The GPS is an important feature of many Android devices.
Fortunately it is pretty easy to work with it.
In this tutorial we will cover a simple program that shows the current position as well as the satellites status.
The GPS functionality is packaged in the GPS library.
Therefore we should first add a reference to this library:
There are three types of relevant objects. The main one is GPS.
The GPS manages the connection and events. The second is Location.
A Location is a structure that holds the data available regarding a specific "fix". The data includes the latitude and longitude coordinates, the time (expressed as ticks) of this fix and other information like bearing, altitude and so on.
It may happen that not all information is available (due to poor reception for example).
The Location also includes other functionalities like calculating the distance and bearing to another location and methods to convert the coordinates string formats.
Usually you will work with Location objects passed to you in the LocationChanged events. However you can also initialize such objects yourself (this is useful for calculating distance and bearing between locations).
The last one is GPSSatellite. This is a structure that holds various information regarding the currently known satellites. It is passed to you in GPSStatus event.
Back to GPS.
The GPS object should be declared as a Process_Global object. Otherwise new instances will be created each time the activity is recreated.
The first step is to initialize the object. Like many other Initialize methods this one expects an EventName parameter. This is the prefix for the events that will be raised by the GPS object.
Here is the complete code:
Sub Process_Globals
Dim GPS1 As GPS
End Sub
Sub Globals
Dim lblLon As Label
Dim lblLat As Label
Dim lblSpeed As Label
Dim lblSatellites As Label
End Sub
Sub Activity_Create(FirstTime As Boolean)
If FirstTime Then
GPS1.Initialize("GPS")
End If
Activity.LoadLayout("1")
End Sub
Sub Activity_Resume
If GPS1.GPSEnabled = False Then
ToastMessageShow("Please enable the GPS device.", True)
StartActivity(GPS1.LocationSettingsIntent) 'Will open the relevant settings screen.
Else
GPS1.Start(0, 0) 'Listen to GPS with no filters.
End If
End Sub
Sub Activity_Pause (UserClosed As Boolean)
GPS1.Stop
End Sub
Sub GPS_LocationChanged (Location1 As Location)
lblLat.Text = "Lat = " & Location1.ConvertToMinutes(Location1.Latitude)
lblLon.Text = "Lon = " & Location1.ConvertToMinutes(Location1.Longitude)
lblSpeed.Text = "Speed = " & Location1.Speed
End Sub
Sub GPS_UserEnabled (Enabled As Boolean)
ToastMessageShow("GPS device enabled = " & Enabled, True)
End Sub
Sub GPS_GpsStatus (Satellites As List)
lblSatellites.Text = "Satellites:" & CRLF
For i = 0 To Satellites.Size - 1
Dim Satellite As GPSSatellite
Satellite = Satellites.Get(i)
lblSatellites.Text = lblSatellites.Text & CRLF & Satellite.Prn & _
" " & Satellite.Snr & " " & Satellite.UsedInFix & " " & Satellite.Azimuth _
& " " & Satellite.Elevation
Next
End Sub
The next step is to tell the GPS to start listening for data. The GPS can consume quite a lot of battery. Therefore it is recommended to stop using the GPS whenever it is not necessary. It is recommended to start listening in Activity_Resume and stop listening in Activity_Pause.
It may happen that the user has turned off the GPS. Due to privacy concerns the Android OS doesn't allow you to turn the GPS on programatically. The best thing that you can do is to ask the user to enable the GPS device.
The following code shows a message if the GPS is not enabled and also opens the GPS control panel so the user only needs to check the GPS option:
Sub Activity_Resume
If GPS1.GPSEnabled = False Then
ToastMessageShow("Please enable the GPS device.", True)
StartActivity(GPS1.LocationSettingsIntent) 'Will open the relevant settings screen.
Else
GPS1.Start(0, 0) 'Listen to GPS with no filters.
End If
End Sub
If the GPS is enabled we are starting to listen for data. The Start method receives two values which are the minimum time (milliseconds) and the minimum distance (meters) between events. An event will be raised when at least one of these criterions is met. This can help saving battery.
In our case we are passing 0 and therefore will get all fix events.
The GPS raises three events:
-
GPS_LocationChanged (Location1 As Location)
This is the main event. Location1 holds the data for the new fix.
-
GPS_GpsStatus (Satellites As List)
This event allows you to display information about the currently available satellites. Note that not all satellites in the list are actually used for calculating the last fix. So it is possible that the list will include several satellites but still the reception is not good enough for a fix.
-
GPS_UserEnabled (Enabled As Boolean)
This event is raised whenever the user changes the status of the GPS device. It is also raised right after calling Start.
The program is attached.
