GPS Tracker enhancements

Suggestions? Comments? Features you'd like to see?
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morton
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2020 11:36 pm
Dive Computer: Teric/Descent Mk2i

GPS Tracker enhancements

Post by morton »

I'd like to suggest a few additional features related to the GPS Tracker in MacDive:

Export the tracked GPS locations as GPX (or KML) file (iOS)

This would be an awesome addition as it would support several nice use cases in third party applications like visualizing the drift path on a map or adding more accurate geolocation information to photos as the location changes throught the dive. On drift dives that are fast / long it's possible to cover multiple miles of distance - having the track log exportable would allow photos to be tagged more closely to the actual location during the dive (assuming the boat is tracking the divers).

Configurable recording interval (iOS)
In addition to the feature mentioned above having the choice to trade battery life for resolution/granularity would be cool, in my opinion having 3 or 4 intervals available should be more than sufficient (for example every 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes).

Copy location information of a Site (iOS & Mac)
On the Mac I can copy the information relatively easily but everywhere it's displayed it's shown as separate Latitude/Longitude fields/columns. This is a minor inconvenience when you want to re-use the information. An easy way to copy the whole location string (either as a string like 20°53'08.9"N 156°41'17.4"W or 20.885806, -156.688167) would be a nice improvement.
That said in the iOS version I can't seem to find a way to select/copy the geographic position shown in the site at all although it's displayed in the site as a nicely formatted string.
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nick
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Re: GPS Tracker enhancements

Post by nick »

morton wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:46 am Export the tracked GPS locations as GPX (or KML) file (iOS)
I have implemented the ability to export the current locations to GPX. This is under Tracker > Settings > Export Locations as GPX. From there you can email them somewhere or save them to iCloud (same as with the UDDF export).

Configurable recording interval (iOS)
I've added exactly this (1, 2, 5, 10 minutes). 10 remains the default. Increasing it will have a big impact on battery life.

Copy location information of a Site (iOS & Mac)
iOS Labels by default don't support this. I've changed them in the iOS app to include a long-press which provides a Copy action that copies it to the clipboard. This is true of basically any field displayed (gear details, critter details, site details, etc), including the GPS location.

For macOS, as you note you can already copy them separately from the table view of the Sites screen. There was also a separate lat/lon field on the Map tab of the Site Inspector. I've made this just one position field, like iOS, meaning you can copy both in one go. Hopefully that helps.

If you like, drop me an email and I can give you access to the iOS and/or macOS betas.
morton
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2020 11:36 pm
Dive Computer: Teric/Descent Mk2i

Re: GPS Tracker enhancements

Post by morton »

Wow, that sounds amazing. I'll shoot you an email shortly to give the new features a spin!
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