The graph above shows the results from a stationary test, with measured speed on top, and accuracy estimates at the bottom. For the first 5 minutes of the test (the left, yellow half), I had covered the Raspberry Pi with a bit of aluminum foil; for the second half of the test, I put the Pi on top of the foil.
The results show that (a) the Pi generates a lot of RF noise that's picked up by the GPS and introduces error, and (b) that this RF noise can be blocked quite easily. For those of you who like numbers, here are the averages and maxima for this test (all numbers in knots):
For the numbers, I divided the second half of the test into two parts: a transition part, where the speeds and error estimates where high; and a "not blocked" part, when the numbers stabilized. Moving the Pi took just a few seconds, but the transition period lasted about 2 minutes. I'm not sure exactly what was going on there - perhaps the software in the GPS module needed a couple of minutes to figure out which satellites and/or noise filters to use.
The numbers in the table above reflect what I had seen many times before in other data sets:
- At low error estimates (the "with foil" row), actual errors typically are below the error estimates.
- With higher error estimates, deviations larger than the error estimate can be observed more often.
- With poor data quality (high error estimates), the error becomes less random, with extended regions of larger error. This is illustrated by the high (false) speed over 2 seconds of more than 4 knots in the "Transition" period. In this region, 10 successive points had errors over 2 knots, about 2x to 5x as high as the error estimate. This would be extremely unlikely to occur randomly.
While the data shown are from a single test, the results are very reproducible. This is quite easy to do by simply hooking up the GPS to u-center, and opening a few graphs. Here's a screen shot from the part where the Pi was covered with foil:
Changes after uncovering the Pi where quite dramatic:
For a lot of the satellites (but not all of them), the observed signal-to-noise ratio dropped significantly, which reduced the accuracy of the speed calculations. So, if you want to use a Raspberry Pi to capture GPS data: cover your Pi!
