Group3

Executive Summary

This section is much like an abstract and summarizes the entire report

Introduction

This section should include an introduction of the product and a brief description of group members (i.e. who was responsible for which sections or tasks)

History of the GPS system

General notes about the product (it's condition, how it works, how many parts, types of materials, etc)

A GPS (Global Positioning System) is a device that when intercepted by satellites, provides useful information to the user in finding destination/locations. The GPS was created by the American Department of Defense and runs on 30 satellite systems orbiting Earth. Signals are transmitted by the satellites to the GPS providing information such as the following: Latitude, Longitude, land details (roads, buildings, grass, water, etc), current dates and times, sunrise/sunset times, when and where the best places to fish are, etc. These satellite transmitted signals show whether the GPS is on the ground, in the air at high or low altitudes, or on a body of water. GPS systems were mainly used for military use only in determining where opponents were and to aid in dropping bombs on specific locations. Over time, GPS systems continued to grow through technology and were used in aviation as a guide to aid in flying altitudes and ashore locations. GPS systems may also be used in engineering surveying work to plot specific land points to guide the site contractors in constructing the designed site. The GPS provides the engineer with information such as; setting up property lines, how much excavation needs to be performed, etc. In 1973, the decision was made to generate a device that would aid in locating various objects or destinations by the transmission of various satellite signals that would be launched into space. It wasn’t until 1980 when the first Block I satellite was launched into space. However, the Block I satellite only carried sensors to detect atomic explosions. Over a time span of a approximately 30 years or more, satellites were launched into space with more and improved technology which developed a more sophisticated GPS system. A few types of satellites that have been launched into space include the following: Block I, Block II, Block IIA, Block IIR, and Block IIR-M. Of these satellites, the Block IIR-M satellite is the most recent satellite with updated information for both civil and military signals.

GPS Uses

A GPS can have a wide variety of both military and civilian uses. GPS can be used in the military to help soldiers find objectives in unfamiliar territory, or to coordinate movements of troops and supplies. It is also extremely useful in the guidance of ballistic missiles and to point out targets for air strikes and artillery attacks. One very important feature is that a GPS allows command to pinpoint the location of soldiers caught behind enemy lines, and makes search and rescue missions much easier to complete successfully. This particular use, search and rescue, can be quite useful to civilians as well. For example if a hiker is carrying a GPS, rescue teams will be able to pinpoint his location, and bring him to safety much faster than if he was simply lost. This becomes especially important when the members of the lost party are injured, and are in need of medical assistance. In an emergency situation, the extra time granted by knowing the location of a person in need of rescue can mean the difference between life and death.

GPS also allows for much easier navigation in any vehicle, whether it travels by sea land or air. GPS navigation systems are becoming more and more common in new vehicles, and are making travel to unfamiliar places much easier for many people across America. In addition to travel by car, a GPS can also make navigation easier for fishermen, speedboats, even large shipping vessels, as well as any type of aircraft.

Geocaching

For our project we decided to explore the more useless uses of the GPS. Caches have been placed all over the world just waiting for other people to find them and place new ones in other places. These caches are hidden and only their latitudes and longitudes are given. Even with the best civilian GPS units the readings are only accurate up to 10 feet, this is why geocaching can be so difficult. Even if you arrive at the lat and long that the has been given to you, you must now find the cache that |you are looking for. This is what makes this game so exciting. We decided to try and test the accuracy of our own GPS by going around campus and creating our own caches for our teammates to find.

We set our caches as waypoints in the GPS. Three members went around campus and set the waypoints and two members went around and tried to find the waypoints. I was on the team that went around finding these waypoints. The precision of the unit was incredible. It gave the degree and minute up to the fourth decimal place. However, finding these locations turned out to be harder than we thought. As we walked the GPS lagged behind, the distance to the cache jumped and swiveled while standing still, but still we moved on. We were not able to find the exact lat and long of the waypoints, but we were able to get close enough to the points to find the caches.

The caches laid out for us to find were not actually items but certain places. We went around twice to see how close we could get to the actual readings.

Our Caches

Set By	Original Corrdinate	1st Reading	2nd Reading	Cache
Tim	N-39° 57.2831’ W-75° 11.2471’	N-39° 57.2843’ W-75° 11.2468’|	N-39° 57.2828’ W-75° 11.2460’	North East corner of Disque Hall
Marc	N-39° 57.2250’ W-75° 11.3280’	N-39° 57.2241’ W-75° 11.2911’|	N-39° 57.2257’ W-75° 11.3361’	Out front of Café near bikes
John	N-39° 57.2648’ W-75° 11.2911’	N-39° 57.2648’ W-75° 11.2911’|	N-39° 57.2663’ W-75° 11.2892’	On top of the new amphitheater

As you can see the accuracy and precision of our unit was incredible, but we were never able to get exactly on top of the same spot as our teammates. I believe that if we had a military GPS unit we would be able to tell which pavement block our teammate stood on.

Personal experiences

Jon's Personal Experience:

After using the Delorme Earth mate GPS PN-20, I found many versifying features that aids in finding a destination. My first time using this GPS system was becoming acquainted with the use of our hand held GPS and all of its components. Not realizing the amount of accessories that came along with this GPS, I decided to tear apart every single package found with in the packaged box. This GPS came along with a USB cable, two double AA batteries, user manual, a charger system, and a copy of the USA map. The GPS itself is made of rubberized material for ease of grip and a waterproof shield, that if I were to drop this GPS in a river and remove it, it would probably still work. However, due to a limited time period, I was not able to prove my point. Although, I was able to make use of the GPS as a navigation guide to aid me in finding the building my Music Theory II class was in. There is a zoom in and zoom out feature that shows you various details of land locations and what is around you. When you zoom in, more land detail surrounded by you is shown whereas; when you zoom out a general overview of other states are shown. When I first used this feature, I zoomed all the way out not only to realize that I was somewhere in Maryland. After realizing that I was zoomed out, I was actually still right here in Philadelphia. Since the maps were not loaded on to the GPS system at the time of use, it was not apparent of what type of land implications surrounded me. What I like about this GPS system, was that it guided it me with in a reasonable range of finding my Music Theory II class. It appeared to bring me to the Drexel book store, where I had made my entrance through the double doors, around a few corners, and up the stairs to the second floor of Macalister (room 219) where I sat my ass down and waited for approximately 5 minutes for my professor to show up. The GPS provided useful information at the time of my arrival to the bookstore. This information included: the time, date, bearing, and heading. Other useful information this GPS system provides includes; time and elevations of high and low tides, distance to stop, speed, average speed, elevations, sunrise/sunset times, moonrise/moonset times, and many more. It also provides information of the best times to fish and where to fish. So, for those fishermen who crave to each fish every day, this would be a handy dandy device to use to aid in finding their fish. Overall, GPS systems are versatile in many aspects in aiding one to find a location that he/she is not familiar with. There are many types of GPS systems that may be used in various situations such as; in dash units for cars, portable add on-units for cars, laptop systems, handheld systems, and many others. Therefore, the next time you are at circuit city and are staring down that price for that one and only expensive GPS system you want, don’t deny it “buy it.”

Steve’s personal experience:

I felt that the Earthmate GPS was somewhat of a disappointment. It seemed that it could be quite useful as a tool to help find your way around but I ran into a few difficulties. It was a bit difficult to use when searching for the caches that the other group members had set. The readings of direction and distance to the point were not consistent. For example, at one point while I was standing still, the GPS said the cache was 6 feet in front of me, and then 15, and 25. Another time, the device said the point was 200 feet to my left, when in reality, the point I was looking for was about 30 feet in front of me. Also, I set up a waypoint and then went around looking for a few caches, and when I returned to the exact same position, it told me that I was 40 feet away from where the original point was located. This lack of accuracy makes it a bit difficult to use in the city. There were some features that I did like though. One thing that wasn’t particularly useful, but pretty cool, was that the GPS has the ability to tell you how fast you are traveling. I feel that if I had the chance to download topographic maps onto the device and go out hiking, it could be an extremely useful tool.

Guide to Writing Wiki Code

The beauty about Wiki is that if you don't know the code, you can steal it from someone's page that does. Feel free to click the "edit" links or tabs to view the code for sections or the pages respectively. Be weary about wrecking havoc on another's page. Each page can be rollbacked to a previous verison and your username is linked to all changes. Although you might think it's cool to go through and insert "MIKE RULES" throughout the page, I'm sure Dr. Lewis would not be pleased.

Here's a few tips on writing with Wiki:

This is a bracket "[" "]"

This is a brace "{" "}"

To create a new page/link within Wiki:

• Double brackets, page name, double brackets
• Typing in a new page name will automatically create a page, which when clicked, you can then edit.
• Whatever name you first type in is the name of the page. You can't change page names, only create new pages. Think before you create a new page.
• Don't worry about slashes or anything, all pages are located in the same directory. If I wanted to create a page called "MAE 277 Template" the code would be ''MAE 277 Template'' Note: Brackets are italicized to prevent creating a new page.

Your table of contents is created automatically.

• 1,2,3,4 are level 2 sections
• 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 are level 3 headers

To create headers:

• Section titles are wrapped with two equal signs ==My favorite header==
• Bold headers within a section are wrapped with three equal signs ===My not-so-favorite header===

Asterisks indicate bullets. Be sure to put each asterisk on a new line.

• Here's one
• Here's two *Here's three, but its not on the next line

Bold text:

• Start line with "b" in "<>". Be sure to end the line with "/b" in "<>" if you don't want the whole paragraph to be bold.
• Surround text to be bolded with three " ' " marks on either side. Or highlight the text and click the "B" button on the toolbar.

Italics:

• "i" in "<>". Don't forget to end with "/i" in "<>"
• Highlight the text and click the "I" button in the toolbar (It will put four " ' " on either side).

This is a broken link media file caption

Media tags are indicated by "Media:", images by "Image:" Broken links in red. Case is not important. Use the toolbar to get examples if you're not sure.

Spacing is werid in wiki. Single return does nothing.

Double return (blank line), breaks the line.

Triple return (two blank lines), puts an extra blank line between lines of text.

"br" in "<>" will break lines. They can also be used to separate section headers.

Finally, use the "Show Preview" button on the bottom of the page to see how it looks before saving. It will allow you to catch and edit your errors without having to edit the page again. Just don't forget to save it when you're really done.

This is an example table

See help page for more information on the syntax.

This is the table title

This is Column Header 1	This is Column Header 2	This is Column Header 3
This starts Row 1	Width values (pixels) in header are used to designate the width of the column for the entire table. Text will wrap but it helps to control the layout. Height of the row is determined by the row's largest content	A return and single vertical lines separate columns in rows. A double vertical line is necessary if you don't break up the text for cells.
This starts Row 2	"br" in brackets break lines. Wiki sometimes ignores blank lines.	Some html tags can be used, but not many. Notice the align equals center tag at the beginning of the row. It centers the text in the first two columns, but doesn't work for the third column. I don't know why. Adding the tag again to the beginning of the cell in question will center the text.
This starts Row 3	Image tags are in this format: Double brackets "[[" Image name | = Vertical Line The following order is not important, as long as each is separated by a vertical line: Horizontal position (left, center, right) Thumb (to create clickable thumbnail that links to fullsize image), don't include to make a fullsize Size denoted in pixels (if desired) You can add a caption if there is a thumbnail Then close with double brackets "]]" Broken links show up in red. File:This is a broken link 150px Here's where you can view any uploaded files	This is thumbnail This is a resized image, not a thumbnail, but notice you can still click on it to get the full size.
This starts Row 4	Notice the repeating code for every row? It's important. A vertical line and a dash indicate the start of a new row. An exclamation point indicates the first column. You can put the entire row onto a single line, but it's easier to read if you break it up. Again, wiki usually ignores new paragraphs.	Make sure to end the table correctly (vertical line and closed brace). Not doing so might still display the table, but nothing that comes afterwards.