User guide

Introduction

This section has some information relating to the application design and technology.

Locations

Ski Tracks uses a technology built into the majority of Android Devices called assisted

GPS (aGPS). aGPS uses a number of different ways to get your current location:

1. Phone mast triangulation.

2. WiFi Hotspot location database.

3. GPS using 3 or more satellites to calculate position.

By using these 3 different methods aGPS can get a ﬁx on your location very quickly

compared to a standard GPS - usually in around 2-10 seconds. Once a location has been

retrieved getting following locations can be done in under a second1.

On a mountain however there are a number of limitations for example mast triangulation

may be difﬁcult, WIFI is generally not available and if you are in a valley ﬂoor there is less

sky available to get satellites signals and so on.

Ski Tracks is also designed to be used with Data Roaming Off this can effect the aGPS

system - but means that you donʼt get home from your trip with a nasty data bill.

IF YOU ARE USING SKI TRACKS IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, ALWAYS MAKE SURE

DATA ROAMING IS OFF UNLESS YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC DATA ALLOWANCE FOR

THAT COUNTRY.

The amount of time it takes to get a ﬁrst location ﬁx varies between different devices. We

have seen whilst testing on the mountain the following ﬁx times with the following phones:

• Samsung Galaxy S3 - ~10 seconds.

• Samsung Galaxy Ace - ~10 seconds.

• Sony Ericsson Xperia U - Anything from 10 seconds to 5 minutes.

• Samsung Galaxy S2 - ~10seconds.

Ski Tracks is designed to work as a background task and is fully operational at all times.

However we have worked hard to reduce the battery load of the application, so although it

is running all day you should expect anything up to 12 hours for the Samsung Galaxy S3,

12 Hours for the Sony Xperia U and 18-20 hours of recording on the Samsung Galaxy

Ace. Again these ﬁgures vary between device.

We have employed a series of efﬁciency savings.

1. Reduced the processing when the application is recording a track.

2. Advanced battery monitoring.

SkiTracks_Android_UserGuide_V1_0! Document Version 1.0