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Posts: 101 | Thanked: 54 times | Joined on Jul 2007
#21
Originally Posted by Master of Gizmo View Post
Hi,

what a coincidence, i have also just written my first geocaching related software. It's a geocaching.com gpx file viewer. See here

It's still under development and currently still lacks some features. While you can already view all the important stuff from the gpx, e.g. the reference bearing and distance is calculated from is fixed. Maemo really eases the development of such stuff as it comes with libgtkhtml and libxml and thus even allows to embed rendered html cache descriptions.

This is written in C with maemo-mapper in mind and i plan to either include this into maemo-mapper so the caches are marked on the map. I am also trying to get this combined with navit and its ability to read garmin maps and hopefully this can be combined with e.g. topographic garmin maps.

Regards,
MoG
That's great!
It works for me out of the box with a sample gpx-file.
I am not a premium member - but now I think of it !

As a geocacher I would really like to see those funtions like mCacher and gpxviewer ( with gifs, please ;-) to be integrated.

Another little shell program I developed is a script which
can show you a new waypoint caclculated from a given coordinate
and a distance.
That would be nice, too ;-.)

Here's the program:
www.linuxvision.de/dist/dist

or if someone is interested in the C-Source:
www.linuxvision.de/dist/distance.c

---------
>chmod +x dist
>./dist
Please enter latitude, longitude
and degree and distance of new POI:
lat, lon => deg, dist
e.g.: for N 52.818717, E 9.81875 and 90 degree, 67000 metres:
distance 52.818717 9.81875 90 67000
---------
(call with no parameters to geht the help page)


Hope that at some time all these features come to maemo mapper
or are connected via a DBUS connection...

Regards,
asys3
 

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Posts: 19 | Thanked: 11 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#22
Originally Posted by Master of Gizmo View Post
Hi,

what a coincidence, i have also just written my first geocaching related software. It's a geocaching.com gpx file viewer. See here

It's still under development and currently still lacks some features. While you can already view all the important stuff from the gpx, e.g. the reference bearing and distance is calculated from is fixed. Maemo really eases the development of such stuff as it comes with libgtkhtml and libxml and thus even allows to embed rendered html cache descriptions.

This is written in C with maemo-mapper in mind and i plan to either include this into maemo-mapper so the caches are marked on the map. I am also trying to get this combined with navit and its ability to read garmin maps and hopefully this can be combined with e.g. topographic garmin maps.

Regards,
MoG


Ading the DBUS support to mCacher does not look too difficult. If you think you wish to add mCahcer support I could work on the DBUS interface next. I think just a single message "Goto waypoint: name, lat, lon" would do the trick.

Let me know,
Charlie.
 
Posts: 19 | Thanked: 11 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#23
All;

Would like to get some feedback on the accuracy of the directional arrow indicator. I am not doing much GPS conditioning on the coordinates. mCacher simply averages two consecutive GPS readings as the current location (the basis for all calculations). It appears there is quite a bit of bounce in GPS readings that is more impactful at slow speeds / short distances. I am considering doing something more elaborate (and allowing the user to select the tracking method).

Thanks,
Charlie.
 
Posts: 50 | Thanked: 4 times | Joined on Nov 2007 @ Melfa, VA, USA
#24
going tp boston this weekend, if i can get away and do some caching, will post a review on both these little programs.
__________________
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Nrune
n800, Ubuntu laptop, Ubuntu server
 
Posts: 19 | Thanked: 5 times | Joined on Nov 2007
#25
Hi,

I find it great that there is so much development done for geocaching on the Internet Tablet. OTOH, I feel some projects are reinventing the wheel. There's already two applications that covers the basic needs for Geocaching:
- GeoPOI to convert GPX files to POI databases (Miss the ability to add POI to an existing database but that's an already requested feature)
- Maemo Mapper to display the location of the caches (as POI), the type of caches (using JPG icons for each category), the distance to a cache (with POI context menu) and even the route to the cache.

IME, these two application already make a great team for geocaching. So, even if this new application seems great, I would rather have additional features built into the existing ones, mainly in MM, rather than additional applications that duplicate what these two already do.

So, the big question is: how to build add-ons for MM so Gnuite doesn't have to do all the hard work himself?


Krystan

P.S.: Sorry to be devil advocate here.
 
Posts: 19 | Thanked: 11 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#26
Feedback is good. I don't think either of those apps (combined) provide the same approach as mCacher. If they did I would have simply used them. I chose to develop mCacher for myself and posted here to "give back" to the community. If anyone finds this useful then thats great. I do intend to add the DBUS interface.

Charlie.
 
Posts: 348 | Thanked: 61 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#27
CJ is right, they're not quite the same things. The GPS display, with an arrow pointing to the destination (I actually prefer to see the distance and direction numbers, not an arrow, but that's just me) is more useful than just seeing it displayed on a map. Both are useful, and having the ability to quickly switch between the two displays would be really nice. Having a satellite photo of the cache location, and the detailed navigation info, on the same device is what lots of people have been looking for, for a long time. Just a little more integration, allowing the logging of the cache, notes, etc into the program would pretty much be the holy grail of caching.
 
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Posts: 357 | Thanked: 115 times | Joined on Sep 2007 @ Sunny England :)
#28
Indeed, I've been tempted to write something myself but not had the opportunity. A simple addition to maemo-mapper to add a direction arrow and distance target would make it even more complete. Maybe it could sit where the satellite information lives?

Although I still intend to try mcacher in the meantime, as it looks ideal for what I want.
__________________
pixel - pushing buttons that shouldn't be pushed, and fiddling with things that shouldn't be fiddled with
 
Posts: 19 | Thanked: 11 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#29
I have posted a new release of mCacher v0.1.1 out on the garage site. This is packaged as a .deb (many thanks to Uwe Koch for the packaging script).

http://mcacher.garage.maemo.org

Also, a major change to tracking (the direction you are walking). Changes in track are damped/slowed to help address GPS drift. I have only tested this a bit, but results look much improved (more stable direction to destination arrow). I am posting this early if anyone wishes to try this over the weekend. The .deb install will coexist with the earlier version so you can try both. The extras mCacher will be the newer .deb version. To run the older version run mcacher.sh from /home/user/mcacher.d.

Next:

Version 0.1.2 - Improved resolution in the direction to destination arrow (currently 36 deg. , double to 18 deg.)

Version 0.1.3 - DBUS support for external apps to initiate mCacher.


Charlie.
 
Posts: 148 | Thanked: 20 times | Joined on Sep 2007
#30
I got the dep to install but I had to go into red pill mode and install the python gps manually. Was this to be expected?
 
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