[HN Gopher] Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool
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Turn your phone into a space monitoring tool
Author : JeanMarcS
Score : 325 points
Date : 2022-03-31 06:42 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esa.int)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esa.int)
| lambic wrote:
| I miss seti@home.
| DarthNebo wrote:
| We don't even have apps to turn an Android/iOS device into a
| proper native webcam using UVC over USB2.0 & all attempts at
| RTSP/other sttreaming protocols just feel hacky & laggy.
| detaro wrote:
| and that's relevant how?
| feymese wrote:
| android dev here.
|
| afaik newer device kernels in android implements f_uvc function
| for it's usb gadget interface but i'm not sure you can use this
| without root. so, apps can't create this functionality without
| root.
|
| also i'm not sure it's works even apps can get root. i didn't
| tried yet because my phone not support f_uvc and released
| kernel sources sucks.
|
| src:
| https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/android-5.0.2_...
| charcircuit wrote:
| scrcpy + an app like opencamera works great for me
| DarthNebo wrote:
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >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.
| DarthNebo wrote:
| Oh nice, will try it out with a clean camera feed
| probably from some WebRTC sample page.
| ochrist wrote:
| Off-topic, but why are they showing a graphic of an iPhone, if
| it's an Android app? (on-topic: I'll install this and try it out)
| lfkdev wrote:
| Yeah, classic editor who probably doesnt even know the
| difference and just search for a phone template
| nullref wrote:
| Really interesting project.
| dghughes wrote:
| This reminds me of something I read long ago when I was just a
| child. A computer magazine had a project where you used an FM
| radio, a computer probably a Commodore, and a plotter (who had
| one of those?!). The FM signal could detect meteor strikes in the
| atmosphere, you wrote a bit of code, the plotter mapped the
| strikes.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| Used to be everyone had an FM radio and no plotter.
|
| Now everyone has a printer, but no FM radio.
| Moru wrote:
| Forget the FM radio, people hardly have commuters any more.
| Aachen wrote:
| Only on Google store, and an open source google store client
| (Aurora) just says "failed to fetch app details"... why is it so
| hard to just put an apk on your website if you actually want
| people to use your app?
|
| > As well as helping to create new Earth and space weather
| forecasting models, participants are also in with the chance to
| win prizes
|
| They seem to be quite keen on getting users and I'd be interested
| in the data myself (don't care for prizes), but then they make it
| a Google ecosystem exclusive?
|
| Edit: sent them an email using the address on the contact page.
| Let's see.
| onion2k wrote:
| _why is it so hard to just put an apk on your website_
|
| Then you'd have to field all the "How do I use this file?" and
| "Why doesn't this work on my phone?" questions yourself.
| mritzmann wrote:
| and _how can i update my app?_
| nmstoker wrote:
| Or you just put the apk behind a big obvious button saying
| "Advanced users" and a checkbox for users to affirm they are
| comfortable installing/working with APKs themselves, which is
| required before the download can start.
|
| You might still get the questions but at least then support
| teams can legitimately say that kind of advice is not
| provided as the users agreed to handle such matters.
| simion314 wrote:
| You put a GIANT Google Play link , and a smaller link for
| alternative stores that will open a plain html page dense of
| information and with big warnings to scare away the non-tech
| people.
| weugek wrote:
| Android GPS API is quite a bit more low-level than in iOS. You
| can get data about visible satellites where as (to my
| understanding) in iOS you can't.
| Aachen wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not on some locked-down apple device, I'd just like
| to run this on a regular Android.
| giantg2 wrote:
| And another reason is that some devs, like me, don't want to
| pay Apple $100 year to have apps on the store, especially if
| they're free apps.
| progbits wrote:
| Plus I think the ability to run continuous high precision
| location queries in the background is severely limited in
| ios.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Is this an issue with aab files not being pulled through?
| Aachen wrote:
| Didn't know of Android App Bundles yet, thanks for that
| pointer!
| giantg2 wrote:
| Basically the aab is supposed to be smaller based on
| utilizing shared resources. But really it seems like Google
| is using aab to force devs into using Google's key/ signing
| management. I have no idea if aab format prevents an app
| from being in Aurora. It was just my random guess that the
| format might be causing an issue.
| punnerud wrote:
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I had an idea a few months ago that this just made me remember. I
| was thinking that I could come up with some way of mining crypto
| but instead of guessing hashes I would be proving that I was
| actively sending weather/sky data. So people actively
| participating in the sensor network would get rewarded. Proof
| of... sky?
| aembleton wrote:
| Link to install the app:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iiasa.cama...
| antognini wrote:
| Tangentially related, but there's another cool app that turns
| your phone into a cosmic ray detector: https://cosmicrayapp.com/
|
| It turns out that cosmic rays pass through your phone more
| frequently than you might expect.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Interesting! How it works:
|
| > The application works by detecting lit pixels in the phone's
| camera when no light is entering. These pixels are lit as
| result of cosmic rays, local background radiation, or sometimes
| just noise.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| App Login page is absolutely terrible.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| 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?
| nuccy wrote:
| 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.
| antattack wrote:
| If obstruction is static, such when one is charging the
| phone, it would affect absolute values but would still
| provide useful relative change.
| dakr wrote:
| Your phone may not be moving, but the satellites are. The
| obstruction is not static in that case.
| dylan604 wrote:
| what if the device is charging while in a car/train/etc?
| antattack wrote:
| Then software can detect it's moving.
| Fatnino wrote:
| My phone is charging from a portable battery just as often
| if not more often than a wall charger.
| bhawks wrote:
| Hypothetically they could be using an account / login process
| to allow them to filter out measurements from devices that
| for whatever reason (hardware / environment / etc) to be
| sending low quality data. Alternatively they could have used
| device id without having the user setup an account but that
| actually feels more intrusive.
|
| Not saying that is a reason but it could be one of the non-
| user visible rationales.
|
| I too would prefer an anonymous option
| xore wrote:
| They can do the same with a random 64 character identifier
| imhoguy wrote:
| 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.
| Aachen wrote:
| Link doesn't work for me and the URL is obscured for some
| reason. Is my guess correct that you're linking the GPSTest
| app?
| maxden wrote:
| Yeah, its the "all sensor data at a glance page" https://pl
| ay.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eclipsim.g...
| _Microft wrote:
| No, it's not GPSTest but "GPS Status & Toolbox".
| _Microft wrote:
| 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.
| joshvm wrote:
| 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.g
| p...
| Melatonic wrote:
| Yea GPS Test is great!
| piceas wrote:
| See also on F-Droid/OsmAnd
|
| https://gitlab.com/mvglasow/satstat
| 83 wrote:
| I had a lot of fun with that gps status app when I first got
| a smart phone - you could hold your phone up to the window
| while flying (to get gps signal) and see the 630mph or
| whatever speed you were going.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| I thought this was disabled above certain speeds to prevent
| those chips being used in Missiles?
| colechristensen wrote:
| For the limits the speed is 1200 mph and the altitude
| 59,000 ft.
|
| A commercial airliner won't exceed 650 mph or 40,000 ft.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I think those are the old COCOM limits which are no
| longer in effect. I believe that currently the only limit
| is 600 m/s (which is nice, since when there were both
| speed and altitude limits some manufacturers OR'd them
| and some manufacturers AND'd them, so it wasn't clear if
| altitude alone would be enough to disable a device until
| you found out the hard way)
| figers wrote:
| I do this with google maps even without an internet
| connection it shows roughly where we are in the US on a
| flight
| colechristensen wrote:
| > Is this not handled by a GNSS chip in hardware, or the OS
| driver/kernel?
|
| All of the GNSS calculation is handled in hardware but that
| hardware often exposes quite a lot of intermediate data.
| detaro wrote:
| > _"The combination of Galileo dual band smartphone receivers
| and Android's support for raw GNSS data recording_
|
| Newer Android versions have fairly low-level APIs - not
| supported on all phones, but some expose quite a lot of detail.
| peter_retief wrote:
| Doesn't seem to be finding any data for me?
| kkfx wrote:
| 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.
| ganzuul wrote:
| This is why Nokia was gutted. Sony phones with Sailfish is the
| furthest separation you can achieve from the freaks responsible
| for this situation and still remain a participant in the
| information age.
|
| People don't understand the cruelty we have grown accustomed
| to.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it's fairly hard to find research participants
| kkfx wrote:
| Anything "new" and "that demand a substantial social change"
| is hard, at least for start and for a not so short period of
| time... If no one start change never happen, if someone
| start...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Software developers having been calling for FLOSS for
| decades at this point, and it's clear that the average
| person will only use FLOSS if it's mandated or clearly a
| better product in some way. Posing a fringe ethical dilemma
| alone will not get it done... the _vast_ majority of people
| (including people collecting data for research) do not even
| care a little bit. They have a long list of other problems
| to solve first, and if FLOSS gets in the way of any of
| those they 'll gladly forgo it.
| kkfx wrote:
| Casual people and scientist are different cohorts of
| population, casual people do not have the culture to
| comprehend, most do not even understand the difference
| between a third-partly hosted web-app and a local one
| just because they look at the same screen, most do not
| understand why it's absurd and bad print a document, scan
| in to an image and send the image by mail etc BUT those
| normally are not scientist.
|
| Scientist normally like to learn, so if someone explain
| them something interesting they learn it in means.
|
| Population always follow.
|
| Just look at the French Revolutions the Sans-culottes was
| driven by bourgeois, similarly on the other sides
| soldiers are peoples/"commoners" driven by other
| bourgeois and aristocrats. The people have chosen a side
| or another, and they are pushed to chose by both sides.
| So far I do not see much on the FLOSS side since there is
| no community anymore and most just live on someone else
| computer. Who better than Scientist can correct that aim?
| Peoples in Humanities surely are more listening but they
| mostly lack enough skill to bridge the gap between the
| philosophy (in the classical sense of "the why") and the
| practice, scientist normally can.
| throwaway54976 wrote:
| Why is the satellite range restricted to a meter? Are the mobiles
| not capable of better accuracy or is it the limitation of the
| satellite?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| The get higher accuracy requires more precise hardware /
| additional hardware on the receiving end which drastically
| drives up the cost.
|
| Systems like this [1] which you may have seen being used on
| construction sites allow much higher accuracy.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Is it possible to get close to centimetre accuracy without
| using ground stations like DGPS?
|
| Would you get finer resolution if a GPS receiver also used an
| atomic clock?
|
| I thought this was interesting - https://www.gps.gov/systems/
| gps/performance/accuracy/#differ... the difference between
| military GPS and civilian GPS sounds like it uses 2
| frequencies.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Effectively the problem is that the atmosphere (mostly
| ionosphere) distorts the ranges a bit. Different
| frequencies distort differently so you can use data from
| two to compensate.
|
| IIRC, used to work in a gps accuracy firm many many years
| ago
| skbohra123 wrote:
| Can become very popular if they link it with some kind of crypto
| mining, just keep your mobile phone at window and earn crypto!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
| tempodox wrote:
| Almost as good as having a crypto miner in your anti-virus
| software, which is practically a contradiction in terms.
| hansel_der wrote:
| anti-virus software adds so much attack surface that the
| joke of it beeing a contradiction in terms is almost
| overdone.
|
| no crypto needed.
| arlort wrote:
| What wealthy corporation?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| 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.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Interesting, I'm wondering why they didn't even mention this
| availability in their website, I would have turned on that
| setting just to farm more data for their app.
| michelreij wrote:
| April fools joke?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Do explain how you think this is a joke. Genuinely curious.
| Aachen wrote:
| There have been tons of fake apps that claim to do everything
| from microwaving food to measuring blood pressure. Not
| everyone knows everything about how things work in principle.
| I could imagine that GP doesn't know whether this is anywhere
| near realistic and just assumes it's a joke, maybe?
| mdrzn wrote:
| Interesting project, can't wait to help ESA out a bit. Seems like
| the phone will just track the satellites via GPS, so it's not
| even that battery intensive. Overnight left charging could
| provide a lot of data. The fact that there's a leaderboard makes
| it even more gamified.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Don't phones use a combination of various global positioning
| systems these days, including glonass and galileo?
|
| Actually how much detailed GPS information can phones access?
| Most 'common' apps will use the wider 'location services',
| which combine GNSS data with things like known wifi points and
| 3/4/5g radio towers to provide better accuracy.
| edent wrote:
| If you install this app, you'll see exactly what GPS data
| your phone is picking up.
|
| https://github.com/barbeau/gpstest
|
| I can see GPS, Galileo, Chinese, Russian, and Japanese ones.
| maartn wrote:
| Wow! But which editor approved to place an iPhone while it's only
| available for Android?
| mshockwave wrote:
| I'm glad I am not the only person found this amusing.
| hansel_der wrote:
| i suspect most ppl don't know the difference anyway.
|
| mvp is still the name of the game.
| yohannparis wrote:
| Yes, but the designer should know, and that's not
| professional. Even on the APP website, they use an SVG shape
| of an iPhone5 (5s, SE 1st Gen).
| dylan604 wrote:
| In this context, what does mvp mean?
| mh- wrote:
| minimum viable product.
| kappuchino wrote:
| 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.
| operator-name wrote:
| Interestingly the app is made in Unity. A couple of oddities, but
| having this leader board function was definitely an interesting
| idea.
|
| Sadly either my old phone's GPS is not great or my windowsill's
| viability to satellites just isn't great. It'll be very
| interesting to see the data pipelines they have to clean up the
| mountains of data they're going to be receiving.
| peter_retief wrote:
| Probably why I cant get any connections to my phone, from the
| windowsill!
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