Camaliot is a campaign funded by the European Space Agency and its first project is to get smartphone owners around the world part of a project that can help improve weather forecasts using their phone’s GPS receiver.
Camaliot app works on devices running Android 7.0 and higher that support satellite navigation. During the operation of satellite navigation, phones or other receivers are looking for signals from a network of satellites that maintain a stable orbit. Satellites send messages with their time and location, and once received, phones note how long it took each message to arrive, then use that data to figure out where on Earth they are.
Researchers think they can use satellite signals to get more information about the atmosphere. For example, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can affect how a satellite signal travels through the air to a device such as a telephone.
In the future, Camaliot may expand to include more attempts to collect data at scale using sensors in “Internet of Things” connected home devices. “We were inspired by the famous SETI@Home initiative, where home laptops help search for signs of extraterrestrial life,” says ESA navigation engineer Vicente Navarro in a press release.
The project aims to gather information from all over the world and from several different satellite constellations. There are several different Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constellations, such as the US Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s GLONASS, China’s Beidou, or the EU’s Galileo. Japan and India also operate smaller regional constellations. An FCC order in 2018 allowed more devices to use GPS and Galileo signals together for greater location accuracy.
While old Android phones can participate in this project, the Camaliot project lists more than 50 new models with dual frequency receivers that can simultaneously receive two GNSS signals with different satellite frequencies. Phones that have been confirmed to include dual-frequency receivers include the Google Pixel 4a, Samsung Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 Ultra – mostly those with high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 5G chipsets.
Navarro says the “combination of Galileo dual-band smartphone receivers and Android’s raw GNSS data logging support” is working together to increase the likelihood of how much data can be collected from people who only use their smartphones.
The use of domestic technology from outside contributors for scientific discovery continues to increase as everyday devices contain more processing power and better sensing capability. Alongside similar initiatives like the famous SETI project and Folding@Home, other methods include NASA asking the public to use their phones to take pictures of clouds or trees, and science apps like iNaturalist, which documents animal behavior during a solar eclipse or tracks a different animal species. .
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