GPS polling at 1 Hz is wasteful — interval & motion-based activation needed

[spacepc-de]

Right now the GPS is queried at 1 Hz, but this doesn’t really make sense.
If the GPS chip is powered, it’s always on and drawing current anyway — the extra 1 Hz read loop only wastes power without giving any benefit since there is no real live tracking anyway.
A much better approach is to avoid keeping GPS permanently active and instead use interval-based activation:
Interval updates
Example: Power up GPS once per minute (or every few minutes), get a fix, then power it back down.
Even a 1-minute interval would save a huge amount of energy compared to running continuously.
Motion-aware logic
If the motion sensor reports no movement, GPS can stay off.
Only when motion is detected, wake GPS and try to refresh the fix.
If no fix is possible (indoors, blocked sky), GPS should remain inactive until movement resumes, avoiding wasted retries.
This way we don’t burn battery with constant 1 Hz reads, but still get fresh enough location data when the node is actually moving or at least at regular intervals. If we agree, I can try to implement this for my boards that I have at home.

[mrlmuk]

I would suggest going even further with this.

Activate the GPS on boot, get a fix then disable again - useful on a repeater to set the clock correctly.

Enable setting a GPS update interval from the app - 1minute, 1hour, 6 hours, 24 hours all have valid use cases.

Allow turning on and configuring the GPS remotely - Some devices (Seeed T1000-e or Rak WiMesh Tag) are intended as trackers, keeping the GPS off until requested or activated by motion could let them do so for longer.

Make the GPS position separate from the node position advertised - Some people want to hide or reduce the location precision so this feature would compliment #870