Positional: Simple GPS App w/ Coords, Elevation, Speed, Bearing

[tanuki.himself]

Just found this for the first time, installed and working with no issues and shows me everything I want to know quickly and cleanly. Love it - I shall look forward to posting from the equator in Ecuador on the equinox in a couple of weeks

 

[bad luck]

I am in southern Utah, my UTM coordinates are in zone 12S. Your app displays 12N, I just ignore it but thought you might want to know. Thanks for a very useful tool.

 

[mtrewartha]

Hey folks, sorry for the (really, really, really long) hiatus. I'm back to working on this actively, though!

Start your app and it says needs permission for location can be given on next screen. Goes to next screen and sticks looking for location. No way I can find to give permission. Settings only asks about imperial or metric. And try anything else it says to wait till it finds location. Which never happens

Yeah, sorry about that! I think I've fixed that in the newest version on the Play Store... would you mind trying it out and letting me know if it's fixed for you?

Sometimes I want to know my coords and your app is much faster and easier to find them than anything else I have on my phone.
And I love UTM.

Haha that's why I wrote it, so I'm glad to hear that!

Just found this for the first time, installed and working with no issues and shows me everything I want to know quickly and cleanly. Love it - I shall look forward to posting from the equator in Ecuador on the equinox in a couple of weeks

Nice, hope you got a screenshot! I suppose a map screenshot might've been cool to have too, eh?

I am in southern Utah, my UTM coordinates are in zone 12S. Your app displays 12N, I just ignore it but thought you might want to know. Thanks for a very useful tool.

I'm really glad you found this! I researched a bit and it appears there's an inconsistency in the way UTM coordinates are formatted. Apparently, there are two conventions that folks use:

1. Zone number + latitude band: Sounds like you're expecting this one, right? Makes sense.
2. Zone number + hemisphere designation: This is what I've implemented, where "S" is for Southern hemisphere and I'd obviously use "N" for the Northern hemisphere (hence why Utah was showing up with this)

Both seem to be used, but obviously there's an ambiguity when either "N" or "S" is shown. I'll change this up so that it uses approach #1, as that's what the standard seems to be. Thanks again, good find!

 

[mtrewartha]

Just released v2.10.0 to the Play Store!

• Swapped the UTM "N" and "S" hemisphere designations out for latitude band designations (thanks to bad luck for the idea, see above)
• Clarified loading UI (thanks to Spencer for the idea)
• If your location doesn't have certain attributes (as decided by your phone and Google Play Services, not Positional), they're marked with dashes now (also thanks to Spencer)
• Drastically reduced app size, cutting it in half for some folks
• Replaced the red text in the night theme with white text to match Google's shift to "dark mode" themes. If you preferred the red, let me know and I'll consider adding it back in with support for the white as well!

 

[tanuki.himself]

Nice, hope you got a screenshot! I suppose a map screenshot might've been cool to have too, eh?

unfortunately GPS and the 17th century frenchmen who did the geodetic survey at the time don't quite agree on where the equator is and when, so to get the app to read 0'0'0 would have meant a bit of a hike across a closed off car park from the monument.

I did get the altitude up to 4900+m at the mirador de los andes between Arequipa and Chivay, and on the Uyuni salt flats, but i've not managed to break the 5000m mark. Yet....

 

[mtrewartha]

unfortunately GPS and the 17th century frenchmen who did the geodetic survey at the time don't quite agree on where the equator is and when, so to get the app to read 0'0'0 would have meant a bit of a hike across a closed off car park from the monument.

I did get the altitude up to 4900+m at the mirador de los andes between Arequipa and Chivay, and on the Uyuni salt flats, but i've not managed to break the 5000m mark. Yet....

Hah, nice, that's still pretty darn high!

That reminds me... I'd love some feature ideas from folks. There's a ton of stuff I could build, but some direction from the community would be nice. Anyone have ideas?

 

[tanuki.himself]

Hah, nice, that's still pretty darn high!

That reminds me... I'd love some feature ideas from folks. There's a ton of stuff I could build, but some direction from the community would be nice. Anyone have ideas?

At that altitude an oxygen bottle or compressor would have been nice, but probably beyond even the latest iPhone.....

I like things simple so like the app just the way it is, but the other thing I use in another app is local sunrise and sunset times to know how much daylight we have left.

And at high altitudes we always try to work out what the percentage barometric pressure should be so we know how much oxygen we are being deprived of....but of course being deprived the brain isn't always that good with the calculations....

 

[mtrewartha]

Nice, I'll think about working sunrise/sunset and barometric pressure in!

Here's another release, folks! Changes for Positional v2.11.0 include:

• Times for location fixes (thanks again for the recommendation, Spencer)
• Fresh new font (named Basic)
• Improved compass reliability
• Improved layouts to take advantage of various screen sizes more effectively

 

[whitenoise]

Great app! Since you asked for feature requests - Any chance you can incorporate local tidal info into the app? I'd hate to clutter the interface too much so it could be a button that brings up a separate screen for those who want that info. Currently I'm using Tides Near Me but it doesnt work using GPS location so a bit annoying to use.

 

[mtrewartha]

Great app! Since you asked for feature requests - Any chance you can incorporate local tidal info into the app? I'd hate to clutter the interface too much so it could be a button that brings up a separate screen for those who want that info. Currently I'm using Tides Near Me but it doesnt work using GPS location so a bit annoying to use.

I'm not super familiar with tidal info, so can you give me a little more detail? What details would you like to see? Which ones wouldn't you? I'll poke around that app and some others to see what they offer.

 

[whitenoise]

All it is is when the next high and low tides will occur at a certain area. I'm not sure where they get their info from.

Sent from my Nokia 7.1 using Tapatalk

 

[Airmapper]

Seeing the discussion on it I opened it up to explore some since the updates. It's not an app I use frequently but it's in my mind as my go to if I need coordinates.

Since you are fielding requests, one thing I would think some would find useful is add the Degrees, Decimal Minutes (DDM) format. (HDD MM.mmm )

Back when I Geocached quite a bit, this was the default format (still is) and I got quite used to it having entered it in manually on a GPS screen no telling how many hundreds of times. See here, https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=128&pgid=811

While there are much more advanced methods to Geocache with a phone now, I recall directly viewing coordinates was a trick I pulled out from time to time, and in the default format for Geocaching of course. I found a puzzle cache with a bad puzzle by direct viewing coordinates and searching the range of a number I couldn't solve, took weeks for other searchers to figure out how I found it, and by that time they got the owner to fix the puzzle.


Also, on my Samsung Galaxy S7 there is some formatting goofiness on the compass page in portrait orientation, a white space is partially covering the top of the compass letter and the bottom line of text. Also mushed together a bit in the middle.

In landscape it looks all good.

Great app and I like seeing how you improve it and add utility over time, while still keeping it simple. Thanks!

 

[Yuccahead]

I love this app. I use it all the time when I'm on trips. I do notice that most of the time, it doesn't update the position on my phone (an original Pixel). Instead, I have to completely close the app and reopen it.

 

[mtrewartha]

All it is is when the next high and low tides will occur at a certain area. I'm not sure where they get their info from.

Alright, so would you like to see the same basic info: times of last tide and next tide? Would you want to see both the next low tide and next high tide or just whichever one is next?

Seeing the discussion on it I opened it up to explore some since the updates. It's not an app I use frequently but it's in my mind as my go to if I need coordinates.

Since you are fielding requests, one thing I would think some would find useful is add the Degrees, Decimal Minutes (DDM) format. (HDD MM.mmm )

Back when I Geocached quite a bit, this was the default format (still is) and I got quite used to it having entered it in manually on a GPS screen no telling how many hundreds of times. See here, https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=128&pgid=811

While there are much more advanced methods to Geocache with a phone now, I recall directly viewing coordinates was a trick I pulled out from time to time, and in the default format for Geocaching of course. I found a puzzle cache with a bad puzzle by direct viewing coordinates and searching the range of a number I couldn't solve, took weeks for other searchers to figure out how I found it, and by that time they got the owner to fix the puzzle.


Also, on my Samsung Galaxy S7 there is some formatting goofiness on the compass page in portrait orientation, a white space is partially covering the top of the compass letter and the bottom line of text. Also mushed together a bit in the middle.

In landscape it looks all good.

Great app and I like seeing how you improve it and add utility over time, while still keeping it simple. Thanks!

Done! I added the DDM format and the build is rolling out to the Play Store now. I also re-styled the compass accuracy stuff a bit, so I think that funky formatting issue you had should be fixed. Thanks for the idea and bug report!

I love this app. I use it all the time when I'm on trips. I do notice that most of the time, it doesn't update the position on my phone (an original Pixel). Instead, I have to completely close the app and reopen it.

I think I've noticed this a few times on my phone as well. I'll look into it tonight.


I mentioned it above, but I just released v2.12.0 to the Play Store! Here are the release notes:

• NEW: Degrees, Decimal Minutes (DDM) coordinate format was added. Thanks for the idea, @Airmapper !
• NEW: Oxygen Mono font for location and compass readings improves font sizing consistency
• FIXED: The compass layout should no longer be cramped on some phones. Sorry about that!

 

[whitenoise]

Yup, both tides would be useful to have.

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