ForumsQuestionsLocation distance
Location distance
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christatedavies |
I would like to be able to select 500m as a location alert. I work about 1km from one of my main locations, and I don't really need to be reminded I am near it, unless I really go near it. You know what I mean?
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
The iPhone's background location monitoring technology is not accurate enough to have such a small distance. 1km is already pushing it.
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Nick |
Hrm, is this still the case? I ran across this article which says background locations are accurate to about 500m: http://longweekendmobile.com/2010/07/22/iphone-background-gps-accurate-to-500-meters-not-enough-for- foot-traffic/
Perhaps this should be offered in the same way that ~1 min alerts are offered? "We're quite sure it'll be accurate at 1 mi, but at 500m it might be cranky, use at your own risk" |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
In our testing, lower than 1mile caused lots of erroneous alarms, but we'll test it again.
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raj_1312170655 |
I have around 8 locations defined and have some tasks assigned to each location. My iPhone is constantly giving me an alert for one particular task with an associated location which is always 4 miles or more away, even though I have the location distance set to 1 mile! At the same time, it doesn't give me alerts for other locations which have assigned tasks and which are actually closer, such as 2 miles away! Whenever I get the false alert, it's always for the same task, which is always more than 4 miles away! Very strange. I don't know what's going on. I work from home and at random times it'll suddenly alert about this one task (about once a day), even though the phone itself hasn't moved an inch!
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Salgud |
@raj
Have you tried deleting the task and re-entering it? Rebooting the phone? |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
The problem is with the way Apple's background location monitoring service works. Because it cannot use the GPS (Battery drain), it uses triangulation with the cellphone towers instead. You must be in a location that has poor coverage, or is right on the border of two cells. So, if your cellphone loses its connection to one cell tower, it switches to another nearby tower and this tricks the iPhone into thinking that you moved, even though you haven't. We have definitely see this in our testing. The iPhone is just sitting there on our desk, but the location is bouncing around by a half mile this way and a half mile that way.
Until Apple refines their technology, this is what we have to work with. You could try decreasing the sensitivity in the App settings. |
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raj_1312170655 |
Yep, that describes my situation. I definitely have bad coverage where I am. I figured it was something like that. Too bad. I really liked the feature and had hopes to use it, but basically I can't currently.
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
Sorry. We are limited by the capabilities of the hardware. There isnt anything that our software can do to improve this.
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LockeNYC |
Could you create a setting to check the location by GPS only at specified times of day? Or only once an hour or some other frequency?
This could preserve battery while still giving some benefit. Similarly, could you have the default view/filter change based on your location at specific times of day? Even without location checking it would be great to feature work tasks starting at 7am each day and make home tasks the most prominent starting at 7p each day. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
Apple currently does not allow the GPS to work like that, unfortunately.
Thanks for the suggestion on time-specific auto-filters. That is an interesting idea. |
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sventhebrit |
Hi there, I am just starting to use the location feature but am initially concerned about battery life. I noticed the iPhone Reminders app uses a Geo Fence, but I would prefer to have everything in one place on Toodledo - is this similar to how the location alerts are worked within Toodledo? Or does the Reminders app work in a different way?
Thanks Steve |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
I do not know exactly how Apple has implemented their location reminders, but I suspect that we are doing it in a very similar way.
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mark.knapp |
With iOS 5.1 a new icon was added to indicate when an app is "using a geofence" versus "using your location". My understanding is that using a geofence consumes less battery.
The Toodledo location monitoring shows the full "using your location" icon versus the geofence icon. And my anecdotal evidence seems to show Toodledo location alerts use battery life more quickly that apps using geofencing (e.g. Instapaper). I haven't done any rigorous monitoring, however, so I could be mistaken. Toodledo, can you comment on this and what method the Toodledo app is using? Thanks! |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
Apple provides 3 types of location monitoring.
1) GPS. This kills your battery. We only use the GPS when you have opened the map inside our app, so that it can plot your exact location. Otherwise we do not use the GPS. 2) Significant Location Change. Apple will tell the app whenever you have moved a significant distance. It does not use the GPS, but rather uses Wifi and Cell tower triangulation. This is nice to the battery. This is what Toodledo uses. We get periodic updates about your location, and we compare this to your locations to see if you are near enough to one for us to trigger an alarm. 2) Geofencing. Apple will tell the app whenever you have entered or exited a predefined region. Apps are limited to 50 regions. Like #2, it does not use the GPS, so it is nice to the battery. We do not use this method because in our testing we had trouble getting it to work reliably and with good sensitivity. Option #2 worked better for our needs, in our testing. Apple's documentation suggests that battery usage between options #2 and #3 are the same. |
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eyv |
In my experience over more than a year with Appigo's Todo, which uses geofencing, I've had very few false alarms, but there's a HUGE boost in accuracy when using geofencing. I get constant false alarms with Toodledo (or set sensitivity low enough and never get alarms).
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