Vitaliy Alexeyev

synshell · Phone · syn-compass

Compass

Compass for synshell on phones — magnetometer and accelerometer, a level, a bearing mark and figure-eight calibration.

READMEAUR package: synshell-mobile-binAUR package: synshell-mobile-git
Compass

Features

  • Heading — degrees and cardinal direction to magnetic north; the dial turns, the fixed mark on top shows where the phone points. Held upright, the phone shows the heading of the back camera.
  • Level — tilt in two axes; the dot turns green when the phone lies flat.
  • Field and calibration state — field strength in µT, whether the sensor calibrated itself, the app's own calibration is used or calibration is needed; a warning near magnets and metal.
  • Calibration — figure-eight with a progress ring; the hard-iron offset is computed by a sphere fit and stored in ~/.config/synshell/compass.toml.
  • Bearing mark — remember a heading and see how far to turn left or right.
  • Coordinates — latitude, longitude and altitude from GeoClue, if it is running.
  • Portrait and landscape — in a wide window the dial and the details stand side by side.
  • 14 languages — follows the system language.
Calibration
Calibration

Requirements

A phone with Qualcomm SLPI sensors, read through the platform's sensor source /usr/lib/syndroid/sensors-source. On a computer without sensors the app shows “Compass unavailable”.

Install

Arch Linux (AUR) — x86_64 and aarch64. syn-compass is part of the synshell-mobile package (phone shell, modem, calls, SMS, NFC, step counter):

yay -S synshell-mobile-bin      # prebuilt
yay -S synshell-mobile-git      # built from source

Depends on synshell-core. From source: cargo build --release -p syn-compass in the synshell repository.

Command line

syn-compass                                 # the app
syn-compass --screenshot out.png            # window snapshot
SYN_COMPASS_DEMO=40 syn-compass             # without sensors: heading wanders around 40°

Part of synshell

syn-compass is one of the applications of synshell — a Wayland desktop environment in Rust for computers and phones, built on the syngui UI framework.

License

GPL-3.0-only