The EU's
Galileo satellite positioning project has been lost in a
haze of paperwork for a while, but there's finally some positive news to report: a "precursor" system called EGNOS launched last week, which will provide free positioning over most of the 27 EU states. The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, as it's charmingly called, consists of three satellites, four control centers, and around 40 positioning stations, all of which combine to take signals from US GPS satellites and enhance them to provide position information that's accurate to six feet, compared to around 60 feet for GPS alone. That means satnavs in Europe are going to get more accurate overnight, as most major brands are already EGNOS-ready -- too bad better navigation won't keep
drivers in the UK from
careening into rivers and
damaging bridges.
posted Oct 4th 2009 11:44PM
It sucks that the only reason US GPS is so inaccurate is because the military scrambles the signal slightly
No they don't. They stopped doing that in 2000.
Don't forget, GPS in North America can also use WASS to get that kind of accuracy. Well, not necessarily 6 feet but very close. Most modern receivers use the WASS data to improve accuracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waas
Someone hasn't done thier homework. I live in Canada and I get 6 foot accuracy on my GPS unit using WAAS.
OK, I'm an idiot. Engadget dude said 60ft with GPS alone. But you might want to make it clear that in North America we don't have to use GPS alone. Most handheld GPS units built today can receive WAAS signals.
Someone's not paying attention!
*US GPS*
GPS Satellites are all US owned. So yes, the article is correct.
German units are equipped with a setting that tells drivers how to get to their destination via Poland or France.
Lol, I totally see what you did there.
That´s true. But we allways get lost in Russia!
lmao
Ahhh, but the US units allow you to go via Iraq and Afganistain.
or via Vietnam, shortly before having to admit defeat :)
It's because of the traffic in Germany, you idiots. That comment had NOTHING to do with WW2.
anyone know why uploading a picture for profile on engadget doesn't work?
Does this mean that I won't have to wait 15 minutes for my iPhone with NAVIGON to get a fix anymore? Or what!?
No, it does not. Not related.
This being said, Navigon takes about 1 minute to get a fix on my iPhone 3G, so something might be wrong with yours. Make sure date/time are correct...
I knew i noticed a difference with my phone's GPS!:) Like two days ago I was playing around with it, and i got a connection INSIDE of my house, and like immediately too.
All i need now is that new firmware to enable InstantFix II :-P
Original text read "from 10 metres to two metres." that's from *30* feet to 6 (here says 60)
27 EU states? I think you'll find they are countries. Thanks for playing, please insert coin.
They're called Member States of the European Union.
I resent the implication that British Drivers drive into rivers using GPS. I'll have you all know that we can drive into rivers perfectly well without GPS.
By the bye, it uses russian sattelites too
Russian system in glonass. This doesnt use them.
There have been some receivers that could use both, gps and glonass, which is quite a feature of persistance as the glonass and gps have such a different modulation techniques.
Now to get galileo up and running, with 4 meter open accurace, and 1m accuracy for a fee, even 10cm with groundstation helping.
EGNOS has been around for years, so it's not "new".
What they report is that EGNOS is now officially launched, indeed this was just announced.
However the preliminary service has been live since 2006 and has delivered just as smoothly as you could want it and it's supported in all reasonable recent GPS devices (just like they support WAAS for north america). So I don't think anyone will notice any difference in service as a result from this announcement
Very cool, I recently bought a handheld gps off of http://handheldgpssystems.org , and am looking to use it for geocaching. Knowing this is available kind of makes me wish I'd waited since 6ft accuracy is way better than what I'm getting currently. Oh well, next time...