Monday, September 16, 2013

Вышла версия WiFiLine 1.0.16

Выпущена новая версия WiFiLine. Она включает некоторые улучшения и исправления ошибок. Среди прочего реализовано предотвращение известной проблемы, которая может возникать на устройствах с принудительным включением аппаратного ускорения без учета конфигурации конкретного приложения.

WiFiLine 1.0.16 is published

New WiFiLine version is published. It includes some improvements and bugfixes. Among other things, a workaround is implemented for well-known issue which may arise on devices with improperly enabled hardware acceleration.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

New maintenance release is out

After the recent release of the version 1.0.13 with several bugfixes, new maintenance version 1.0.14 is released today. It contains minor improvements, for example, in svg-images SVG Length units are supported, and a tricky situation is handled, when, on some devices, OS unloads all backstack activities regardless to the fact that the application is foreground at the moment.

Выпущена очередная версия с исправлениями

Вслед за недавней версией 1.0.13 с несколькими исправлениями ошибок, сегодня была выпущена версия 1.0.14 с дополнительными улучшениями, которые, впрочем, незначительны. В частности, в svg-изображениях добавлена поддержка единиц измерения SVG Length и обработана ситуация, возникающая на некоторых устройствах, где система выгружает часть активностей приложения в то время, как оно остается активным.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Вышла версия WiFiLine 1.0.12

Сегодня новости будут краткими. Я рад сообщить о выходе новой версии WiFiLine 1.0.12. В ней нет никаких новшеств, зато она содержит несколько исправлений ошибок. Я надеюсь это сделает опыт работы с программой заметно лучше.

С Новым Годом и Рождеством!

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

WiFiLine 1.0.12 is released

Today's news are short. I'm glad to announce the release of the next WiFiLine version 1.0.12. It's a maintenance release - it does not contain new features, but comprises several bugfixes. I hope end users will have a better experience with WiFiLine from now on.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!

Friday, December 7, 2012

On Earth's magnetic field in navigation indoors

Today I'm posting a little piece of news regarding some research I've conducted recently to find out if it's possible to make use of Earth's magnetic field for the indoor navigation task.

According to some sources magnetic field structure is unique in every point and could be used to identify location. Despite Earth's natural magnetic field is slowly changing, its pattern remains similar at the same place, if - and this is a big if - some artificial electromagnetic sources around do not interfere (such as switched on and off microwave oven, for example).

It would be great to have a permanent "reference signal" instead of WiFi hotspots. This would allow for navigation even in places where WiFi coverage is low.

There are even reports about existing such an application for Android, though the app is experimental and not available for public testing.

So, I decided to test this approach. To write it shortly, the result is negative, at least so far.

Currently available magnetic sensors of mobile devices produce in the same physical point too different measurements, if taken at separated moments. A couple of minutes is sufficient for measurements to change in a factor of 1.5 in the same axis.

Apart from instability of overall magnetic field value, another difficulty arises from the fact that mobile's changing orientation in space adds uncertainty in measurements, because 3 magnetic sensors that laid in 3 dimensions, do not work the same. For example, if you take a value 15 micro-Tesla along X axe of a mobile, then rotate it on 90 degrees and measure the same physical direction along Y axe, you'll never get similar values. This means that every device requires some sort of calibration before measurements of magnetic field from all 3 sensors can be used. Alternatively, we could leave amplitude only, but this dimension reduction (from 3 to 1) makes the resulting information insufficient for unique location estimation.

If a hypothetical application driven by magnetic field does exist, it should have been using a know-how, adding the most of the value to the whole approach. In other words, there is a great field for further research.

If you have an idea, please let me know.