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Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

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Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#41

Post by kappuchino »

maartn wrote: post #2

Wow! But which editor approved to place an iPhone while it’s only available for Android?

Seriously, 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.

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#42

Post by kkfx »

A 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.

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#43

Post by charcircuit »

DarthNebo wrote: post #30
charcircuit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

scrcpy + an app like opencamera works great for me

That'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.

>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.

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#45

Post by hansel_der »

tempodox wrote: post #20
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. 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.

Almost as good as having a crypto miner in your anti-virus software, which is practically a contradiction in terms.

anti-virus software adds so much attack surface that the joke of it beeing a contradiction in terms is almost overdone.

no crypto needed.

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#46

Post by nuccy »

nomercy400 wrote: post #7

The 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?

The idea is interesting, but there are some disadvantages of the app itself (see below). Maybe developers can read this and implement some changes.

- the phone should have non-obscured view of the sky. Thus having a phone charging and logging the data while it is on the desk inside a house doesn't work that well (red or orange indicator of the measurements quality, even near a big window).

- speaking of charging, there are no settings which allow to instruct the app to be dormant and automatically start recording when phone is charging.

- Account and login process is needed to upload the collected data. Why is it even the case? Can't the data be uploaded anonymously with just some unique phone identifier, or without one just relying on coordinates and other GNSS related measurements. Data can be cross-checked with others nearby and outliers can be removed just from that. There is no real need to know my name, email and create a leader-board or at least have an option of anonymous upload.

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#47

Post by joshvm »

_Microft wrote: post #22
imhoguy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here 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/lT3TpHarUx89Z7HIf043aU... At least I can confirm it works will all navigation constellations on Samsung S10.

This looks a lot like "GPS Status" and it used to be really good. Recent comments on the Play Store do not sound good though.

It 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.gp...

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#48

Post by micromacrofoot »

kkfx wrote: post #42

A 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 publi…

it’s fairly hard to find research participants

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#49

Post by joecool1029 »

If 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.and...

I recommend turning on Force Full GNSS measurements in android developer settings if you're going to try messing with it.

Re: Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool

#50

Post by arlort »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #18
skbohra123 wrote: post #15

Can become very popular if they link it with some kind of crypto mining, just keep your mobile phone at window and earn crypto!

Sigh. 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.

What wealthy corporation?
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