gps

Pure python script to get a gps fix on SailfishOS phones. Can be used standalone or as a importable class.

May also enable positioning if disabled in UI, but this needs prior setup of sudo (see below)

Command line invocation and arguments

[nemo@Sailfish]$ ./gps.py --help
usage: gps.py [-h] [-t TIMEOUT] [-a ACCURACY]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -t TIMEOUT, --timeout TIMEOUT
                        Maximum time (in seconds) the program will run, trying
                        to get a fix, to reach the requested accuracy or
                        collecting a track
  -a ACCURACY, --accuracy ACCURACY
                        requested accuracy, in meters

[nemo@Sailfish]$ python3 gps.py 
location enabled
gps enabled
Mozilla location service (agps) enabled
gps status: Unavailable
gps status: Acquiring
satellites used: 0; visible: 28
satellites used: 2; visible: 28
satellites used: 3; visible: 28
gps status: Available
new position: [47.53214128, 1.07622818, 109.0], precision 35.0
average position: [47.53214128, 1.07622818, 109.0, 35.0], precision 35.0
satellites used: 4; visible: 28
new position: [47.53213695, 1.07621242, 108.0], precision 22.0
average position: [47.53213817628437, 1.076216883335284, 108.28320655354007, 18.626004082642105], precision 18.626004082642105
new position: [47.53214012, 1.07626797, 109.0], precision 18.0
average position: [47.532139181354066, 1.076243299575342, 108.65385098411326, 12.943574610175748], precision 12.943574610175748
new position: [47.53212019, 2.16293615, 105.0], precision 16.0
average position: [47.53213166903655, 1.0762800279660507, 107.20851492851513, 10.063035049411571], precision 10.063035049411571
new position: [47.53212354, 1.07628995, 103.0], precision 14.0
average position: [47.53212889984024, 1.07628340795575, 105.77486360475933, 8.171191141296395], precision 8.171191141296395

Accuracy reached!

With a precision of 8m the phone is at
geo:47.53212889984024,1.07628340795575
https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=47.53212889984024&mlon=1.07628340795575&zoom=15

If the phone is moving (above 2.5 km/h), it will record the track up to the timeout and print the list of coordinates.

Enabling gps by script

The script already contains what is necessary to activate positioning and gps if these were disabled in the UI. It does it following this post at TJC. For this to work automatically from within the script without running the whole script as root, you should set up sudo (see here) and edit the /etc/sudoers file. For editing this file using nano as editor (which you may need to install first) you can type sudo EDITOR=nano visudo

then, below the line

nemo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

add this line:

nemo ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /bin/sed -i * /etc/location/location.conf

then save your changes. Now the script can enable the gps, even when running as nemo.

In the repo I also made a standalone shell script enable_gps that you can run as nemo. Its content is simply:

#!/bin/sh
sudo /bin/sed -i 's|^enabled=false|enabled=true|' /etc/location/location.conf
sudo /bin/sed -i 's|^gps\\enabled=false|gps\\enabled=true|' /etc/location/location.conf