Handling Input on Windows Phone 7 : Location

1. Understanding How It Works

The location sensor is a service that can use cell tower locations, wireless access point locations, and GPS to determine a user's location with varying degree of accuracy and power consumption.

Determining location with GPS is highly accurate, but it takes a while to spin up the GPS, and it consumes relatively more battery. Determining location using cell tower location is very fast, doesn't consume additional battery, but may not be accurate depending on how many cell towers are in range and their relative distance from each other in relation to the phone. Determining location with wireless access points can be accurate depending on how many wireless access points are in range and their relative position. If only one wireless access point is available location data will have a large error ring. Turning on Wi-Fi can consume additional battery power as well.

2. Programming with Location

You may try to guess that the Location namespace is in the Microsoft.Devices.Sensors namespace, but that would not be correct. It is located in the System.Device.Location namespace. The primary class for location is the GeoCoordinateWatcher class with the following class members:

• DesiredAccuracy: Can have a value of GeoPositionAccuracy.Default or GeoPositionAccuracy.High. The latter value forces the use of GPS, which can delay readings and consume battery. Use with care.

• MovementThreshold: This has a type of double. It indicates how far you have to move in order to generate a location reading in meters.

• Permission: Level of access to the location service.

• Position: Latest position obtained from location service.

• PositionChanged: Event that fires when a new position is available.

• Start: Starts location data acquisition from the location service.

• Status: Current status of the location service.

• StatusChanged: Event that fires when the status of the location changes.

• Stop: Stops location data acquisition from the location service.

• TryStart: Attempts to start location data acquisition with a timeout parameter passed in. The method returns false if the timeout expires before data is acquired. This call is synchronous and will block the thread it is called on – call on a background thread.

The sample in that solution for this section is titled LocationSensorSilverlight. In the MainPage() constructor for the LocationSensorSilverlight project, the LocationService is instantiated and events for PositionChanged and StatusChanged are wired up. Here is the code:

LocationService = new GeoCoordinateWatcher();
LocationService.PositionChanged +=
  new EventHandler<GeoPositionChangedEventArgs<GeoCoordinate>>
    (LocationSensor_PositionChanged);

LocationService.StatusChanged +=
  new EventHandler<GeoPositionStatusChangedEventArgs>
    (LocationSensor_StatusChanged);

The rest of the application is just UI to display the LocationService information. The code uses the Bing Maps Map object to center the map on the user's current location. Here is the event handler to plot and zoom in on the map a bit:

private void PlotLocation_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  BingMap.Center = LocationService.Position.Location;
  BingMap.ZoomLevel = 15;
}

The UI implements the Application Bar to start and stop the Location Service as well as plot current location. The Application Bar also has a menu item to change the location accuracy. It is not possible to change accuracy after instantiating the GeoCoordinateWatcher variable. You have to instantiate a new GeoCoordinateWatcher variable and wire-up the event handlers again. Here is the code that handles this:

private void SetAccuracy_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  if (LocationService.DesiredAccuracy == GeoPositionAccuracy.Default)
    if (MessageBox.Show(
      "Current Accuracy is Default.  Change accuracy to High?"
      +"This may take some time and will consume additional battery power.",
      "Change Location Accuracy", MessageBoxButton.OKCancel)
      == MessageBoxResult.OK)
    {
      LocationService.Dispose();
      LocationService = new GeoCoordinateWatcher(GeoPositionAccuracy.High);
      LocationService.PositionChanged +=
    new EventHandler<GeoPositionChangedEventArgs<GeoCoordinate>>
      (LocationSensor_PositionChanged);

					  

LocationService.StatusChanged +=
    new EventHandler<GeoPositionStatusChangedEventArgs>
      (LocationSensor_StatusChanged);
    }
  else
    if (MessageBox.Show(
      "Current Accuracy is High.  Change accuracy to Default?"+
      "This wll be faster but will reduce accuracy.",
      "Change Location Accuracy", MessageBoxButton.OKCancel)
      == MessageBoxResult.OK)
    {
      LocationService.Dispose();
      LocationService =
        new GeoCoordinateWatcher(GeoPositionAccuracy.Default);
      LocationService.PositionChanged +=
    new EventHandler<GeoPositionChangedEventArgs<GeoCoordinate>>
      (LocationSensor_PositionChanged);

    LocationService.StatusChanged +=
      new EventHandler<GeoPositionStatusChangedEventArgs>
        (LocationSensor_StatusChanged);
      }
}

					  

The XAML for the MainPage class implements a simple status panel that displays Location Service data. The code also uses the Silverlight Toolkit GestureListener to allow the user to drag the status panel over the map. Here is the markup:

<Border x:Name="LocationStatusPanel" HorizontalAlignment="Left"  VerticalAlignment="Top"
  Background="#96000000" Padding="2" >
  <toolkit:GestureService.GestureListener>
    <toolkit:GestureListener  DragDelta="GestureListener_DragDelta"/>
  </toolkit:GestureService.GestureListener>
  <Border.RenderTransform>
    <CompositeTransform/>
  </Border.RenderTransform>
    <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Width="200" >
...Xaml for TextBoxes here.
    </StackPanel>
</Border>

					  

Here is the GestureListener_DragDelta event handler code that repositions based on the user dragging the status panel.

private void GestureListener_DragDelta(object sender, DragDeltaGestureEventArgs e)
{
  Border border = sender as Border;
  CompositeTransform compositeTransform = border.RenderTransform as CompositeTransform;
  compositeTransform.TranslateX += e.HorizontalChange;
  compositeTransform.TranslateY += e.VerticalChange;
  e.Handled = true;
}

					  

This concludes the overview of the Location Service available for Windows Phone 7. The next section covers how to capture Microphone input and play it back.