Libre or somewhat freer geopositioning device
Someone mentioned the dire situation of GPS navigation in a thread about partially liberated mobile phones, so I was left wondering about the software freedom status of standalone GPS units. There are a couple of old threads here on that topic, and the conclusion was that there is probably no option.
However, there seem to be some paths for exploration, if we are ready to get our hands on an Arduino shield for intance and start playing with things like RTKLIB. The Arduino board, GPS shield, OLED display and cables cost about $80 together. That's still below the price of the low-end, 100% proprietary, out-of-the-box hand-held refurbished units, so it might be tempting to delve into Arduino tinkering and see what can be made of it. Also, RTKLIB (and the currently available Arduino shield) can use signal from various GNSS constellations beside Navstar GPS, which makes any system based on them less dependent on a single GNSS operator, which always sounds like a good idea.
Of course, for that price you'll only get various pieces of hardware to assemble and breath life into, until they give you a couple of coordinates to play with, but I do not see any other option around to get relative satellite based positioning freedom. In fact, I'm not even sure whether the currently available Arduino GPS shield is supported by RTKLIB. Anyway, I hope no extra backpack is necessary to carry the fancy libre DIY tell-me-where-I-am podule once you've managed to make it do its job. I still need to check the freedom status of that GNSS chip firmware.
Some links:
https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-mkr-gps-shield
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/RTKLIB-compatible_GPS_devices
Still trying to figure out how to correctly position decimal degrees on a paper map featuring fancy regional grid markers only. Without a spreadsheet at hand.
Some say geopositioning is too serious a thing to be used for such frivolous activities as outdoor frolicking. They may well be right, but it's been too long since I first wanted to put my hands on an Arduino board, I might not resist the call much longer. Grav-mass approaching, it may be tempting to use it as an excuse for some geostastionary satellite experiments.
EDIT: I forgot the power supply and the protective box in my price calculation. I'm beginning to think that this Arduino stuff might in fact be a never-ending process of adding new modules until you get a mostly useless geopositioning gizmop that can mop the ground, provided it's flat. If you add the water tank module, that is. Also, the mop pad support frame module. Oh, and the water pump module. But if you have a map showing only local system coordinates, then podule might also be able convert GNSS signal into some useful info, and possibly save your life. What a dilemma.
Just found a nice video about doing something like the Arduino gizmop, but for a ridiculously lower price. Some soldering required, though, since you are getting even smaller components to piece together. It's a simple tracker, no display attached.
Also, this could have been a new dawn, and a new inflated budget for Grav-mass geo party: https://www.crowdsupply.com/amungo-navigation/nut2nt-plus. But the thing is currently, and somehow mysteriously, unavailable.
The GNSS chip firmware are closed and unfree, but that might still be acceptable as it is embedded and non modifiable. This is not something you would want to modify anyway, a bit like your toaster's circuitry. I think this looks like a cool accessory, as long as you keep it dry:
>"something you would want to modify anyway, a bit like your toaster's circuitry"
I only use toasters that respect my 4 software freedoms. In other words, I hold a slice of bread over the fire until my fingers are burned.
>"But the thing is currently, and somehow mysteriously, unavailable."
Cthulhu's evil plans are beginning to become clear...
Question - is there any way to use GPS without GPS using YOU? Is GPS simply a technology designed to get us addicted to its convenience, while pushing us all a big step closer to global enslavement to the surveillance state? Would we be better off going back to paper maps and compasses?
This NUT2NT+ looks pretty cool. How do you hook it up to a display and actually get some kind of navigation out of it? Have people somehow plugged it into a laptop and used it with openstreetmaps or something?
Question - is there any way to use GPS without GPS using YOU? Is GPS simply a technology designed to get us addicted to its convenience, while pushing us all a big step closer to global enslavement to the surveillance state?
GPS itself does not even know you are using it. The GPS satellites only send their locations and times and the receiver calculates its own position, without ever transmitting anything. The driver supporting the GPS receiver or the application processing the received data (to plot the position on a map or whatnot) can be proprietary (hence user subjugated) or not.
I'm not convinced by your magically fruity superior intellect. These GPS satellites are developed and overseen by military and government surveillance entities. Why would they not be built with hidden tracking features? Have to assume that they are and then try to prove that they are not.
No. There is no way to "prove" that "hidden tracking features" do not exist. The burden of the proof is on you or anybody else claiming GPS receivers transmit something to GPS satellites.
I think the actual risk is the other way around: GNSS signal spoofing.
Of course, for that to happen, you would need to have been making very special friends. The kind of friends who would deliberately lead you astray while you went for a walk, so you fall into the easy-to-miss Pit of Eternal Death never to be seen again in your neighborhood. Wrench and stick figure stories come to mind.
Most confusion on that topic arises because most end user products combine GNSS receivers with networking chips, so geopositioning, GNSS-based navigation and tracking get conflated. People are actively asking to be tracked and surveiled, no need to deploy extra stealth technology for that purpose.
> surveillance
GNSS is tracking you only to the extent that you have chosen to send your positioning data once you have managed to produce them, so if you are using such standalone module as I am dreaming of, you are in fact monitoring yourself, which according to RMS is acceptable as long as you have given your own consent to yourself and never try to sneak it into somebody else's hidden places. As MB wrote, the satellite themselves are unable to determine your position, they are telling you where they are and letting you make the triangulation. The devil has always been in the network chip, these nasty little buggers always trying to call people around to tell them whatever they managed to gather about you.
By the way, there's already a big difference between mere positioning and navigation: in the latter case the end user just gets an arrow on a map telling them which way to go. In the former case, you need to do the map positioning yourself, and nobody can tell you where to go (and of course nobody else knows where you are headed to). That's the reason why I am interested: I sometimes lose myself in endless speculations on cloudy nights.
It seems that many boards come with all the 'connectivity' chips attached, including GPS, and many are even proudly marketed under the spooky 'IoT' label. It would sound wiser to stay away from these. Meanwhile, I am designing an embedded maritime compass which uses the sun, the stars and the side of the ship where moss is growing faster in order to give you a rough idea of your position relative to the Kraken. We might be able to use whale calls to improve precision.
>"I am designing an embedded maritime compass which uses the sun, the side of the boat where moss is growing faster, and the stars in order to give you a rough idea of your position relative to the Kraken. We might be able to use whale calls to improve precision."
You're going about it all wrong. Just eat raw jellyfish until the jellyfish viruses and bacteria enter your brain and you get subsumed into the universal jellyfish hive mind. Then you will always know your position relative to other jellyfish, which is the only important location anyway.
Oh and you'll also become immortal.
I've been a jellyfish for some time already, but because of notorious individual memory limitations, I keep forgetting about it. Oneness is everything in us the jellyfish entity. We have good hope to overcome the Kraken by sheer collective mind power. Then it will just be Cthulhu and the seven seas are ours.
Thanks for the reminder. Back to my usual blobfish routine of following empty vessels which look more like a ship than like a boat.
Immortality is overrated, though. I really hope there is an afterdeath.
> This NUT2NT+ looks pretty cool. How do you hook it up to a display and actually get some kind of navigation out of it?
They say it has a USB3 output, so I guess you could simply plug it and send the output to any sort of device with a display. There you might in fact have some choice among several free software tools to manipulate the raw coordinates.
Most OSM viewers manage extra layers, so a simple cron job could send the last position to the map every so often, or even draw your track on the map, as an additional layer. Gnome Maps displays gpx tracks natively.
Since I'd also like to track my chickens at all times, I have been working on a GSM-less mobile with GPS activated.
Succeful pecking places are detected and logged.
