Waypoint averaging to help hide caches

[Frank]

I used to have an app on android that I pipe average coordinates for five to ten minutes and then email the results to me. I've had a ton of compliments on accurate coords due to that app. It would be awesome if cachly had something like this built in!

[rragan]

I don't know how Android functions with respect to the GPS but my observation on iOS is that you can collect samples for as long as you want and if the phone is not moving, the original GPS locating is reused -- saves battery. 

I end up taking a reading, walking some distance away and back and take another reading. Repeat varying the direction you walk away. Averaging each separate reading is a pain so if one wanted to make it better, an averaging mode would guide you to walk away and back and put samples in a bucket that it would average when you tire of your drunkards walk. 

[Frank]

The App I used on android worked similar to how Garmin averages waypoints - you just leave it in position and it gathers a waypoint every second or two. After five minutes you have really sharp coords!  It's a heck of a lot better than manually averaging numbers.  There isn't anyone doing this nicely on iOS at the moment sadly. 

[rragan]

The Garmin gets a new GPS reading every second or two while sitting still. I'm not sure IOS does to conserve power. Maybe there is a programmatic way to force rereading GPS signals. 

Here is an app that does what you want. 

https://www.looking4cache.com/content/578

[brudderman]

Based on suggestions received in another thread (https://goo.gl/r1qbGs), I follow the procedure outlined by @rragan above. To assist with this I created a Google sheet set for offline use and paste coordinates into it after walking away and returning. If a reading is obviously an outlier, just clear that row since blank rows are excluded from the average. Five or six readings are usually enough to get a reasonable  average. Though it could still use a bit of tweaking, a sample is here in case anyone is interested: https://goo.gl/Af36Jg.

I would be interested to know whether anyone has tried the app @rragan mentioned. 

[barefootguru]

From my experience iOS will keep updating the location when stopped if you’re in a program which is asking for it — such as tapping your current location in Cachly, or sitting on Cachly’s Compass screen.

[MrGigabyte]

Without accounting for weighted HDOP, averaging is not going going to gain you any better accuracy.  You end up with better precision, but not accuracy.