[Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system - Page 26 - maemo.org

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ThePooBurner	2010-10-07 , 18:13
Posts: 85 \| Thanked: 15 times \| Joined on Sep 2010	#251

Oh another things i just remembered. I have it set to use Miles, as KM is meaningless to me. It would be nice when it is set to miles to have the batch download also display miles. (5mile radius, 10 mile, 160 miles, etc.) This would help out those of us who don't use KM to figure out how far around us we've actually just grabbed.

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Wikiwide	2010-10-08 , 00:37
Posts: 1,994 \| Thanked: 3,342 times \| Joined on Jun 2010 @ N900: Battery low. N950: torx 4 re-used once and fine; SIM port torn apart	#252

Quick reply...
I'm waiting impatiently for Point-Of-Interest.
Just like:
1. Click button;
2. Input text description;
3. Get a clickable pin at your current coordinates, which displays the text when clicked.

Useful for bus stops, benches, names of streets (Ct or St?), etc. I cannot keep them all in the head!

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Reeby	2010-10-08 , 06:53
Posts: 92 \| Thanked: 17 times \| Joined on Feb 2010	#253

Originally Posted by Wikiwide

Quick reply...
I'm waiting impatiently for Point-Of-Interest.
Just like:
1. Click button;
2. Input text description;
3. Get a clickable pin at your current coordinates, which displays the text when clicked.

Useful for bus stops, benches, names of streets (Ct or St?), etc. I cannot keep them all in the head!

4. Option to navigate to it (integration with existing POI's)

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MartinK	2010-10-10 , 11:36
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#254

V0.16-2 just hit the repositories

What's new ?

The main improvements are in the batch tile download functionality. I have added support for socket reuse, which is faster and puts less strain on network infrastructure during large downloads.

I have also reworked the inner thread logic, so the download/size estimation starts immediately after pressing the corresponding button/area and it also should now be much faster.

The size estimation run now also removes tiles that are locally available (in the db/file-system) and removes them from the download queue - you can see how the estimated number of needed tiles decreases each time it finds a locally available tile.

Other than the batch tile feature, I have added basic logging support, that can be enabled from "options>debug->Log modRana stdout to file". A file named modrana_stdout.log.txt should then appear in MyDocs with the terminal output from the last modRana run. The rounding bug for imperial units in navigation should be now fixed and sqlite tile storage should be more stable.

__________________
modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
Mieru: a flexible manga and comic book reader
Universal Components - a solution for native looking yet component set independent QML appliactions (QtQuick Controls 2 & Silica supported as backends)

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zimon	2010-10-10 , 11:54
Posts: 1,341 \| Thanked: 708 times \| Joined on Feb 2010	#255

If sqlite storage is used, can it still use the file-based tiles at the same time? Eventually this is maybe not needed, when mappero also uses just sqlite db. One has to just reget all the previously saved maps.

Does modrana convert the old file based maps to sqlite when the change is made in the options?

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MartinK	2010-10-10 , 13:10
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#256

Originally Posted by woody14619

I think the idea was more to make a "jump to zoomlevel" setting.
...
Maybe a screen widget can do this? Can the widgets do things like "jump to zoom level 16"? If so, I could make one for 9, and one for 16, and just jump between them.

Really looks like a job for a widget. I really need to finally revamp the widget feature to a usable state

Originally Posted by woody14619

Another issue: The reason I need to zoom back is because there's no way I've found to jump to the destination on a route. When using address lookup, I like to verify that the target looks sane, since I've seen Google return bad results at times when it doesn't quite know where something is. (eg. Putting you in the middle of a town when it can't find a street.) Being able to jump to a turn or the destination would be a nice feature.

Good point, this should be added.

Originally Posted by woody14619

That would be great. Also, saving routes is currently broken. When you go to save, it says "loaded in XXms", but doesn't give you the option to give it a name, and thus save it as a route. It does auto-save it with a time-stamp name, but with no way to rename it, it's not so useful.

OK, I'll try to do something about it

Originally Posted by woody14619

Mappero stops drawing when the screen is off (may be worth a look to see how they do it). He also has a bit of code to keep the display on if the device is in motion. Handy if you're doing a short trip and don't have the device plugged in to a charger.

Interesting, I'll look how Mappero does it. Also, some control over screen dimming in modRana is really long overdue.

Originally Posted by Flandry

Actually i was looking at the code on my flight home and it seems it uses powers of 2 to specify the range around the origin to download. Based on that it seems that only 2.5 km is available, but it's likely i missed something. Could you please explain what that power of 2 number is and how one could specify an arbitrary distance? It was trivial to add the button to request 2.5 km but i haven't had a chance to test if it actually works. It does make me wonder if the range is in km--it almost seems like it might be instead some multiple of the current map scaling. That would make my experience with downloading tiles make more sense.

The map tiles use two integers as X and Y coordinates. By incrementing and decrementing the coordinates it is possible to easily move to the neighboring tiles. The function that gets coordinates of tiles for a given area uses this.
It finds which tile is near the center of the area and then spirals around the central tile, until the distance from center (measured in tiles) reaches a given number. This number is that power of 2 value you mention.
It looks like this for size==1:

Code:

  ###   
  #0#
  ###
0 - central tile
# - tiles added by spiraling

This is not ideal and some sort of absolute distance - tile distance is needed to support wider range of steps + imperial units.

Originally Posted by Flandry

Should be, but i can get the same results with MAME (others have verified that), so the watchdog isn't doing its job or something. There are two different problems--one is that the ui gets frozen in whatever state it is in. The other is that the device crashes and shuts down, so maybe the watchdog catches it sometimes.

Maybe both modRana and MAME use the same OS component/library/GUI toolkit that triggers this ?

ModRana uses:

Python 2.5
GTK + cairo + pango
python-liblocation
sqlite (only recently)

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MartinK	2010-10-10 , 15:05
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#257

Originally Posted by Reeby

Well, sorry in advance if I will now repeat myself or someone else here but just where is the "save position" option in this app?+?????

Originally Posted by Pigro

Fair enough, and I agree that the ability to add any random map location as a POI would be very useful (i'm sure MartinK will consider this when he sees your post, probably just an oversight that he missed your original request).

However, POI's or Street names will work as I described in 99% of cases, so I don't see it as a biggie to wait until the developer gets around to looking at it for you. The other stuff he's working on is important to optimise download sizes, and if you're ever caught in your siberian wastes then you'll be needing a large preloaded set of map data regardlss of POI's (as you'll have bugger all mobile coverage I reckon).

Originally Posted by Wikiwide

Quick reply...
I'm waiting impatiently for Point-Of-Interest.
Just like:
1. Click button;
2. Input text description;
3. Get a clickable pin at your current coordinates, which displays the text when clicked.

Useful for bus stops, benches, names of streets (Ct or St?), etc. I cannot keep them all in the head!

Originally Posted by Reeby

+1
4. Option to navigate to it (integration with existing POI's)

As there seems to be quite a big popular demand for it, I think I'll do the POI improvements next

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

Updated and giving the sqlite a good work out. Some things i've noted so far:

Thanks ! Feedback is very important, especially for new features.

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

1) On the initial switch it didn't import the tiles i already had into the DB. Not sure if this was just doing something wrong on my part or if that just how it is.

This is working as intended. I have already mentioned that I don't want modRana "eating" the possibly shared.
I'am considering files->db import functionality, which may be handy for people with many already downloaded tiles or for importing tiles downloaded on the PC.

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

2) When downloading for a particular zoom level, it downloads according to the zoom level used in the map scaling preference. For instance, if i have it on x2 scaling and i tell it to download, it downloads the levels below, which it should but it's not clear if that is all it is getting or if it is also getting the actual zoom level you are on (assuming "0 down/up" as the batch download setting). Of course when i first fired it up i was forgetting i had the scaling on and so when it told me it needed 330,000 tiles i was a bit taken aback. 5KM around from my location at the zoom level i was "at", visually anyway, is only about 25 tiles when using the scaling. I figured out that it was downloading the actual zoom level and not the current displayed level of zoom.

Yeah, as it is just scaling tiles from one zoomlevel, it should download tiles from the same one, not the one "beneath".

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

3) When there are large numbers of tiles being downloaded, say over 400 (as i've done a couple different batch downloads), the count downloaded doesn't update until it is finished, so you have no real idea how much time might be left in the download.

4) When there are large numbers of tiles to download, and you "click to estimate size", it simply freezes the phone for about 30 minutes and then causes a hard reboot. Download sizes that have caused a reboot when estimateing, 48K, 98K, 330K, 498K tiles. I've since stopped asking for an estimate and have just gone ahead with downloads (though i jumped from 400 to 98K in my downloading. The data counter is spinning so i know it's working, but as mentioned in 3 the display in modRana isn't updating). Even with a small amount of tiles (400), the estimation took a long time to finish and hung the phone for a few minutes.

5) Large tile downloads take a lot longer to download than you would think. I get about 100KB/sec down here at work but the download (which is using almost 96-100% cpu) is only piddling along at about 12.4KB/sec. is there any way to get it to us more bandwith and finish sooner?

This all (speed, GUI responsiveness, long freezing, etc.) should be fixed in the recently released new version. But it was quite an extensive rework, so please let me know if you spot something not working as expected

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MartinK	2010-10-10 , 15:18
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#258

Originally Posted by zimon

If sqlite storage is used, can it still use the file-based tiles at the same time?

Yep, both are totally independent.

Originally Posted by zimon

Eventually this is maybe not needed, when mappero also uses just sqlite db. One has to just reget all the previously saved maps.

Does modrana convert the old file based maps to sqlite when the change is made in the options?

Currently not. I am considering some sort of an optional batch import:

select folder
select target layer
select if you want to remove the tile-image-files after import to db
start the batch

Could be quite handy if you already have many tiles or use a desktop for downloading the tiles.

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craftyguy	2010-10-10 , 20:35
Posts: 455 \| Thanked: 278 times \| Joined on Dec 2009 @ Oregon, USA	#259

MartinK,
Are you accepting donations? I'm thrilled that someone has:

1) Finally integrated google map images into a GPS app on Maemo
2) FINALLY integrated online POI search with google maps

I would like to donate a small amount to encourage you to continue making this application even better

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MartinK	2010-10-10 , 22:01
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#260

Originally Posted by craftyguy

MartinK,
Are you accepting donations? I'm thrilled that someone has:

1) Finally integrated google map images into a GPS app on Maemo
2) FINALLY integrated online POI search with google maps

I would like to donate a small amount to encourage you to continue making this application even better

Thanks !

I have added a Paypal donation link to the end of the first post.