Nvidia shield GPS test

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Just posting this for those of you who are on the fence about buying an Nvidia shield tablet to use with your phantom...

I just got myself a 16gb Wi-Fi Nvidia Shield tablet. One of my concerns was about the GPS operation on this unit. I have a Samsung galaxy S4 with a plan that allows tethering. They both run Android, so I figured I would compare GPS on the two during the trip home from work.

I turned on tethering on my phone, and set it to use 5GHz instead of the default 2.4GHz. I joined the mobile hotspot using my shield...so far, so good. Internet access seems to be just fine.
Next I asked Google to navigate home on both the shield and my galaxy S4 (satellite view on both).
I drove about 6-7 miles while tethered. GPS navigation was almost identical. There were a few times when they both said the exact same thing at the exact same time. So now for the real test, I turned off tethering.

For the next 4-5 miles, GPS navigation remained unaffected, then I noticed that the map resolution dropped significantly, and Google stopped saying street names. Instead it was saying things like "turn right at the fork", "drive straight for one mile". Nevertheless, it still knew exactly where I was, just like on my phone.

I turned tethering back on, and the shield automatically rejoined the wireless network. Within about a minute or so, the map resolution cleared up, and street names started appearing. I left it this way for the last 6-7 miles home.

To conclude, GPS works about as good as any GPS on a cellular phone. When available, it uses the data connection to refresh the map imaging and street names. When data is no longer available, it used the information it had already cached to continue navigation, but at no point did it lose track of where I was located. This means that when/if the "follow me" feature or "dynamic home point" gets released, the shield will be able to accurately transmit your GPS coordinates to the phantom with no need for a data connection.

Since I used 5 kHz wireless, I have no reason to believe that I should not be able to tether it to my phone for map data, and still be able to view lightbridge video, and even stream video at the same time. I guess I'll find out for sure next week when I hope to have my P3P in my possession.

I hope this little review/test session helps someone with the same questions I had!

Enjoy the skies...
 
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I don't know anything about the "tethering" thing you described, but I currently have an S4 and have been using it, and was looking into buying the nVidia Shield.

Since you have both, which do you recommend?
 
Since you have both, which do you recommend?

The things that mmjax is mentioning here is that the Nvidia Shield's GPS work perfectly and that his S4 can tether as a hotspot. This means it acts as a router to the Internet. He turns tethering on in the S4 and then the Shield connects to the S4 like the S4 is a WiFi router so that the Shield can get an Internet connection to download the maps used in the DJI Pilot app. It's not really a question of which is "better", one is a tablet and the other is a phone. In mmjax's case, the Shield does not connect to the Internet on it's own.
 
Personally I prefer to use Bluetooth tethering for my tablet so I can just turn Wi-Fi of and not be concerned about interference. I have experienced signal loss when my tablet was connected to the 5ghz home network. I need to test 5ghz using my hotpsot in a remote location and see if I have any signal drop issues.

The biggest advantage of Bluetooth for tethering is low power usage.
 
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Me too, i use bluetooth to tether the shield to my galaxy s5, cache the maps then i turn it off on both.There is no need to keep wifi or bluetooth on once you have cached the map where you are.
 
I have a Samsung galaxy S4 with a plan that allows tethering.

...

I turned on tethering on my phone, and set it to use 5GHz instead of the default 2.4GHz.

Can you please tell me how did you did this? I have an S5 and I haven't figured out how to only use 5GHz.
 
Can you please tell me how did you did this? I have an S5 and I haven't figured out how to only use 5GHz.
On my AT&T Galaxy S4 running Android Lollipop 5.0.1:
1 - Go to settings
2 - Connections tab
3 - More networks
4 - Tethering and mobile hotspot
5 - Turn mobile hotspot on
6 - Touch the menu button to the left of the galaxy's home button
7 - Configure
8 - Scroll to the bottom of the menu and select the "Show advanced options" checkbox.
9 - Continue scrolling down, and select 5 gHz
10 - Save

Hope that helps!
 
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Personally I prefer to use Bluetooth tethering for my tablet so I can just turn Wi-Fi of and not be concerned about interference. I have experienced signal loss when my tablet was connected to the 5ghz home network. I need to test 5ghz using my hotpsot in a remote location and see if I have any signal drop issues.

The biggest advantage of Bluetooth for tethering is low power usage.
I haven't tried Bluetooth tethering in a couple of years since I had issues with it on my laptop at the time, but I will try it again with my shield - thanks!
 
On my AT&T Galaxy S4 running Android Lollipop 5.0.1:
1 - Go to settings
2 - Connections tab
3 - More networks
4 - Tethering and mobile hotspot
5 - Turn mobile hotspot on
6 - Touch the menu button to the left of the galaxy's home button
7 - Configure
8 - Scroll to the bottom of the menu and select the "Show advanced options" checkbox.
9 - Continue scrolling down, and select 5 gHz
10 - Save

Hope that helps!

Thanks, unfortunately the settings seems to be a bit different on my S5 running Android 5.0. I can select channels, but not 2.4/5 GHz.
 
For me on T-Mobile I needed to go into the tethering app, select Mobile Hotspot and then press the three dots and Configure. From that screen there was a Show Advanced options box I needed to check to get to this setting.

However, it appears now that the phone would only allow 5Ghz connections.
 
No option here on the Galaxy S5, EE. No worries anyhow because i just cache the maps then turn it all off anyhow. This way there is no chance of interference during flight. :)
 
Just posting this for those of you who are on the fence about buying an Nvidia shield tablet to use with your phantom...

I just got myself a 16gb Wi-Fi Nvidia Shield tablet. One of my concerns was about the GPS operation on this unit. I have a Samsung galaxy S4 with a plan that allows tethering. They both run Android, so I figured I would compare GPS on the two during the trip home from work.

I turned on tethering on my phone, and set it to use 5GHz instead of the default 2.4GHz. I joined the mobile hotspot using my shield...so far, so good. Internet access seems to be just fine.
Next I asked Google to navigate home on both the shield and my galaxy S4 (satellite view on both).
I drove about 6-7 miles while tethered. GPS navigation was almost identical. There were a few times when they both said the exact same thing at the exact same time. So now for the real test, I turned off tethering.

For the next 4-5 miles, GPS navigation remained unaffected, then I noticed that the map resolution dropped significantly, and Google stopped saying street names. Instead it was saying things like "turn right at the fork", "drive straight for one mile". Nevertheless, it still knew exactly where I was, just like on my phone.

I turned tethering back on, and the shield automatically rejoined the wireless network. Within about a minute or so, the map resolution cleared up, and street names started appearing. I left it this way for the last 6-7 miles home.

To conclude, GPS works about as good as any GPS on a cellular phone. When available, it uses the data connection to refresh the map imaging and street names. When data is no longer available, it used the information it had already cached to continue navigation, but at no point did it lose track of where I was located. This means that when/if the "follow me" feature or "dynamic home point" gets released, the shield will be able to accurately transmit your GPS coordinates to the phantom with no need for a data connection.

Since I used 5 kHz wireless, I have no reason to believe that I should not be able to tether it to my phone for map data, and still be able to view lightbridge video, and even stream video at the same time. I guess I'll find out for sure next week when I hope to have my P3P in my possession.

I hope this little review/test session helps someone with the same questions I had!

Enjoy the skies...
When I wrote the original post, I completely forgot the main reason for wanting to test the GPS capabilities of the shield: "will the tablet support the follow me or dynamic home point features if/when they become available, without a data connection?". The answer certainly seems to be a definite "yes". I edited my original post to include this conclusion.
 
Me too, i use bluetooth to tether the shield to my galaxy s5, cache the maps then i turn it off on both.There is no need to keep wifi or bluetooth on once you have cached the map where you are.
Yes there is with the shield. I stream almost every flight to twitch. It is a much better stream than what the dji app streams to YouTube on ios devices. The shield is bad azz. Mine is LTE version but I have tried the 5ghz teether with my s5 and went out over 13000' with no signal problems.
 
Yes there is with the shield. I stream almost every flight to twitch. It is a much better stream than what the dji app streams to YouTube on ios devices. The shield is bad azz. Mine is LTE version but I have tried the 5ghz teether with my s5 and went out over 13000' with no signal problems.
Yes, if you stream then fair enough, i have no plans to. How do you choose the 5ghz on the S5?
 

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