Battery Consumption with Tracking using Internal GPS

albundy9999 · February 16, 2011, 06:00:21

Hello All,

What is the best settings to use with GPS logging / tracking feature? I'd like the battery to last as long as possible. Has anyone use it for 12 hours continuously?

Thanks for any comments,
Al

albundy9999 · February 16, 2011, 21:10:22

Can Locus track the coordinates with time?

albundy9999 · February 16, 2011, 21:38:48

Also, is it true that using an external bluetooth GPS instead the internal GPS would even be more battery efficient?

Menion · February 17, 2011, 08:01:39

Hi,
in Locus is unfortunately nothing that can improve you battery. Settings for track recording only affect frequency of saving location, not time that GPS modul is enabled/disabled.

anyway, bluetooth GPS rapidly increase time that your phone last. By my own experience, more then twice! (from normal 5hours to more then 10)

dibrial · February 17, 2011, 20:00:16

Menion,
I have used Apline Quest for a while.

This app has the option to adjust the update rate to:

Could this be an option to reduce battery consumption?

Menion · February 17, 2011, 20:51:46

yes, this could be, but I'm not sure if this has any influence on battery consumption. Anyway, I can also add this into Locus and if anyone do some test, it could be fine ...

dibrial · February 17, 2011, 21:50:39

I could give it a try on a desire. Maybe it works and when hiking I don't need a position update every second.

albundy9999 · February 18, 2011, 00:07:01

Thanks for the reply. It apears that this software includes the recording of times with the coordinates:
GPS Logger for Android - http://gpslogger.codeplex.com/

And it is battery efficient.

Menion · February 18, 2011, 18:40:38

OK, in new version is new settings for GPS. You can now set time interval between GPS updates. When I set 60s, it really send by my test, location only every 60s (against normal updates every sec). Question is, wheather GPS is sleeping during that time and if this can improve battery or not. If anyone try or have any comparison, wrote here, I'm sure, it'll be welcome by all ...

seantrek · February 19, 2011, 06:38:10

In order to save power, the program would have to disable the GPS for awhile between updates. You can watch the GPS status in the top system panel, and see that Locus does not currently turn GPS off between updates. The Google "My Tracks" app does this quite well. The GPS is cycled on/off according to some adaptive algorithm, the tracks are saved in the background, and using battery miser mode, I can collect tracks all day and use very little battery. But "My Tracks" doesn't have the wonderful offline maps that Locus has, so it would be nice to have this capability in Locus. Or, if there were some way to show the real-time tracks from "My Tracks" in Locus, that would suffice.

Menion · February 19, 2011, 08:24:34

I'm not sure if enabling and disabling gps is good idea. It takes some time to get valid location etc..

First, please try anyone battery consumption with settings actually created to new Locus version with for example 0sec and 60sec time interval. Exist any simple application that should measure power consumption of simple application? I'm not experienced with this.

If this solution will not be usable, I'll then try to think about something similar to My Tracks. Anyway, you can now see My Tracks map on map, did you noticed this?

(but not the one actually recording with refresh)

cseu · February 23, 2011, 23:47:39

Hi,

I've ran a couple of test on that matter, i went for a walk 10 minutes and back using an app called battery monitor. Gear used for the test : HTC Desire HD unrooted with original 2.2 ROM from HTC and a QStarz bluetooth GPS logger. Record log in locus set to 0 so logging continuously, screen off, wifi, mobile networks and sync off and just locus running (of course the battery monitor app updating each 10 seconds must have used a bit of juice too). Just the radio cell was enabled on the mobile.
On the first 10 minutes walk, i had bluetooth enabled to receive the fix from the QStarz, the consumption was around 60mA
On the way back, i disabled bluetooth and used the internal GPS to get the fix, the consumption was around 90mA

Doing some operations in locus, moving the map and zooming, of course with the screen on i get between 150 and 250mA (the screen on the Desire HD is big and pumps a lot of battery)

I will run longer tests later like for example a 1 hour drive and tell you the results, i can also try with 10s 30s or 60s between fix and check if it's really worth it.

Thanks for this great app, i'm a long time OziCE user and Locus is the best alternative i've found so far, even if it's really problematic to convert all my Ozfx topo map collection, i may discuss that matter later on in another topic and post a tutorial of a interesting way of converting combined different scales topo maps into a sqlitedb file.

Cheers,

Cseu.

dibrial · February 24, 2011, 18:50:30

Would be great if you tested it. I'm a bit to busy this week to test it and next week I doubt I have time to test.

cseu · February 24, 2011, 22:21:49

It will be the same for me... but i will run the tests as soon as i can...

By the way, i've found an interesting tip in some android forum which i don't remember... when going hinking with my old WM6 phone and OziCE, in order to spare the battery at the max, i used the airplane mode to disable the cell radio but i could still enable BT in order to use an external GPS... i havent been able to do that with Android... untill i've found this little hack... all you have to do is to turn off wifi, mobile networks and sync manually (leave only bluetooth active), then go to the phone dialer and type : *#*#4636#*#* (4636 for "INFO") a hidden menu appears, go to "Phone information", scroll down and click the button "Turn off radio" leave the menu with a couple of back key... and there you are, everything turned off and only BT enabled, maximum juice for your trek !... (of course if you have an HTC Desire HD, you'd better try not to have to look a lot at the map, and set the screen brightness to the minimum!)... at the end of the trek, or if you broke your leg in the middle of it, just dial the same code and go back to the button "Turn on radio" to call for help ;-)

Cheers,

Cseu.

dibrial · February 25, 2011, 07:19:38

That sounds like a good tip for the bluetooth GPS users, but since I use the internal GPS I just can turn on the airplane mode use locus in offline mode. To bad downloading from OSM is slow. When I go hiking in een area for a week I need an area larger than 10x10km.

I was wondering about another setting which doesn't make sense to me:
In the Guiding menu the disable gps setting can be set. The description of this setting is 'When screen turn off and guiding is enabled :!: , also disable GPS'.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a setting to disable the GPS when screen is turned off and the guiding is DISABLED :?:

This would also save a lot of battery, since, when not in guiding mode, I only need GPS when checking my position.