Satellite Director 2.4.0

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Music: "Werq" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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Welcome to the introduction of the new version of Satellite Director version 2.4.0
I will demonstrate you the visible changes.
You may have noticed that the accuracy of the used compass sensor is reported on the screen.
The sensor name with its accuracy as: high, medium, low, or unreliable.
When the accuracy is reported as, low, or unreliable, you are, or were, probably too close to iron, and have to calibrate the compass.
There is now a warning with red background color that the GPS is switched off. Or, that the phone is in a battery saving mode.
In this situation you can only enter the GPS coordinates of your location.
The other option is to change the phone's settings and switch on the GPS or leave the battery saving mode.
When the GPS is switched on and the battery saving mode is off, you can switch between using the GPS for your location coordinates, or enter them self.
Just toggle the checkbox named "use gps", to switch between these 2 modes.
The Menu has now a settings item.
The settings of each screen are now accessible independent of the current screen.
Thus you can change the director settings while your are on the satellites or location screen.
Lets look at the settings for the location screen.
Satellite Director requires a compass to find a satellite. The compass delivers azimuth, roll and pitch.
A phone can have up to 3 different sensors that can be used as a compass.
These can be: the compass sensor, the magnetometer together with the accelero meter, or, the rotation vector.
When the name of the sensor is colored GREEN, the sensor is present and can be used.
When its colored RED it is not present and cannot be used.
Which sensors are available depends on the phone. Older phones have a compass but do not have a rotation vector.
Newer phones do not have a compass but have a rotation vector. Almost all phones have the magneto meter together with the accelero meter.
Dependent of which sensors are available in your phone you can now select which sensor should be used as a compass.
The compass sensor is the oldest sensor and in the past some phone makers changed the sign of the values for roll and pitch of the sensor compass sensor.
You can check the sign with the help of menu "Check roll and pitch" where you roll a ball into a hole.
If rolling the ball into the hole does not feel natural, then there are options to invert roll and pitch.
On tablets it may be necessary to swap roll and pitch.
The compass data is always filtered to get steady values.
An additional adaptive compass filter is added to the location settings that filters even more tightly when the value changes become smaller.
The result is a more steady compass data.
The settings for the satellite screen are not changed.
The settings for the director screen has one extra setting.
Some users complained that the satellite is being misdirected, or the azimuth is rotating continuously, or the compass is pointing north incorrectly.
They all blame the app but the truth is that this is usually caused by being too close to iron or a magnet.
The compass sensor is then confused or, the compass runs away. Or worse, the damaged sensor is beyond repair and gives unstable, or faulty data.
The check for faulty compass values is now stronger but, if you want, you have the option to skip the warnings.
It is possible that the iron or magnet disrupted the sensor so much that a reboot of the phone is necessary to get everything back to normal.
The method can differ per phone but usually comes down to this:
When the phone is powered off, boot the phone into recovery mode. This is usually done by pressing simultaneously the power button and loudspeaker volume down button.
When the phone is in the recovery mode, the loudspeaker buttons act as scroll buttons and the power button acts as a "perform the selected function" button.
Scroll to the reboot option (without reset) and then push the power button.
That is it for the visible changes.
The non visible changes are: updated magnetic field model for the years 2020 to 2025, increased accuracy of the compass filter, updated satellite list, some bug fixes.