Variables other than 0 plus increment/decrement

Facer Creator
1

Hi, is there any way to assign a value to a “variable” (e.g. #VAR_1#) other than 0 +/- increments?

What I would like to do is:

  1. capture the latitude/longitude value
  2. wait n milliseconds
  3. capture the latitude/longitude value again
  4. use the haversine formula to calculate distance and/or bearing between position 1 and 2
  5. [optional] divide distance by n milliseconds to get speed

I have managed to do this is MS PowerApps - the math is quite easy (although the calculation is quite involved!), but what I can’t seem to be able to do is steps 1) and 2) above. Step 3) is easy - it’s just #LAT# or #LNG#.

I have thought about using #VAR_1_T# (The timestamp in milliseconds when VAR_1 was last updated), but all this requires #VAR_1# to be settable to a value other than 0 +/- an increment.

In other programming I have done, you can “set” variables to a desired value (e.g. X=1.3), but that does not seem to be possible in facer…or am I wrong?

Alternatively, is there already a built-in #tag that gets you speed and/or bearing from GPS, thereby obviating all of the above?!

Many thanks,

:slight_smile:

2

As far as I am aware, there are no tags that could provide you what you need.
You can have a look at official tag thread:
https://help.facer.io/hc/en-us/articles/360015184094-Tags

Generally, whatever requires storing variable temporarily somewhere won’t work as there isn’t anywhere to store it.
That is, of course, to the extent of my knowledge but there are more experienced users than me so who knows :slight_smile:

3

Thanks, but there are already “variables” #VAR_1# to #VAR_6#, which are stored as integers. Those tags also have last update metadata (#VAR_1_T# - The timestamp in milliseconds when VAR_1 was last updated), so there must be some storage built into facer!
All that is needed is a way to “set” a variable, e.g. “#VAR_1#=1.36”…!
Thanks anyway.