Hi Nick,

I like the new website, looks good. Is there any way to subscribe to the forums as an RSS feed as we are able to on the sourceforge forum?

Anyway a suggestion that I would like to make for a future mod is to modify the code for the phone application so that it attempts to upload the GPS data to the webserver when the device changes its position, instead of after a set time interval. 
Eg. instead of sending through the GPS coordinates every 60 seconds, can it be modified so that an update only occurs when the device moves say 30 metres from its previous location? The idea being that there will be a big saving on GPRS data costs if it only transmits location data if there is new data to send. 
I guess the distance between points itself is not super important - the aim is to get accurate tracking of the GPS device without having all the wasted data costs when there is nothing new to update. 
Perhaps an easier way to do it is to compare the current GPS coordinates to those of 60 seconds ago and then if they are different (possibly by more than a small fraction of a degree), to send through the new coordinates over the GPRS connection, but if they are the same, to ignore the new coordinates. This is as an alternative to using the formula to convert degrees to metres.

The full notes from our previous discussion is at http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1872642&forum_id=703886

Cheers!

Anthony

Yes, you do raise a good point about the accuracy and stability of GPS receivers. But I think it would depend heavily on the quality of the receiver itself. Eg an external bluetooth receiver should perform better than the device's inbuilt unit.

Ideally the mobile application would only transmit new data if the coordiates have changed by a minimum preset value. This value would be changed by the user to suit their requirements and hardware capabilities and limitations. ie the user could choose to reduce data costs by making the preset value larger (greater difference between current and previous coordinates), or they could have a very small value at the expense of greater data costs. Even with a very small value (or zero), there would be a reduction in the amount of data transmitted over the current version.

Nick could also put a switch in the application so that a user could choose to have data sent at regular intervals as what happens in the current version.