Please bear with me, I'm not good at explaining things, let alone good at arduino.
I had an idea a few minutes ago to help make the Drum Corps I'm in a little bit better. The basic design in mind is to have four different GPS modules on each corner of the field (think of the pylon cameras the NFL uses) and a little clip on tag the marcher would wear. The tag would find the distance between all 4 "pylons" to determine where exactly the user is. The tag would have a small graphic display (.96") to give the user information on how far away their spot is.
How would I go about this? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated! I don't need the whole design, just a liftoff
What you describe is currently very, very difficult, if not impossible, for more than a couple of marchers. Pozyx makes commercial systems that do that for a limited number of position tags.
Each marcher could have a GPS unit, but that is limited to typical GPS positional accuracy (at very best +/- 2 meters and often significantly worse, even in an open field).
If the four pylons are receivers, and the corpsman is the transmitter, time of arrival of the corpsman signal at each pylon will show distance from pylon. Intersecting distance-arcs will show location. The basis of direction finding.
May be you can implement your own differential GPS (DGPS) system.
In this setup, one module (arduino + GPS + radio) — the "reference GPS" — is placed at a known fixed location, while the marcher has the same module.
The reference GPS continuously calculates its position based on satellite signals and determines any discrepancies between its calculated position and its known coordinates.
This error is then transmitted to the marcher’s tag using the radio.
The Marcher's module receives both the GPS signals from satellites and the error correction data from the reference GPS.
By applying the correction to its own GPS readings, the Marcher's module can improve its positional accuracy.
a u-blox NEO-M8P (RTK enabled) could be used
the radio could be LoRa or an HC12 or similar and the reference GPS would broadcast the error so any number of Marcher's modules could be used
Those actually work pretty well, (ESP32 UWB modules are available here) and a four anchor/single tag setup results in +/- 10 cm positional accuracy.
But at present, the library code available for those devices limits the number of position location tags to one. A couple of us are working on remedying that, but hardware limitations of the setup are such that it will never be able to handle more than a few tags.
If all your interested in is relative positions on the field, such as is the band 'square' then the absolute position of the RTK reference is not an issue.
After some research, I found the ESP32 UWB Pro with Display, which covers the display issue. Some questions though.
The anchor would be the four "pylons". The tags would then go on to the marcher. This is mainly for the trumpet subsection, so could the anchors handle having 30-some tags? Can the tags communicate to all 4 anchors?
All y'all (@J-M-L@jremington@xfpd) are beyond any tech assistance I can offer in this thread, but us cowpokes take it as it comes. @arduino_not_master if I may offer a slice of personal philosophy, never lead into a discussion where you put yourself as incompetent and never put yourself down.
I may recognize my betters in this forum of helpers and I try to to help folks look to those with the best solutions; however, in a general sense, I say never put yourself down.
There will be folks a plenty in life to try to do that for you, no need to go on helping them.
Approach every room, every discussion as though God wanted you there, because s/he does.
Again, if I may, try the growth mindset. Don't say
because thoughts like these erode your self worth over time. I can't tell you how many hours and dollars it cost me to realize this.
You might say: "I'm very new to Arduino, I haven't mastered it YET - I've been learning all I can, and I've had this idea. What do you think of...."
