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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Hand bearing compass as iPhone app?
From: Philip Bailey
Date: 2012 Mar 6, 21:13 +0000
From: Philip Bailey
Date: 2012 Mar 6, 21:13 +0000
[I sent an initial reply which hasn't turned up yet. If it does, here are my more considered comments, anyway.] I have an app called Spyglass on my iPhone which seems to meet all your requirements. It shows a zoomable image of what the iPhone's camera currently sees, with a reticule superimposed over that showing azimuth and elevation. It shows the position of the sun, moon and other obvious celestial bodies. Other information, including the time and your GPS position is also shown. You can save bearings to several objects, marked on screen even as you turn to face elsewhere. You can also save what you are seeing (the camera image and all the superimposed information) as a photograph. There are other features, including apparently the ability to measure the (linear) distance between remote objects, although I haven't figured out quite how to do that with the app. Recommended. Phil On 6 Mar 2012, at 20:15, Lu Abel wrote: > iPhones have some very accurate sensors built in -- not only GPS but a compass and an inclinometer. > > The basic compass that comes with the iPhone is pretty neat, but I'm wondering if there is an app that is specifically designed as a hand bearing compass, ie, an app where you can aim your iPhone at a distant object (the app would likely have to give something like a sight vane) and it would give the bearing to the object (with, perhaps, the ability to freeze the bearing so you can move the iPhone to read the bearing without having it change)