GLONASS Satellite Stats on iOS Devices

July 16, 2012 8:29 PM

Is there an iOS app that shows the received signal strengths of GLONASS satellites?

I recently discovered that the GPS receiver on the iPad v3 receives signals from the GLONASS (Russian version of GPS) satellites in addition to (American) GPS satellites.

I have been looking for an app which will show the signal strengths of the GLONASS satellites being received, and possibly their position on a horizon display, but have not been able to find any that do so.

Can you find me an app that shows this information?

posted by Juffo-Wup to Technology (5 answers total)

Best answer: I don't think you'll be able to do this, at least not with a non-jailbroken iOS device, because Apple's CoreLocation API's don't provide this information. You can ask the OS to tell you where you are, and what direction you're heading, and how accurate those numbers are, but it doesn't provide information to that level of detail.

A CLLocation object contains the following:
coordinate
altitude
horizontalAccuracy
verticalAccuracy
timestamp
description

horizontalAccuracy is just:
"The radius of uncertainty for the location, measured in meters."

From here.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 9:04 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Unfortunately, the API used on iOS for location has no way to get to individual satellite strength and location.
posted by zsazsa at 9:05 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This is a great question for Stack Overflow.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:20 PM on July 16, 2012

(as far as what's possible on jail-broken devices, with respect to code)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:22 PM on July 16, 2012

Response by poster: Oh man, the question and preliminary answers posted by "Alex Reynolds" on Stack Overflow look promising. Thanks for the lead!
posted by Juffo-Wup at 3:54 PM on July 17, 2012