Hi Jan-Tarek, So sorry for late reply.
On 14 May 2017 at 19:47, Jan-Tarek Butt <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Zeeshan, > > Johannes is my mentor I put him in CC. Aweosome, thanks. Just out of curiosity, which org this is under? >> Good project. Have you heard of Geoclue? It is the default geolocation >> framework on freedesktop environments: > > Yes, I have heard something about Geoclue. > I am already on the [email protected] list some years. Cool! >> https://geoclue.freedesktop.org > > I am writing this mail currently offline so I cant check the links ;P Ah ok, if you know geoclue, that link isn't important but the following ones were important for you to get a good idea of what I'm talking about. :) >> I am the author and maintainer of Geoclue2, which has already very >> tight integration with GNOME (which will be the default on future >> Ubuntu) and already makes use of Mozilla Location Services. >> >> Moreover, it already supports making use of NMEA-over-network and we >> have an android application that let's you easily use your phone's GPS >> on geoclue-enabled machines on your local network: > > Right, I tested that last year. Nice feature :) Great! Thanks. >> https://github.com/ankitstarski/GeoclueShare >> >> One thing that is missing in Geoclue is support for standalone (we >> already support GPS on modems) GPS devices. Since GPSD was supposed to >> die a long time ago (https://gypsy.freedesktop.org/why-not-gpsd.html) >> and I didn't feel like reviving Gypsy (we can get into reasons later), >> I decided to go another way: >> >> https://github.com/zeenix/gps-share >> >> This will be not only a replacement for GPSD but also be able to share >> your GPS device on the local network (the same way as our android app >> works). I'm writing it in Rust language so it's very reliable and I >> have aims of porting Geoclue to Rust as well in the future. >> >> So while you're free to do as you wish, I'd strongly recommend you >> modify your GSoC project a bit to join forces with me to enable GPS >> support in Geoclue instead. You won't need a new MLS key either. :) > > Ok, I don't understand what exactly is missing? You mean standalone as > only receiving coordinates base on surrounded WiFis? Standalone GPS are the ones that are not part of a 3G modem but are just GPS devices (USB and bluetooth). This has nothing to do with WiFi-part really. The WiFi-geolocation is already in place and geoclue even uploads Wifi information to MLS if submit-data=true is set in /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf file. Applications on Linux system are expected to use Geoclue (and many do, even if some still use the old geoclue) for geolocation and I feel that your current plan will create unnecessary redundancy: Geoclue will be using MLS for WiFi-geolocation and then your module will be doing exactly the same. Unless I misunderstood your project or your project is meant to be never used on a typical Linux system? > My use case is a bit special. I am maintaining a firmware for few > thousand routers. This is an open source and open wireless network, working > with distributed network protocols like BATMAN-adv (Freifunk > ffnw.de <-- is in german). The problem is that many routers have only 4MB > Flash. So I need a very small application which gave me lat/long by > surrounded WiFi networks. Actually we use libwlocate and lwtrace. It doesn't > need an API key or any authentication for receiving a position anonymously > like real GPS. Ah ok. Geoclue with it's deps chain[1] on a typical desktop Linux machine (Fedora in my case) is 13MB but these deps have not been configured/built for a limited-resources case like yours. I won't be surprised at all if you can strip quite a lot if you build the deps (e.g glib) with most features disabled and make everything fit within a few MBs. > So if Geoclue already supports communicating with real GPS hardware over > /dev/tty devices, Geoclue should also able to work with sgps or not? That's what is missing. It does not. It only has support for modem-based GPS devices. > The pro is that we have a very modular structured modules. > > In my last mail I told that I would like to write a new backed for > openwifi.su. Maybe I can realise that all wifi informations can also > integrated into MLS. So MLS will get more datas. :) I recall that I did have a look at this openwifi before MLS existed but once MLS came to being, I didn't see any point of project. I felt it was very Germany-focused project (the webpage still speaks to you in German by default). Anyway, if you project has to be about openwifi, sure I understand but I still don't understand the point of putting anything in the kernel if everything can be very efficiently implemented in the user-space. -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali [1] with geoclue built without support for ModemManager and NMEA source. _______________________________________________ dev-geolocation mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation
