root tool - I did this yesterday using a combination of AntTek Explorer, which lets you browse to the system directory if you're rooted and Remount, which lets you mount System as a RW partition....

Note: Couldn't get the file on System to EDIT within AntTek, so simply copied it to the SD card, edited from there, and used AntTek to copy the file from SD back to System.

Have only briefly experimented with GPS since, but I do seem to get a faster fix - so all is good....

Cheers to wbaw for his work with this !!!!!

Just adb push the .conf file. Takes 10 seconds + reboot.

(Note that Wiper.apk is not installed on SS ROMs)

Edited May 21, 2011 by Len Ash

[Guest tox!c]

i've read the whole thread and im a bit confused.

I'm using SS RLS 5. Lean said that WIper.apkt is not installed in that rom. I was getting Skipton bug until i wrote wiper=0 (wifi was off all the time, data on and network positioning in menu tap was off too). Although I was changing other lines too, so I cant confirm that and wiper=0 should do nothing because i dont have wiper.apk, network location was off and wifi was off (only data was enabled).

Now, google maps is locating me quickly and well (gps only) and any changes in gps.conf (intermediate pos=1, tresshold=0 etc, wiper on, wiper off) seems to do nothing (always rebooting)

Is it there any way to clean cache data and do a cold start? I think cold starts are better for testing. I'll apreciate if i can clean cache manually instead of using apps (i used status gps to clean agps data and only enabling gps, wifi and data are disabled, im getting insta location in google maps. I did a reboot after agps data was erased)

The last thing i wanna know is if agps in enabled by default. I dont have any option tab to in settings.

Edited June 24, 2011 by tox!c

[Guest tox!c]

I did some research because I was misunderestanding the difference betwen agps and "pseudo gps location using network"

I logcated some info: 1st log using gps stats, 2nd and 3rd using google maps

Data on, gps off. Forced GPS Status to download a gps data: D/GpsLocationProvider( 236): NTP server returned: 1309045675279 (Sun Jun 26 01:47:55 GMT+02:00 2011) reference: 1310935 certainty: 364 system time offset: -205

E/libloc ( 236): loc_eng_inject_time: GPS not initialized.

Data on, gps on, network location off: Google maps doesn't get ntp info. After few seconds i was correctly located (warm start i think)

Data on, gps on, network location on: Google maps. D/Provider( 237): NTP server returned: 1309046961058 (Sun Jun 26 02:09:21 GMT+02:00 2011) reference: 80137 certainty: 75 system time offset: 1290

D/GpsXtraDownloader( 237): Downloading XTRA data from http://xtra3.gpsonextra.net/xtra.bin I was "almost" instantly located in my nearest cell tower before it changed to my correct location

ok, in conclusion. Agps doesn't work if you dont force to download data with gps status or have enabled network location (activating network location meas that you will be located to your nearest tower which i dont like but its the only way...)

eventually, when google maps download the agps info, gps status still says AGPS data age (---) The only way to make it show something is to download agps data by itself

Edited June 26, 2011 by tox!c