Can we get an updated AssetTracker library?

[ztynzo]

Hey guys,

I’ve enjoyed playing around with my Electron and AssetTracker shield, but as is well reported, the GPS results aren’t super accurate in the provided library.

Yes, there are libraries on GitHub, but that starts to stray from the ease of use that many are looking for and appreciate (for example, whenever I use Particle Dev, either for my own code, or an example from @Dave’s fancy asset tracker library, my electron goes into safe-mode).

I like the equipment, but I’d also like it to be more accurate without jumping through hoops I don’t really understand well.

Thanks!

[rickkas7]

If you're using Particle Dev (Atom IDE) you must upgrade your Electron to system firmware 0.5.3. You're entering safe mode because of a system version conflict, not because of the libraries. It's explained here:

Safe mode explained

The Particle Photon, P1, and Electron support safe mode, breathing magenta. Safe mode allows network connectivity but does not run your user firmware. This is most useful when you want to OTA (over-the-air) cloud flash code to your device but: You have a program that runs with the cloud connection turned off Your program uses sleep mode to save power You have a bug in your code that prevents cloud access (breathing green) Entering Safe Mode (Photon) You enter safe mode by holding down RESET …

[ztynzo]

Thanks @rickkas7,

That is very helpful, however kind of goes back to the issue of requiring more in-depth knowledge when I thought Particle was going to be the more friendly learning curve.

I know to those of you who are totally in your comfort zone here, I probably sound like someone who wants it all done for them... but I had a program I liked, then I realized the GPS output was very rough, had to learn a bit about why, then had to go away from the Web IDE (which is super convenient and awesome for beginners), now I need to update the firmware (without the nice firmware manager -- still on 0.5.2b), will have to port my code to Dave's library or vice versa... at the end of it all, sure I'll be more knowledgeable, but there are many who probably wouldn't have bothered to keep trying.

So, from where I'm sitting an AssetTracker that better handled the NMEA sentences would be very welcome.

This is the issue I'm referring to:

Default example for Asset Tracker GPS prints erratic NMEA sentences to serial

My Asset Shield and Electron seems to be working fine as far as publishing GPS coordinates. But when I made a serial connection to COM3: (9600,N,8,1) the output seemed erratic like bits and pieces were missing. I stepped down the transfer rate to 2400, just to make sure I wasn’t losing data, but that didn’t seem to make the problem better or worse. I added some more strings to the main loop of the default 1-gps-features.ino example. The text I added always comes across the same, which is good,…

[rickkas7]

I’m not a huge fan of the Adafruit GPS library that’s in the official AssetTracker library either. I prefer the TinyGPS++ parser, so I built a replacement library. It’s nearly a drop-in replacement for the official one if you’re only using the AssetTracker methods. The library/class name is different and preNMEA() returns an empty string on mine because TinyGPS++ doesn’t really output something similar during parsing.

It’s in the community libraries in Particle Build (Web IDE) as “AssetTrackerRK” and here:

rickkas7/AssetTrackerRK

[ztynzo]

Thanks, I’ll definitely look into that!