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Solar Eclipse Workbench 1.5.0: Get Your GPS Coordinates Straight from Your Phone

We are excited to announce Solar Eclipse Workbench 1.5.0, a focused but very practical release that solves one of the most common annoyances eclipse chasers face in the field: entering an accurate observation location on the laptop when you are standing in the middle of nowhere.

The Problem: Where Exactly Are You?

Precision matters for eclipse photography. The contact times — C1, C2, C3, C4 — that Solar Eclipse Workbench uses to schedule every camera command are calculated from your exact latitude, longitude, and altitude. A rough estimate is fine for casual viewing, but if you want the script to fire at the right millisecond, you need real GPS coordinates.

In previous versions you could type coordinates manually, or search for a city name. What if you drove to an observation site you had never visited before and didn't know the address? The answer was always sitting in your pocket — your smartphone.

The Solution: 📱 Get GPS from Phone

Version 1.5.0 adds a new "📱 Get GPS from Phone" button to the Location panel, available both in the main GUI and in the Script Generation Wizard. Here's how it works:

  1. Click the button. Solar Eclipse Workbench starts a tiny, secure (HTTPS) web server on your laptop.
  2. A dialog appears showing the server URL — something like https://192.168.x.x:8443.
The dialog showing the server URL
  1. Open that URL on your phone in any browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox — no app needed).
The web page on your phone
  1. The browser asks for permission to access your location. Tap Allow
  2. Your phone's GPS reads the coordinates and submits them automatically.
Successfully sent coordinates to Solar Eclipse Workbench 
  1. Back on the laptop, latitude, longitude, and altitude are filled in instantly.

That's it. No app to install, no Bluetooth pairing, no cable.

Smart Altitude Fallback

Some Android phones don't supply altitude when positioning is based on WiFi or cell towers. Solar Eclipse Workbench handles this gracefully: if altitude is missing, it silently queries the Open-Elevation API in the background using the received latitude and longitude — the same service used by the address-search geocoder introduced in 1.4.0.

Works Without Internet at the Observation Site

Many remote observation sites have no WiFi. That's not a problem: connect your laptop to your phone's mobile hotspot and the HTTPS server works over that local connection. No internet is needed at all. The new documentation page docs/GPS_PHONE.md includes step-by-step hotspot setup instructions for both Android and iPhone, as well as guidance on accepting the self-signed certificate warning that browsers show the first time.

New Standalone GPS Script

For users who prefer the command line, a new script scripts/get_gps_location.py is included. Run it with --web to start the phone-browser workflow, or with --smartphone HOST if you prefer a direct connection.

Upgrade

source solareclipseworkbench/bin/activate 
pip install --upgrade solareclipseworkbench

That's all it takes. Your existing scripts, wizard configurations, and saved locations are fully compatible.

More information

More information can always be found on the GitHub page.

Looking Ahead

The next solar eclipse visible from a densely populated area is approaching. Whether you are travelling across the world or just driving a few hours, Solar Eclipse Workbench is designed to handle the logistics so you can focus on the view. Give the new GPS feature a try before eclipse day — you'll appreciate having one less thing to worry about when totality is two minutes away.

Clear skies! 🌑☀️

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