[ConnectIQ Feature Request] Location Comparison (Haversine)

hyakuhei doesn't do maths so good.... :p

What kind of compare are you looking to do? See if lan/lon are the same? Get the distance been position 1 and position 2? the direction from 1 to 2?

Planetscooter posted code to do the distance a while back, and I'm using it, and it works well. With that, I can see if I'm back to a known location using a current GPS location, for example (I actually use "within 75" for my application).

What kind of compare are you looking to do? See if lan/lon are the same? Get the distance been position 1 and position 2? the direction from 1 to 2?

Thanks Jim! I'm just trying to find the distance between two spots.

In fact I have a working, though somewhat verbose Haversine function here:

function haversine(position1, position2){
//credit: www.movable-type.co.uk/.../latlong.html
//credit: rosettacode.org/.../Haversine_formula
var radius = 6371000; //Eaths radius in meters
var p1LatRads = position1.toRadians()[0];
var p2LatRads = position2.toRadians()[0];

var latDeltaDegrees = position2.toDegrees()[0] - position1.toDegrees()[0]; // The difference of the two latitudes in degrees
var latDeltaLocation = new Position.Location({:latitude=>latDeltaDegrees, :longitude=>0, :format=>:degrees}); // An object that uses that lat difference so we can get radians from it
var latDeltaRads = latDeltaLocation.toRadians()[0];

var lngDeltaDegrees = position2.toDegrees()[1] - position1.toDegrees()[1];
var lngDeltaLocation = new Position.Location({:latitude=>0, :longitude=>lngDeltaDegrees, :format=>:degrees});
var lngDeltaRads = lngDeltaLocation.toRadians()[1];

var a = Math.sin(latDeltaRads / 2) * Math.sin(latDeltaRads / 2) + Math.sin(lngDeltaRads/2) * Math.sin(lngDeltaRads/2) * Math.cos(p1LatRads) * Math.cos(p2LatRads);

var c = 2 * Math.asin(Math.sqrt(a));
var result = radius * c;

return result; //result is in meters
}



I just think it's something that lots of applications are going to want this functionality and putting into a Location.compare() seems like a reasonable thing to do.

Here's planetscooter's code.... Not sure exactly the method he's using, but it works for me (I changed it a bit so that lat/lon is passed differently and distance is returned as a number.

// computes the direct distance between two points
// distance = sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy)
// with distance: in km
// dx = 111.3 * cos(lat) * (lon1 - lon2)
// lat = (lat1 + lat2) / 2 * 0.01745
// dy = 111.3 * (lat1 - lat2)
// lat1, lat2, lon1, lon2: Breite, Länge in Grad
// 1° = p/180 rad ˜ 0.01745
function computeDistance (pos1, pos2) {
var lat1, lat2, lon1, lon2, lat, lon;
var dx, dy, distance;

lat1 = pos1.toDegrees()[0].toFloat();
lon1 = pos1.toDegrees()[1].toFloat();
lat2 = pos2.toDegrees()[0].toFloat();
lon2 = pos2.toDegrees()[1].toFloat();

lat = (lat1 + lat2) / 2 * 0.01745;
dx = 111.3 * Math.cos(lat) * (lon1 - lon2);
dy = 111.3 * (lat1 - lat2);
distance = 1000 * Math.sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy);
distance = distance.toNumber();
strokelength = Lang.format("$1$ m", [distance]);
validstrokeposition = true;
Sys.println(strokelength);
}


Looks good :)

Planetscooter's code is what the haversine formula reduces to for points which are very close together (so cos(lat) is effectively the same for both points, and sin(lon1-lon2) is effectively equal to (lon1-lon2)). Which is good to 0.005% when lon1 and lon2 are a full degree apart, which is over 100km for latitude and nearly 30km for longitude even at 75 north/south. There aren't many human-powered activities where this approximation isn't perfectly good (maybe a 24-hour point to point cycle race in a straight line?)

I agree with Hyakuhei's suggestion, though, you'd imagine all the watches have a hardware calculation for this, as a reasonably complicated calculation they're doing at least once a second, and probably considerably more if you are following a course.

I'll file this as a new feature request. We plan to make navigation and mapping features available in the SDK in future releases (no ETA, and I don't have any specifics), so this will likely be part of that.

Thanks Brandon, it seems like a sensible thing to add :)