gpsprof - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

gpsprof - profile a GPS and gpsd, plotting latency information

SYNOPSIS

gpsprof [-f plot_type] [-m threshold] [-n packetcount] [-t title] [-T terminal]
[-d dumpfile] [-l logfile] [-r] [-D debuglevel] [-h] [[server[:port[:device]]]]

DESCRIPTION

gpsprof performs accuracy, latency, and time drift profiling on a GPS. It emits to
standard output a GNUPLOT program that draws one of several illustrative graphs. It can
also be told to emit the raw profile data.

Information from the default spatial plot it provides can be useful for establishing an
upper bound on latency, and thus on position accuracy of a GPS in motion.

gpsprof uses instrumentation built into gpsd.

To display the graph, use gnuplot(1). Thus, for example, to display the default spatial
scatter plot, do this:

gpsprof | gnuplot -persist

To generate an image file:

gpsprof -T png | gnuplot >image.png

OPTIONS

The -f option sets the plot type. The X axis is samples (either sentences with timestamps
or PPS time drift messages). The Y axis is normally latency in seconds, except for the
spatial plot. Currently the following plot types are defined:

space
Generate a scattergram of fixes and plot a probable-error circle. This data is only
meaningful if the GPS is held stationary while gpsprof is running. This is the
default.

time
Plot delta of system clock (NTP corrected time) against GPS time as reported in PPS
messages.

uninstrumented
Plot total latency without instrumentation. Useful mainly as a check that the
instrumentation is not producing significant distortion. It only plots times for
reports that contain fixes; staircase-like artifacts in the plot are created when
elapsed time from reports without fixes is lumped in.

instrumented
Plot instrumented profile. Plots various components of the total latency between the
GPS's fix time fix and when the client receives the fix.

For purposes of the description, below, start-of-reporting-cycle (SORC) is when a device's
reporting cycle begins. This time is detected by watching to see when data availability
follows a long enough amount of quiet time that we can be sure we've seen the gap at the
end of the sensor's previous report-transmission cycle. Detecting this gap requires a
device running at 9600bps or faster.

Similarly, EORC is end-of-reporting-cycle; when the daemon has seen the last sentence it
needs in the reporting cycle and ready to ship a fix to the client.

The components of the instrumented plot are as follows:

Fix latency
Delta between GPS time and SORC.

RS232 time
RS232 transmission time for data shipped during the cycle (computed from character
volume and baud rate).

Analysis time
EORC, minus SORC, minus RS232 time. The amount of real time the daemon spent on
computation rather than I/O.

Reception time
Shipping time from the daemon to when it was received by gpsprof.

Because of RS232 buffering effects, the profiler sometimes generates reports of
ridiculously high latencies right at the beginning of a session. The -m option lets you
set a latency threshold, in multiples of the cycle time, above which reports are
discarded.

The -n option sets the number of packets to sample. The default is 100.

The -t option sets a text string to be included in the plot title.

The -T option generates a terminal type setting into the gnuplot code. Typical usage is
"-T png" telling gnuplot to write a PNG file. Without this option gnuplot will call its
X11 display code.

The -d option dumps the plot data, without attached gnuplot code, to a specified file for
post-analysis.

The -l option dumps the raw JSON reports collected from the device to a specified file.

The -r option replots from a JSON logfile (such as -l produces) on standard input. Both -n
and -l options are ignored when this one is selected.

The -h option makes gpsprof print a usage message and exit.

The -D sets debug level.

Sending SIGUSR1 to a running instance causes it to write a completion message to standard
error and resume processing. The first number in the startup message is the process ID to
signal.

Use gpsprof online using onworks.net services