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Project Information
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GPS Bearing and Distance for Android Bearing is a simple application that remembers one GPS location and then computes the bearing and distance between that specific location and your current GPS location.
It's also displays the current compass value. That's all there is, really. What is this good for? I use it for land survey: walk to a particular point, mark the GPS location and then walk towards the next point and note the bearing and distance between the two points. There are some caveats when doing so, mostly GPS accuracy and update interval, but it's a good start. What this is not? This is not a game. There are no fancy graphics, not even a graphical display of the compass. There are just a bunch of techy numbers and some cryptic text display. Here are some screenshots:  
The various text fields displayed are as follow: Mark Location:
- GPS coordinates of the marked location,
- Bearing to current location in degrees,
- Distance to current location in feet.
Current location:
- GPS coordinates,
- GPS accuracy (meters and feet),
- GPS bearing and GPS speed (only useful if you're moving at more than 5 mph).
- It also displays two time delays: the numbers of seconds elapsed since the
last GPS coordinate update and the numbers of seconds for the previous update.
This is enough to give you an idea of how often the GPS updates and thus if
the value is stale or fresh.
Compass:
- Heading in degrees,
- Average of the last 20 samples,
- Accuracy (high, medium, low).
GPS status: started vs stopped, last fix time stamp, number of satellites. There are two buttons on the screen: - The Mark Location button lets you mark the current GPS location. The location is saved in permanent storage and will be recalled when the app is next started (useful if your phone looses its battery or such.)
- The Compass button launches the GPS Status application. If you don't have it, Market will be opened to help you install it.
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