DishPointer LOS (iPhone App)

[smiffie]

Has anybody used this iPhone app? Is it any good, is it accurate? Does it know altitude? i.e. If you are on the ground then scale a ladder, would it be aware of that you altitude has increased by 15 to 20 feet?

_http://www.dishpointer.com/2009/dishpointer-los-iphone-app/

 

[digi247]

Has anybody used this iPhone app? Is it any good, is it accurate? Does it know altitude? i.e. If you are on the ground then scale a ladder, would it be aware of that you altitude has increased by 15 to 20 feet?

it only gives you longitude, latitude, heading, (true), (mag), Sat, Elevation, Skew

 

[Captain Jack]

Does it know altitude? i.e. If you are on the ground then scale a ladder, would it be aware of that you altitude has increased by 15 to 20 feet?

Yes, it "knows" it. Satellites will appear over the trees on the ladder if they were behind the trees on the ground, for example.

 

[Huevos]

Has anybody used this iPhone app? Is it any good, is it accurate? Does it know altitude?

Elevation is spot on; azimuth is based on the compass so is only as good as the local magnetic field and any interference in it allows. I've got it for Android, not iPhone. I've also got Satellite AR (which is free) and I like that more. Anyway it's pretty good for a site survey but not anything to do with alignment.

Also, if you have a tree infront of the satellite at ground level, but not when you are 10 feet up the ladder you should find a different site for the dish, especially if the tree belongs to a neighbour.

 

[smiffie]

Elevation is spot on; azimuth is based on the compass so is only as good as the local magnetic field and any interference in it allows. I've got it for Android, not iPhone. I've also got Satellite AR (which is free) and I like that more. Anyway it's pretty good for a site survey but not anything to do with alignment.

Also, if you have a tree infront of the satellite at ground level, but not when you are 10 feet up the ladder you should find a different site for the dish, especially if the tree belongs to a neighbour.

What because the tree will grow? I'm just mucking about with both the iPhone and Android versions of AR Pro. The iPhone one looks smoother but I cannot capture images (no camera button) whereas the Android feels more sensitive or twitchy but I can grab images. I assume it gets Lat/Long from the GPS then uses the compass to work out the position of the Clarke belt. It certainly seems to be aware of height/altitude, perhaps from GPS. Hopefully this will be a useful tool as I'd like to move my dish to a lower location but I'm worried about some satellite being obsured by roof ridges both in the East and West arcs.

 

[Huevos]

I assume it gets Lat/Long from the GPS then uses the compass to work out the position of the Clarke belt. It certainly seems to be aware of height/altitude, perhaps from GPS.

For the dishpointer app the lat/lon comes from the GPS. Satellites AR app uses either the GPS or the phone network, whichever the user chooses. GPS canes the phone battery. Elevation (nothing to do with altitude) is worked out based on lat/lon and orbital slot. The phone knows how it is orientated and moved based on its compass (azimuth) and its internal 3 axis gyroscope and accelerometer (elevation).

 

[Chris76]

@smiffie you can use the screen grab on the iPhone by pressing the home and power buttons together. The app is a useful tool for surveys I'm sure there is a line of site app also for the iPhone which I haven't used.

Chris


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[smiffie]

For the dishpointer app the lat/lon comes from the GPS. Satellites AR app uses either the GPS or the phone network, whichever the user chooses. GPS canes the phone battery. Elevation (nothing to do with altitude) is worked out based on lat/lon and orbital slot. The phone knows how it is orientated and moved based on its compass (azimuth) and its internal 3 axis gyroscope and accelerometer (elevation).

Apologies, I was forgetting the distances involved with Geostationary orbiting satellites which virtually makes height irrelevant in this context, as you say, you just need elevation based on Lat/Long and orbital slot. I was getting mixed up with something I was doing at work involving GPS and 30,000 ft.

 

[smiffie]

@smiffie you can use the screen grab on the iPhone by pressing the home and power buttons together. The app is a useful tool for surveys I'm sure there is a line of site app also for the iPhone which I haven't used.

Chris


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for that, bloody hell theat sounds really awkward, can you image trying that whilst balancing on a ladder or even up on scaffolding? What were they thinking of?

 

[smiffie]

I had a quick look last night at the feasibilty of moving the dish from the gable end to the back corner of the house and took a couple of snaps on my Android. It looks like I would get all of the West arc, but would miss out on some of the lower eastern birds which I'm not really interested in anyway. I haven't completely convinced myself of a move yet on the grounds that I would mean more drilling / holes and longer stand off T and Ks.

 

[rolfw]

Don't decide dish location using this app alone, used it on Saturday to ascertain dish location for a particular site and on double checking with normal compass and then dish and meter, the Dishpointer app was massively out. Re-checked after resetting the android onboard compass and was still off by a critical margin.

 

[Captain Jack]

Was it optimistic or pessimistic?

 

[rolfw]

Neither really, it was just plain and simple out, by 30 degrees on the first attempt and 20 degrees on the second after compass reset.