Featherweight Ground Station Options

[kjs]

Tony; I have an iPhone 4/5c/6/7/7x and iPad mini because I never get rid of them... ... but I appreciate the offer, and agree that the content is more important than being restricted - I just wanted to try for the smaller screen since some Android people bought older phones to use with the tracker.

your layout is good if only for indicating what makes sense on that page. I have to say that there is too much wasted space with my labels for altitude, etc so will likely go with small font labels with bigger font data - like on the GPS page - so we can get more information on one screen.

our launch was cancelled for this weekend (rain in AZ??!!) so I'll try to take some time on this.

Thanks as always for your inputs and support!

/kjs

 

[dshmel]

What would be nice is an "easy button" that displays the rocket's position on a map screen after it lands. Right now, I enter LAT/LON from the iPhone into a mapping program onto my Android device to display a map. Since many launch sites have limited connectivity, I use an offline mapping program.

 

[manixFan]

Kevin - thanks for being willing to listen to feedback. I used to do a lot of programming and hated working on the UI, I was much more of an under the hood kind of guy. I did a lot of interactive kiosks back in the day and they were mostly UI, and while profitable, it was torturous work for me. So I don't envy you having to figure out the right info and how to display it.

And I thought I remember somewhere along the lines there was going to be a copy button that would allow us to copy the tracker Lat/Long and paste it into whatever program we wanted. That would certainly be a close approximation of any easy button, especially if we could choose the format of the lat and long data.

Bummer about the launch being cancelled, but, if you get some work done on the app, maybe not so much!


Tony

 

[TonyL]

In terms of what does not need to be there, I like Tony's latest sample page [sorry not to answer the question you asked]. I though altitude was ASL by default, or was that just an older release? However I am not a fan of the selector wheel and would not wish to see it on the tracker page for the reasons Kevin mentioned. I would also prefer radio buttons in the regular tab for the selector, but hey it works, so no change is really needed there. Bearing and elevation both to include numerical [and labeled] values as the bearing arrow seems to dance around too much for my liking, and the elevation dot forces me to move the phone if I want to use it [dot is OK, but I also want the numerical value so I can hold it still if I want].

br/

The other Tony

 

[TonyL]

OK to answer Kevin's post:
agree on no GS lat lon alt.
agree on no selector wheel.

additions:
1. yes, the link icons are good I think.
2. yes text color for warning levels seems very good.
3. AGL is fine [as would be an 'agl' label ]
4. a compacted satellite status would be fine.
5. RSSI/SNR and time since last packet see good to have.

br/

The other Tony

 

[kjs]

ok: I'll get a pre-release out this evening for you to play with:

Track Screen

1- Includes GS lat/lon
2- Title bar goes red if comm is lost for > 5 seconds
3- [TonyL - Title bar already contained time since last packet if > 5 seconds]
4- Text for elevation will now be the rocket elevation - before it was phone elevation but people kinda know how much they are tilting the phone so this now more useful?]

Also:

5- Includes text for flight download info (for another thread where the phone doesn't think there is flight data stored - this so we can see what is being seen by the phone).

Still to do:

- Add RSSI/SNR
- Add sat strength?
- Add battery warning level indictor (red text if below <what voltage>?)
- Review the 'easy' button / copy / paste request
- Make title bar red on GPS page as well when comm lost
- Some indication for comm lost 'reason' (lost BLE or lost LoRa)

 

[TonyL]

Hi Kevin, got the update, here's how it seems on my tablet:
The labels on the right side data fields look very good, the font for the data looks very good too. labels on bearing and elevation still on the wish list...
It looks like you have plenty of room for the GPS fix bar graphics in the middle bottom or right bottom.
Now for the stupid questions:
1. There are RLB and RRB labels on the upper left and right respectively, what are they?
2. It looks like the bearing angle value is relative to the tablet's compass, would the bearing between the GS GPS coords and the tracker GPS coords be what one really wanted? Otherwise one is dependent on the tablet's compass [for mine it is unreliable in practice]. I would much rather have the GPS to GPS bearing number. The arrow can still do what it does now.
3. Right now the tracker is powered off, and the fields on the right have what looks like default text in them. Middle of the left is the letter "Y", is that where the elevation number will appear?

I would mention that I go on about labeling because for me, I need to be able to pick this up after several months and know how to use it without having to re-learn anything. I would claim that for any thoughtfully designed product, the ideal is for a person to be able to pick it up and use it without reading the manual. Labels on every data field is a way to make the interface more user friendly. For anyone who uses it all the time, these things easily seem trivial, but for the customer who does not, they become impediments to using the system effectively.

br/

Tony

 

[Motocrossman24]

I do like the idea of being able to attach the gs to a laptop for data apps and such. Would there be a way to put some form of storage media on the new gs board? So that we could add to a storage app after the launch at home, for those of us who prefer the portability of the system at the field, but would enjoy logging after the fact? Or is that something that would be possible by just sending logged data from the phone to the pc already?

 

[Adrian A]

I do like the idea of being able to attach the gs to a laptop for data apps and such. Would there be a way to put some form of storage media on the new gs board? So that we could add to a storage app after the launch at home, for those of us who prefer the portability of the system at the field, but would enjoy logging after the fact? Or is that something that would be possible by just sending logged data from the phone to the pc already?

If you are using a phone, the phone already stores some of all the data it receives into a file on the phone, and you can use a variety of ways to get it off of the phone.

If you are using the USB connection, at present you would be using a terminal program like RealTerm and typically these have ways to record the data to your computer.

If you want the GS to record data without being connected to either a phone or a P.C. (no real-time viewing) then Sparkfun sells a little data logger that could be soldered to some through-hole pads that are on the new dedicated ground station board.

 

[Adrian A]

We now have the new batch of integrated ground station boards back from the assembly house, and Kevin is touching up the user interface in the phone software.

When that is done, likely in the next week or two, we will be switching over to using the new dedicated ground station boards as the default way to buy Featherweight ground stations. If a customer wants the original convertibility, that's still available, by ordering a tracker and a ground station adapter kit. The new dedicated ground stations will work just the same as the original convertible ground stations, except for the following changes:

• The USB port in the new ground stations is now functional for data as well as battery charging. The data is in the form of a serial comm port that outputs human-readable text telemetry and accepts commands. I'll publish a command and telemetry description as part of the user's manual that I'm updating now. The serial text packets cover a lot of data, everything from the tracker basic data to locations of lost rockets found by other people's GS/tracker pairs.
  
  
• The new ground stations use the phone's GPS position when tracking. Performance testing shows that the tracking accuracy is just as good when using the phone's GPS location as it is when using a GPS module in the GS. Using the phone's GPS is also more intuitive, because the tracking arrow always points from your phone to the rocket, rather than from the ground station to your rocket. This can avoid the confusing scenario when you're testing out your system with your ground station sitting on your prep table and you walk around with your phone wondering why the direction arrow isn't changing (I've done this more than once). The phone has a simpler tracking quality metric than the original GPS modules, so we are updating the UI of the GPS page to show that version when it's getting its GS location data from the phone.