Add delay recording after GPS is ready preference

[jidanni]

There should be a preference to delay the recording of the first node after the GPS is ready.

Why is this? Because the first note is a very imprecise location. If the user could have a preference to wait 30 seconds after the GPS is ready then a much more precise first note could be recorded. I've seen many surveys where the first note is always 100 m incorrect. This very unfortunate pollution could be very easily corrected if there was a preference to delay recording of the first node after the GPS is ready! For instance I could set it to 30 seconds or even 60 seconds.

[zamojski]

This must be device specific because on my phone I instantly get the location with accuracy around 9 meters which is fair enough. The minimum accepted accuracy is 40 meters. However if your phone reports wrong location but with high accuracy then there's an issue with your phone. My experience is that phones based on Snapdragon chipsets have the best GPS sensors in terms of speed and accuracy.

My advice is to keep location enabled on the phone all the time and use Internet connection to quickly obtain information about satellites and get much more accurate location almost instantly.

[jidanni]

My Samsung A13 5G gives 1 m accuracy. But it just needs a few seconds... please. No matter what it says.

It would be a waste to keep GPS on all the time, as I only record cell towers a few times a month.

One workaround would require installing one of those "keep GPS on" apps. But it is a real shame that there just can't be a delay specified in preferences.

It's always that first and then she'll measurement that's not accurate. For instance if I record an entire train trip for 3 hours it's just that one first reading that's inaccurate.

In fact maybe the preference should be how many readings to throw away upon start

It's mainly I'm hiking around my mountain in a pretty small area and in contrast to the 3-hour train trip it really does influence the results a lot.

[zamojski]

Many people turn off GPS in system settings which is not necessary unless you're concerned with possible privacy issues. This results in the system being unprepared to obtain precise GPS coordinates instantly. I personally have the GPS always allowed because it doesn't mean it's active in the background, it's just a permission to allow other apps to use it and keep it warmed up for instant activation. However I don't know if this is your case.

Regarding the request itself, adding such preference is not only a quick change in the code but also the translation effort for all languages. I would say the translation part is always the most significant cost for such changes.

[jidanni]

Well, translation should never hold up technology. Just simply have users see it in English in preferences until one day for their language it gets translated. That's how it works and all the other softwares I know.

Perhaps first fixing #233 would help.

But anyway perhaps there could be some kind of parameter that can control stabilization. For instance the GPS is getting closer and closer.

Let's say a second by second GPS accuracy reading is as follows:

33, 31, 27, 23, 17, 15, 14, 15, 14...

Okay we see that it's pretty much stabilized there at the end and it's not going to get very much better.

So for this particular cell phone reading should start around 16 or something. In other words as soon as that apps recognizes that it's pretty much stabilized and not going to get very much better very fast.

So even though 33 is acceptable. If the app just waited for it to stabilize then it could get much higher quality readings.

Sort of like we don't want to get off the elevator when it's still moving.

[jidanni]

As far as allowing gps, all I know is for Android 13 on the Samsung when there appears the tear drop indicator in the top row of the cell phone that means some app is using GPS so I did not bar any app...

Maybe other users have several apps using GPS open all the time. I only have one, Tower collector. When I turn off Tower collector, the teardrop indicator disappears.

I mean what you're describing as the system always being able to provide one meter accuracy instant GPS certainly means that the that part of the chip is running all the time. But how could that be the case if a cell phones don't waste energy for things that aren't needed.

[zamojski]

The value 40 is precisely calculated and reasonable. Considering that minimal distance difference between 2 measurements (except for the case when main cell changes) defined as 50 meters and allowed deviation of 10% (5 meters in this case) this value protects users from unwanted collection of measurements while standing still with poor GPS signal.