GPS Data Logger Software - BT747

I guess I need to up this on my list of things to implement.

I hate to 'reinvent the wheel', so I propose to use an existing kind of encoding (more or less).  BT747 could follow the PHP date function scheme:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

This still leaves us with two options (at least):

1. use % before every letter (the nice thing about the PHP date function parameters is that all encodings are a single letter);
2. use %% and everything in between is for the date.

I prefer the first method.

Now that being said, the encoding would be used in two places:

a) The raw log file;

b) The output file.

a) Regarding the raw log file: it is a bit more complex to get the date from the recorder first and then download to a named file, so I would be using the current date (at least for a start) of the device BT747 is running on (desktop, mobile phone, ...).  That might reduce the benefit of smart download if downloading a file on different days.
An in between method could be that I store the previous filename (with the settings) and use the template only in case the content is different.

b) The output file would use the time in the log.

In case you do a smart download, BT747 'appends' the data to the same file if the data already in the file corresponds to the data in the logger.  If not you would get a warning that the data is different with a request to overwrite or not.

Maybe I should add another failsafe, a 'never overwrite' option which would result in not asking the question, just saying that the data is not overwritten (but then some people would erase before actually downloading).

Personally, I try to fill my memory as much as possible.  The number of erase cycles for flash memory is limited.  Normally you should not reach that limit (modern memories have 100000 cycles which would make it last for 274 years with one erasure each day), but nevertheless.  I also get less files to manage ;-).  But that is purely personal.

I don't know whether you have a fix for it or not, but the solution I use was to run from the command line. I run linux, which is an advantage, if you are a windows user, then this ain't gonna work.

I have a cron job set up so that as soon as the bluetooth GPS comes into range of my laptop, it downloads the data, and erases. Each file is uniquely named, and it doesn't download a new log unless the GPS has gone out of range and come back again

After downloading the binary data, the script converts the binary data into gpx form, and as in this version, automatically removes 5 hours from UTC time to put it in a specific timezone. Each of the output files is listed by the day they were downloaded, plus the day they were recorded, this makes geotagging via exiftool easy (CR2 wasn't supported when I wrote these, and having both times means I can fix problems if I forget to change the camera time). The GPS data is erased from the device.

Important. In order for this to work, you must remove the & from the last line of the file run_j2se.sh

Hope this might be of some help.

Script "scanit"

scanitrunning=`ps -ef |grep -c \[s\]canit`

if [ "$scanitrunning" -lt 4 ]
then
found=`hcitool scan |grep iBT-GPS`

if [ "x$found" != "x" ]
then
if [ -a "/tmp/searchdone" ]
then
#echo "Already downloaded"
exit
fi
touch /tmp/searchdone
#echo "Device available"
bash rfcomm-cmd &
sleep 2
bash bt747-cmd
rfcomm release /dev/rfcomm1
wait
else
#echo "Hardware missing"
rm  -f /tmp/searchdone
fi
else
echo "Scanit running"
echo -n
echo $scanitrunning
ps -ef |grep \[s\]canit
fi

Script rfcomm-cmd, edit for your MAC

rfcomm connect rfcomm1 00:1C:88:10:DB:40

Script bt747-cmd

cd ~/bt747/
mbase="`date +%Y_%m_%d`"
count=0
base=$mbase-$count
while [ -a GPS-$base.bin ]; do let count=$count+1;base=$mbase-$count; done
success=`./run_j2se.sh -p /dev/rfcomm1 -f GPS-$base --download-method SMART -a 2>&1 `
osuccess=`echo $success |grep SUCCESS`
if [ "x$osuccess" != "x" ]
then
success=`./run_j2se.sh -b GPS-$base.bin --outtype gpx -f GPS-$base --splittype day --UTC -5 2>&1 `
osuccess=`echo $success |grep "Conversion done"`
if [ "x$osuccess" != "x" ]
then
./run_j2se.sh -p /dev/rfcomm1 -E
else
echo "Error occurred converting data to gpx"
echo $success
fi
else
echo "Error occurred Downloading data"
echo $success
fi
./run_j2se.sh -p /dev/rfcomm1 -l on

Back to the original question in this thread: I've added the functionality as I indicated further above.

It is now possible to specify the output filename using the 'php' like tokens:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

I've implemented most of these '%*' tokens.

As soon as a '%' is present in the output filename, BT747 will stop doing its usual filename magic and suppose that the '%*' specification is unique enough - if you only specify the weekday for instance and the file splitting is set such that you have more than one file for that weekday, the created files will be 'rubbish' (because the same filename will be used for supposedly different files).