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Open Source Hardware

Designers Release 'Aweigh', An Open Source Alternative to GPS (dezeen.com) 186

Posted by EditorDavid from the new-navigators dept.
"A team of student designers and engineers from the RCA and Imperial College have designed an open-source alternative to GPS, called Aweigh, that does not rely on satellites," reports the design magazine Dezeen.

It's similar to the sextant, calculating positions by measuring the angular distances between the horizon and the sun. ExRex (Slashdot reader #47,177) shares their report: They said that Aweigh can even work on a cloudy day when the sun is not in view, and unlike devices that use satellites, such as smartphones, Aweigh functions offline so a user's positional data cannot be leaked through the internet.

"Satellites send information which can be intercepted and interfered with, but to interfere with Aweigh, one would need to artificially move the sun," explained the team of four, made up of States Lee, Samuel Iliffe, Flora Weil and Keren Zhang. "If one of the devices is faulty or broken, it is only that user who suffers. If one satellite is faulty, then the consequences can affect millions of users.

"Most people don't think about the way they navigate," the group continued, "but as concerns over centralised technology and data privacy increase, individuals should have a choice over how their data is taken and used. Aweigh is about giving back choice...." Describing the system as "a set of tools and blueprints", the team wanted users to be able to hack or fix the tools they use, so making the project open-source was important.
There's a video about the device here. It locates the sun by reading light values with a customized Raspberry Pi board.

Although Slashdot reader RockDoctor asks an interesting question: does it work at night?
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Designers Release 'Aweigh', An Open Source Alternative to GPS More

Designers Release 'Aweigh', An Open Source Alternative to GPS

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  • Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 27, 2019 @03:38PM (#58501966)

    unlike devices that use satellites, such as smartphones, Aweigh functions offline so a user's positional data cannot be leaked through the internet.

    What? GPS is one-way and doesn't need the Internet to function at all.

    • The kids today think that because your cell phone is dumb and refuses to give gps readings if it doesnâ(TM)t have live ephemeris, all gps is like that.

    • 100% true, otherwise the handlebar computer I use on my bike wouldn't function at all.
      I encourage people to read up on the GPS satellite system. It's designed from the ground up to be standalone. Any use of Internet resources is just an enhancement of GPS; for instance you can have the equivalent of DGPS (Differential GPS, a way of improving accuracy dramatically) by using Internet resources. But otherwise a GPS receiver can function with nothing other than it's own antenna.

    • Provided your device has all the maps built in. Otherwise you have a bunch of accurate clock signals and some math problems to work out.

      • My Win7 phone had 'Here', which offered downloadable maps. I downloaded the maps for the US states I expected to be in, and also for some European countries I drove in. The maps were free, and I had plenty of room for them. So this much at least is easy. And afaik, it would have been possible to use it in a phone that had no cell provider, once you installed the maps. That's certainly how I used it in Europe--I didn't bother to buy a European sim card. So there would have been no return signal, assumi

  • WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Saturday April 27, 2019 @03:40PM (#58501970) Homepage

    "unlike devices that use satellites, such as smartphones, Aweigh functions offline so a user's positional data cannot be leaked through the internet"

    GPS doesn't use the internet at all. It is a one-way transmission from satellite to Earth based stations (such as the sensor in the phone), and uses triangulation of multiple signals to determine position. There is nothing internet about this at all.

    Cell phones OPTIONALLY have A-GPS, which also uses Wi-Fi and Cell Towers for triangulation, which relies upon centralized databases accessed over the internet, but this is purely optional!

    • Re: WTF (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Is this a gofundme scam? Everything seems wrong.

      • The "interesting" mod caught my attention, but it turned out to be an AC, so I'm not going to reply along that line. WTF you ACs, eh?

        However I wish there were more interesting, dare I say insightful, comments to be found. Yeah, it's early as measured by Slashdot-front-page time (I'd estimate about 1/16 o'clock), but I'm still disappointed. Maybe it's an intrinsically confusing topic? Security is one aspect. The linkage to personal information seems spurious, except that this "Aweigh" app might well be a phi

        • but I still don't understand why no one is producing cheap little GPS transmitter units for indoor use.

          Because people with suits and guns will show up and take all your toys away. All your toys, not just your illegal transmitters. And worse, they'll take you away, too.

          You'll need to come up with a plan that involves unregulated bandwidth. And then triangulate using that, instead of triangulating using GPS frequencies. You could probably just use wifi.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shanen ( 462549 )

            I think in your rude way you are trying to say you think (or theorize or fantasize) that the frequency conflicts cannot be resolved. You seem to lack any technical justification, though it's possible it exists (even though your presentation was utterly unpersuasive). It's obvious that GPS is designed to deal with lots of transmitters as satellites become more or less visible, and there must be technical limits to how many signals can be handled at one time by one receiver.

            Of course I'm strongly biased again

            • I think in your rude way you are trying to say you think (or theorize or fantasize) that the frequency conflicts cannot be resolved.

              Oh, I'm being rude, well. Fuck you.

              And no, I don't think the conflicts can't be resolved, I think those conflicts can't be resolved by you. Or by any other individual party. Multiple industries would have to agree it is a good idea, just to get to the state where the US military tells you "No." It isn't that that part "can't" also be resolved, it is that it "hasn't" been resolved, so nobody is going to try to build the device you describe. You don't even build a prototype of that unless you're a licensed go

      • Is this a gofundme scam? Everything seems wrong.

        Everything you need to know can be summed up by this one phrase from the article:

        Royal College of Art

        It's a neat hack, I'll grant. An electronic sextant, with software and 3D models for printing. It'd be a fun build, educational, and perhaps even useful. But forget all that stuff about how it corrects deficiencies of GPS. That's all nonsense which I hope was written with tongues firmly implanted in cheeks. It's an art project.

    • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

      by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Saturday April 27, 2019 @04:00PM (#58502066)

      Yeah this makes zero sense. It require accurate time to function. Guess what you need to get an accurate clock? An existing accurate clock, so you either need to use the internet to get an updated time or you can just access the GPS clocks. But if you access the GPS clocks then you're using evil satellites.

      And in order to calibrate your compass, you again need to consult existing up-to-date maps which again requires connections to the outside world.

      It is a fun science project but it's nothing more than that. It doesn't actually give the user any sort of independence.

      You know what's way more useful if you need to navigate? A topographical map and a compass. Easier to assemble too and doesn't require recharging.

      • getting time or GPS from satellites doesn't involve your phone talking to anything.

        even without update the clock in your cell phone will not lose a second in a week, will lose less than 20 seconds in a year!

        the problem is the accuracy of determining position of sun, a quality sextant in proper hands will go to tenth of nautical mile under ideal conditions but this method sure won't! so if you're camping and want to know within about a mile where you are maybe this method would work (and there are no trees

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • It also can download the ephemeris data for a faster fix.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      GPS doesn't require the internet but it doesn't function offline. You are dependent on a satellite network and cell phone triangulation depends on the cellular network. This solution would be offline in the sense that it doesn't need any external network. Cell phones have GPS and A-GPS and using that for your benefit is optional, this data is definitely generated and tracked under the justification that it is needed for emergency services to function.

      I get the sense that whoever made that video knows and un

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Cell phones OPTIONALLY have A-GPS, which also uses Wi-Fi and Cell Towers for triangulation, which relies upon centralized databases accessed over the internet, but this is purely optional!

      Incorrect.

      A-GPS is assisted GPS, and ALL cellphones must have them as part of the E911 mandate. What happens is it allows GPS location with only 1 GPS satellite in view, using the difference in received signals and what the tower gets to determine the phone's location.

      It also allows sending the ephermeris data via the cont

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SCVonSteroids ( 2816091 )

      Good maps are not "open source."

      • Good maps are not "open source."

        There are some pretty good open source maps, actually. There's loads of free (and freely redistributable) GIS data out there.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The base map source I've found is OpenStreetMap. It's data, not software, but it is open in the sense that it's all public, you may download it and use it for whatever purpose, and is not locked up behind Google's style of walled garden. It also has reams of data not available in Google's mapping services, such as the best map of trail networks I've found.

        Go ahead, try to batch-download all of Google's map data. Let us know how that goes for you.

        So unless you want to quibble over the meaning of "open sou

      • Good maps are not "open source."

        Welcome to the surface!

        No, those are not mutants.

  • Great, even a last cell + accelerometer set-up will do better. And it will be pretty bad.

  • However people have demonstrated that with a simple photocell and a microcontroller with a real time clock, you can kinda get a rough estimate of where you are. The trick is to compare the brightness outside with the current time and date in UTC. Essentially you estimate dawn and sunset and can use that to determine local time and season.

    Of course with more effort you could take the position of the sun into account. You can measure that, for example via polarisation. In any case, it's fairly inaccurate, but

  • "...unlike devices that use satellites, such as smartphones, Aweigh functions offline..."

    No, "devices that use [GNSS] satellites" do not have to be online, or leak info. Even smartphones (the GPS on a deactivated, disconnected smartphone can still work, it may just take longer to lock on, because it's not getting aGPS info).

    • The point isn't that the device "has to" be online. The point is that the device is in fact online, that the devices tend to leak information, and that users often lack control of that process.

      There are other ways to solve the problem, to be sure. But just because a use case doesn't apply to you, doesn't imply it is somehow wrong.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        The claim was false, as is yours - users do in fact have control of the process. Stop making things up.
  • Kind of useless unless I have it with me. Also, as someone else said, "Does it work at night?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Also, as someone else said, "Does it work at night?"

      Yes, all you need to do is walk east until you see the sun then it will start working again. Alternately you can walk briskly north or south until you get to the other side of the planet, or run west to catch up to the sun.

  • needs technical details, not stop-motion showboat (Score:4, Insightful)

    by at10u8 ( 179705 ) on Saturday April 27, 2019 @04:12PM (#58502112)
    I have used a sextant to shoot stars and get my position using my watch and almanac, and I have shot lunars to get the time in case my watch was wrong, and with good optics and precision vernier scales I knew where I was to about a kilometer. Nothing about this indicates a precision as good as a degree.

  • Electronic sextant (Score:3)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Saturday April 27, 2019 @04:22PM (#58502152)

    The problem is that it needs an accurate time to get a (more) accurate reading, hence you'll need to query an NTP server (or attach a GPS-based clock), you just destroyed your entire premise of staying offline and not requiring a GPS signal.

    It's a cool high school science project though, but I wouldn't say it's something that will ever be a commercial success. We need GPS for very precise and accurate navigation, especially in air- and waterways.

    At night you could navigate with the stars, not sure if they radiate quite enough signal to be measurable here on earth through a cloud canopy.

    • The problem is that it needs an accurate time to get a (more) accurate reading, hence you'll need to query an NTP server (or attach a GPS-based clock), you just destroyed your entire premise of staying offline and not requiring a GPS signal.

      While probably overkill there are always CSACs if you need them.

      https://www.microsemi.com/prod... [microsemi.com]

      Personally given over reliance on GPS and lack of or extremely rusty manual navigation skills something like this would be a good backup. Either due to technical fuckups or intentional acts (Such as North Korea denying GPS over thousands of square miles of ocean) automated star nav like this as backup to GPS would be useful given cost.

    • I could use a 555 to build a clock with better accuracy than the clocks they had on ships when sextants were popular, so I think people are wildly misunderstanding the precision when considering that it needs an "accurate" clock to get an "accurate" reading.

      The reason that it wouldn't be a "commercial success" is that the whole use case is to avoid one of the ills of the modern consumerist landscape.

    • I'm not sure what you're replying to, but at least back in the 70s, there were radio broadcasts that would let you set a chronometer to be precise to within 1/5 of a second. (By precise, I mean the chronometer might be a half hour off, but you knew exactly how far off it was to within 1/5 second.) I don't know whether those time signals are still broadcast.

  • If it cannot be jammed, as conventional GPS can, then not Putin.

  • Asking for a friend, of course

  • Did anyone find an explanation of how it works or how well it works that went beyond hand-waving references to polarization? All I could find was tedious exposition of why it is needed. To me it seems like vaporware. I would almost rather carry a sextant around with me (with an artificial horizon) and figure out where I am that way. Actually, you could probably invent a mini sextant that you just put in front of your smartphone and have it snap a picture and tell you where you are (to the extent possible fr

    • I have not read the article, but: blue daylight is polarized in a way that you can tell the direction to the sun, and the approximate distance to the sun. There is some evidence to imply that the Vikings knew this, and used naturally occurring calcite crystals to navigate even in partly cloudy weather. (Calcite is mildly polarizing.) However, I doubt that this could be very accurate.

    • You can look at their code if you like:

      https://github.com/build-aweig... [github.com]

      Tell me what you think, and look closely at the commands for the servo to move the filter...

  • Night (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    For nighttime, there has long been software capable of auto-discovering and tracking stars. Normally you tell it where you and it then finds the star you want, but there's no reason - so long as it knows the time accurately enough, that it couldn't tell you where you were from the night-sky.

    I remember one in particular that used something like BBC Micro and a primitive low-res digitiser. You gave it lat-lon and time/date, pointed it at the night-sky, and it recognised certain stars and ten helped you auto

    • In order to figure out where you are it is not enough to simply see the night sky. It has to measure angles between the stars and something on earth. Small angular errors will lead to very large position errors. For example, 1 minute of arc (1/60th of a degree) is about 1 nautical mile. So a degree is 60 nautical miles (1 nautical mile is more than a regular mile). The compass and accelerometer in a smart phone are not likely to be accurate enough for this to work to any high degree of precision. I would th

  • Lots of hype, but what does it do? Can it tell you where you are to the nearest metre? kilometre? hundred kilometres?

  • GPS coverage is pretty good, my car seems to get a pretty accurate location despite having no data service.

  • If I'm going to be navigating in my SUV with a sextant, then I want a carronade for use if someone cuts me off.

    • Does navigating with a sextant while driving count as distracted driving? Or is this one of those cases where technology has gone out in front of the law again?

  • 2:37 of my life I'll never get back (Score:3)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Saturday April 27, 2019 @09:12PM (#58503194)

    That was possibly the most pointless video I've every seen. WTF did I just watch?
    But I digress... If this thing relies on a magnetic compass for navigation, you're pretty well screwed for any sort of practical ground vehicle.
    Also, I want something that works indoors too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      There are ways to continue to track movement based on a combination of altimeter, previously measured location, compass, so forth that could close the gap when you go inside. But really, disparaging or embracing this solutions seems very premature since we basically still have no information about its methodology. Think out of the box in the right way and suddenly you've turned well established and understood 2D technology into three dimensions and what was impossible becomes simple... and those sort of ans

    • A magnetic compass? What happens when the poles switch?

  • It's similar to the sextant, calculating positions by measuring the angular distances between the horizon and the sun.
    That's nice. What happens when it's nighttime? What happens if you're inside a building? What happens if you have something obstructing your view of the sun, like buildings, or when in a canyon?

    • I guess there are *some* buildings that are pretty large inside. But in general, if I'm inside a building, I know where I am; getting a sextant fix, even if I could, would not tell me anything I didn't already know.

      Night--well, that's s.t. else.

  • Please elaborate more on this.
    As I think user data can leak on matter their source.
    Or am I badly wrong?

  • ....to paperweight. It can't even get close to the precision of a good sextant, especially when used to measure night stars (they offer a sharper positioning than sun).
  • Oh well, I got a laugh out of how stupid it was.
    So that's something.

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