On 09/24/2018 11:04 AM, Dirk Hohndel wrote:
So Linus said some interesting things about this topic - and others
have added in the past. I'd like to try and connect some of the dots
here - please correct me if I get things wrong...
(a) a dive site, as an independent entity from a dive, does have a
logical GPS location. One can argue where that is and in many ways
that's a matter of taste and opinion (e.g., is it where you enter the water,
or is it where the "interesting" part of the dive happens), but in general
a dive site has just one coordinate.
(b) a dive itself can be described in multiple ways.
(1) Simply by the coordinates of the site.
(2) by the entry and exit point.
(3) by the path that the diver actually took (turning the whole dive profile
into a 3D path).
Today we do (b)(1).
It seems that at least with the Garmin we could relatively easily (assuming
the diver does turn on dive mode early enough to get a GPS fix before
being under water) do (b)(2)
I don't think there is equipment that is widely available to do (b)(3)
Typically when it's hard to foresee how things will get abstracted out
int the future, I tend to suggest using text fields / strings. Right now we
store all available GPS information on the Garmin as strings. Maybe
we should allow people to do this for other dive computers as well,
assuming they have a source for the strings (and we can of course use
the GPS info from a phone). Which means we'd need a way to do this
dive computer independently.
Maybe also an option somewhere, for when the GPS data logger is being
used in the Android app, to save all of the collected GPS points as text
records onto the dive object as well when applying GPS data. (at least
the ones between start and end times of the dive)
I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this.
Let me see if I can make it even more complicated - because I'm pretty
sure more input will definitely make this clearer.
A few of the other loggers, at least diviac and divelogs.de, split the
location of a dive into two ideas "Location" and "Dive Site". (neither
particularly explain the difference spectacularly) The way I've come to
understand the split is that Location is "the real geographical place
where I set up my gear" and Dive Site is "the place where I was under
water". Now with Mk1 GPS or other sets of coordinates, each dive also
potentially has a specific "path" - that is a path described across a
dive site.
Specific examples, to attach concrete examples to abstract concepts:
Blue Hole, NM:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Blue+Hole/@34.9404462,-104.6819938,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x871c0b5ae1b0dfe9:0xe7228c5b0ba0698a!8m2!3d34.940447!4d-104.673239
Scuba Ranch, TX:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Scuba+Ranch+at+Clear+Springs/@32.7891403,-96.1552064,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x86495b7f045849e7:0x7e45bec3eb6d9080!8m2!3d32.7891403!4d-96.1530177
Flynn Reef, Australia:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Flynn+Reef/@-16.7243694,146.2558661,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x6979cbf27dcbb67d:0x778f3f250b640676!8m2!3d-16.7243701!4d146.2733758
Blue Hole, Scuba Ranch and Flynn Reef are all Locations.
Blue Hole has one eponymously named dive site and is super easy. There's
also only one entry/exit point. It's a hole.
Scuba Ranch is also just one "Location" - there is an entrance where you
pay a fee and where you can get your log stamped. There are maybe 10
different parking lots/shore entries (not sure the distinction matters,
but maybe it does?) - and in general different local groups have "their"
spot where they always dive from. Inside the flooded quarry there are
several "Dive Site"s - there's a sunken airplane, two boats, a big metal
fish and several dive platforms. If you dive there a bunch, maybe
because you're a local, which dive you did might be more interesting
than just "Scuba Ranch" - but also you're certainly at Scuba Ranch for
all of them.
Flynn Reef is a real geographic place with a real name, but being a reef
there are more than one spot on it where your boat might moor. From any
one of those moorings, there are multiple available "Dive Site"s ... and
I'm pretty sure the different dive operators call at least some of them
by different names.
Throwing the Linus Mk1 GPS start/end tracking in to the mix, and now
there are also the possibility of one or more distinct "Dive"s with
locations at a given "Dive Site".
Flynn Reef has GPS coordinates, it's a place. Nemo's Bommie also
probably has GPS coordinates - or more to the point is at least a
logical place where saying "these 4 dives were all at Nemo's Bommie"
makes sense as a human. Then each dive at that dive site has the
potential to also have specific GPS start/end coordinates, even though
the dive might be associated with a Dive Site and that Dive Site might
be associated with a Location.
As you go from General to Specific, the GPS information becomes less
likely to be shareable with others. I can _definitely_ tell you about
Blue Hole, NM, Scuba Ranch or Flynn Reef and you can _definitely_ go to
those places - and there isn't any dispute that they are places. The
Dive Sites at those places are also potentially interesting- but are
also up to interpretation in terms of what, if anything, to call them.
The specific Dive GPS coordinates are almost never interesting to
someone else, but still *might* be in case you're trying to tell someone
about a cool drift dive you did - and communicating "I went in at the
beach north of the Maui Sheraton then did a (slow) drift around Black
Rock and exited south of it" is maybe useful to track/communicate.
Sorry, that's a giant pile of words.
What I'd personally love to be able to do is arrive at a "Location",
pick up my phone/computer and say "I'm at a new Location called Flynn
Reef" or "I'm back at existing Location Flynn Reef". Then, as the
divemaster is giving the briefing (or if I'm giving myself the briefing)
I could pick up my phone and Add a new Dive Site called "Nemo's Bommie".
I could mark it as being at the Location Flynn Reef. I might want to
attach a map of the dive site to the Dive Site - and that map would be
relevant to any dives done there.
When I'm done with the dive, I import the dive and I could then select
"Nemo's Bommie" from the Dive Site list. If the dive came with its own
start/end GPS coordinates - or if I drift dove pulling a tender
overhead, maybe I left my phone with the GPS tracker running in the
tender so I've actually got a decent-ish path even. Maybe soon one of us
will get a https://www.navimate.com/ and
That's super complex - and it's possible people might not want to manage
3 different objects of informatoin each with 1:Many relationships. So if
we got more complex modelling of locations, it's probably important for
a human to be able to just dive, and say "I dove at this place" and not
care about having Location->DiveSite->Dive.
In some ways - it might be more accurate to consider Location and
DiveSite to both be areas rather than points. For instance, Flynn Reef
is actually a whole reef. Then, inside of that Area, there are multiple
Dive Sites, each of which being an area underwater that could be
described with a map. And then dives are paths on top of that under
water area.
In that sense, a Location is an area that is (or could be) a mappable
area by Google Maps. A Dive Site is an area under water, and a Dive is a
path. The simple cases are then that a given Location and Dive Site and
Dive are the same, and are a zero-dimensional area described by a single
GPS coordinate.
Or maybe that's WAY too much.
On Sep 24, 2018, at 8:26 AM, Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 6:12 AM Monty Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
Maybe at least collect the start/end GPS so we have them in the data,
and maybe later someone will good idea for visualization?
For the Garmin Descent, the way it's currently done is that start/end
coordinates are captures as "extra data" strings, with a key of GPS1
and GPS2 respectively.
End result: the data does get saved, but only the last coordinate is
then used for the dive site.
So I agree, there's no huge hurry about this.
Looking at the actual data I do have, it does seem to be (a) more than
precise enough to warrant showing on the map and (b) not useful as a
_path_.
For example, I did Blackrock in Maui as a "drift" dive (ok, so it took
an hour and a half to "drift" a few hundred meters because there was
no real current), and for that dive I got
keyvalue "GPS1" "20.928930, -156.695058"
keyvalue "GPS2" "20.926903, -156.696113"
which if you look at a map looks exactly right, but if you draw a line
between them it will go straight through the Sheraton Maui, because
obviously the actual dive is *around* the rock.
So I think Dirk's argument that we don't have good enough GPS location
is wrong - but it is true that it might be hard to show them sanely.
I think the Garmin Connect app showed the locations as a red and a
green marker. I'm not sure that's great either.
Linus
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