I've been working with some GPS equipment that claims to be accurate to 2cm. To test it, I've been visiting local OS trig points, taking position measurements and checking if they are correct.
Unfortunately I've discovered that the data I'm getting from the OS is not nearly as accurate as my equipment claims to be, which is wrecking my testing. We tend to assume (well, I do anyway) that OS trig points are very accurate position markers, but compared with modern equipment, that's no longer so. I thought people might be interested in knowing how accurate they are. A related issue is this: GPS devices don't work in terms of OS map references. If your tracker device gives you a position in that form, it's done a conversion. How accurate is that? The GPS device in a typical tracker is accurate to maybe three metres, so the position you see on the screen will always be a bit wrong. If you get it to display your position in OS map reference form, it will need to do a conversion, which introduces an extra error, so the result will be even more wrong. Not good if you are trying to produce an accurate map. The OS published a spreadsheet giving the positions of their trig points in OS map references. This is available from them as a spreadsheet and Ian Harris has used that data to create the web site:http://trigpointing.uk The OS also offer a web page that can convert this to other forms including Cartesian, which is one of the forms that my GPS device gives me: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/gps/transformation/ To test my equipment, I take the OS map ref of a trig point, convert it to Cartesian form, visit the trig point, get the position in Cartesian form from my device and compare the two. The results are typically out by at least half a metre. Is my equipment faulty, or is the OS data wrong. How accurate is the published position of the trig point and, when I use the OS web page to convert that to Cartesian form, how accurate is thatt? This OS document was very enlightening: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/legacy/docs/gps/updated-transformations-uk-ireland-geoid-model.pdf It explains how the Cartesian coordinates work, which is useful. It reminds me that OS maps pretend that the Earth is flat, which introduces an error, but that's tiny, and for my purposes itcan be ignored. It explains how accurate you can expect the published measurements of trig point positions to be - they can be out by as much as 60 cm! In general, the document stresses that there is no sure-fire way to convert a position from one system to another. The result will always be inaccurate. So now I know that the published positions of the trig points are a bit wrong, but how accurate is the conversion from OS map ref to Cartesian form? OS map references plus height above sea level and Cartesian coordinates both specify a position using a 3D coordinate system. The origin and the direction of the axes are different in each system so you can't compare thm directly. However, the distances between two points should be the same regardless of which system you use. If you have two points in the same coordinate system (a1,b1,c1) and (a2,b2,c2) and the difference along each axis is a,b and c then the distance between them is the square root of (a squared plus b squared plus c squared) by Pythagoras If you have two points in a different coordinate system representing the same two positions, the distance between them should be the same. So I can test the accuracy of the conversion from OS map references to Cartesian. In the table below, on the left, we have the trig points at Box Hill and Leith Hill in OS map reference form, the difference along each axis and below that the resulting distance. On the right we have the same calculation but using the Cartesian coordinates from the OS conversion page. Below that I do the same comparison, this time using the trig point at Mickleham Down and the one at Leith Hill. In both cases, the distances are out by over two metres. So, I'm trying to test equipment which is supposed to be accurate to two cm using data that is out by at least two metres. That's not going to work. I need something more accurate to compare my results with. OS Map Ref Cartesian Box Hill Leith Hill Difference Box Hill Leith Hill Difference easting 517971.06 513949.28 4021.78 x 4000676.63 4006902.33 -6225.70 northing 151163.16 143161.71 8001.45 y -21724.35 -25963.72 4239.37 height above 171.97 307.00 -135.03 z 4950992.32 4946141.89 4850.43 sea level distance 8956.35 8958.70 Mickleham Leith Hill Difference Mickleham Leith Hill Difference easting 517891.74 513949.28 3942.46 x 3998820.07 4006902.33 -8082.26 northing 153518.13 143161.71 10356.42 y -21739.43 -25963.72 4224.29 height above 142.73 307.00 -164.27 z 4952444.39 4946141.89 6302.49 sea level distance 11082.66 11085.53
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