If two adjacent points in the route fall within the same map, Maemo Mapper will only download the map once. It will not download the map multiple times.

There may be a problem with "Download by Route", though, and I'm investigating it.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

I am aware of this issue, which has to do with localization and the fact that NMEA (and GPX?) are locale-independent. In the future, I'll localize Maemo Mapper, but until then, I will be addressing this in Maemo Mapper v0.1.1 by explicitly setting the locale to "C".

First, if you haven't already, try rebooting the device to make sure that flite is in the PATH of the running Maemo Mapper.

Second, you probably know this, but you have to have a route in order to hear voice. The voice is emitted only as you approach a waypoint, which requires a route (with waypoints) to be loaded and a GPS receiver so that Maemo Mapper knows when you're approaching a waypoint. A waypoint in Maemo Mapper is defined as any trkpt in the GPX file that has a (non-empty?) "desc" tag attached to it.

Once you load a route, the route appears as a set of green circles connected by lighter-green lines. Your "next waypoint" is colored slightly darker than the other waypoints. When you get within a certain (speed-dependent) range of that waypoint, the voice is emitted and an info box in the upper-right corner displays the contents of the desc tag of that waypoint (e.g. "Turn left at Baker Street").

If you do not see the info box, then the voice will never be activated. Also, the voice is only emitted once per waypoint, whereas the info box is visible until you pass the waypoint, also at which point your "next waypoint" changes and the "darker green circle" moves to that next waypoint, and the process repeats.

Hope this helps.

P.S. Thanks for the donation!

nmea output and file format?
 

Is there a way for me to get the nmea output mapper is using, I had some scripts that I used with gpsdrive to cat /dev/rfcomm0. Is there any way to get to that?

Why does it save map files as jpg, when they are png files?

file 3014.jpg
3014.jpg: PNG image data, 256 x 256, 8-bit colormap, non-interlaced

gnuite,



As I am reading this thread I am realising how much effort you have put in this great program! Thanks for making GPS navigation available to us.

gnuite, this is such an excellent app that makes the cost of the 770 so much more tolerable. My thoughts on getting a GPS display unit for the car are now gone. Is there a way in which I can enter in POIs (points of interest) and get them to show up? e.g. free wifi hotspots? even manually would be fine, don't need automation. Thanks again!

Not at the moment, no.

You know, I'm not sure. I knew the data was PNG, but for some reason every example I saw online of getting maps from Google Maps used a jpg or jpeg extension, probably because they were working with the satellite data.

The extension doesn't really matter - just that it is consistent regardless of the true format. Maybe I should have just disregarded the extension entirely, but it's too late to do that now without asking people to rename all of the Map Cache data.

Not at the moment, but I'm hoping to incorporate this functionality in a future release.

Not at the moment, no.
 

Um any chance this is comming? maybe a check box to log all nmea data? Or can we use other GPS access like rfcomm with mapper?


Again, this thing is awesome :D

This software is awesome! Finally the bluetooth GPS I bought months ago is truly useful for something. GPSdrive is powerful but it wasn't stable or really usable on the 770.

Well ... I just manually made a gpx file where I wrapped a single <trkpt> with <desc> in single <trkseg> pair and included many instances of <trkseg> and mapper showed a little green doughnut (or red if you imported it as a route vs. a track) for each separate <trkseg>.

Since I don't have a GPS yet (it is enroute from the e-store :] ) I don't know if mapper will do the flite or waypoint display if you get close to any of them in order or out of order. It certainly does show them in the right spot though.

The gpx info was in the following format:

In a future release, Maemo Mapper will support GPSD and rfcomm connections, which will allow you to gain access directly to the NMEA data. I'm not exactly sure if that is possible with the current version of Maemo Mapper, but it might be.

Penguinbait, maemo-mapper keeps a running track of where you've been. All you need to do is save it off to disk.

However, what I think you really want is the ability to record a voice note at a location using a bluetooth headset. See something interesting? Push the button on the headset and record a georeferenced note.

See, that way you can put the GPS receiver where it needs to be, leave your 770 in your pocket with the cover safely on it, and still take notes.

Oh, and flite should send its output through the bluetooth headset.

Maemo Mapper will announce your approach to those waypoints if you visit them in order (you don't have to start at the first waypoint, though).

I could implement "announce as you approach any waypoint," but that could waste a lot of CPU if there are many waypoints. Is there a desire for this kind of "arbitrary point of interest approach announcement?"

This would only be possible if Maemo changed the "disable radios when cover is on" behavior, which may or may not happen with the 2006 OS.

Still, this would be useful if the Nokia 770 is available for access (e.g. mounted to a car window), but there would still need to be a signal to Maemo Mapper for when to start recording (like one of the hardware buttons, unless you want it to record everything you say).

NMEA output
 

Thanks RussNelson, but what I really want is the NMEA output, I wrote some scripts to plot real time as I drive and they played nicely with gpsdrive but it chewed cpu, the information is sent via bt to my webserver where it displays a map from a few different locations. I use speed, elevation, heading, so I need all the output not just location.

http://www.penguinbait.com/index.html

I really want to run this with maemo-mapper, I look forward to the future.

I loved my 770 and gpsdrive was useable, Maemo Mapper is the best software written for the 770, I do a lot of driving to different places, I can download routes from t-mobile and recalc works great. Its really a whole new reason to buy a 770, this has been a great success, CONGRATULATIONS!!! :D :D

Oh, and I have my iblue mounted high on my drivers side window, I can still roll the window down about 5 inches ;)

I have not the slightest clue after all the reading I did...on how to use this program. I don't know if it's because of legal issues that people aren't comming outright and posting the way to really use it. If that's the case, someone please feel free to PM me, or IM me at RabeeRaven on aim, to tell me what I should do map wise.

Tracking Stops
 

Hi,

Maemo mapper is easily the most impressive 770 app I've tried yet. I was leaning towards eBaying the device until I tried maemo mapper. Definitly the killer app for me an I was happy to make a small donation.

Sucking up done...

I'm planning a long trip that I've setup a route for and have been testing the app over the last few trips to work to gain confidence. I've noticed s few times now that the tracking sometimes just stops.

Observing the GPS lights show that theres a fix and that bluetooth is still active, but Maemo mapper has stopped plotting. The app is still response, restarting it results in the track still not plotting. Restarting the 770 cures the problem without restarting the GPS.

Has anyone else seen the same kind of problem? I've read through the thread but dont see the same issue mentioned.

This is using the patched version with the atof fix in and with the latest released firmware.

Dave

Read the second post in this thread if you're looking for a URI Format to use.

If it's something else, then I'm sorry that there is no formal documentation yet. The project is young. What specifically do you need help with?

Yup. I think it's been reported here before. Look at this posting:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...&postcount=134

Wow! This program is dope! I got it to work...but I have one question. How can I avoid having to download the map constantly? is there a way to download it once?

the maemo-mapper will not download the portions of the map that are already downloaded. you can use the application i made if you want to download big areas of the map:
http://www.barghis.com/winmapper.htm

I was looking all over for this, I found it while I was at work but now at home I couldn't find it!...maybe I'm just sleepy. How would I get the coordinates for my area?

you can zoom in, the top-left corner (with the maemo-mapper on your 770) and then go in menu to Map->download area, and the View Center will show you the coordinates for that position. Do the same for the right-bottom. You can do the same thing on your windows computer using Google Earth

Once again, this sleep deprived brain of mine isn't working too well. I figured it out, man this isn't hard at all in any way, shape, or form! All the script this and script that...which I read in previous posts threw me off and made me think it's hard to do this stuff, but it's rather easy. Gnuite and Ioan...you guys are the best!

One last question before I go to sleep...would if I have everything downloaded, would the 770 still need internet connectivity to get where I'm at in anyway? or would the mapper know what map to load?

If you have all the maps downloaded and they are placed in the correct directory, then maemo-mapper does not need any internet connection for showing the correct position/map. :)

Thanks I'll give that a try.

Dave

I've got an iBlue receiver now but Maemo-mapper does not recognise it. I tried to pair it using the BT phone wizard, it is recognised as BT-Q800 GPS, I enter 0000 as passcode but then the message I get is: "Selected phone does not have services that can be used. Select another phone."

I have the BT application installed (for a BT keyboard), is that interfering with pairing?

....

Sorted. I had to use the BT plugin to connect which gave me the MAC address, which I entered manually in Maemo-mapper. (The MAC was set to 00:00:00:00:00:00 before as I did not have the receiver then.)

That's exactly what I had to do.

I could see some uses for this. Automated tour guide service, geocaching ... if was easy enough to create these custom GPX waypoint files, you could even create location dependent events to remind you to pick up some milk on the way home from work when you are driving past the store :] Kind of a spacial to-do list rather than a temporal one.

I just got my GPS last night and finally got to try the full functionality of maemo-mapper out. Very nice!

I am not sure if others have mentioned these but my feedback would be:
- since I had already faked it out by putting in a 00:00:00:00:00:00 hardware address, it was a little difficult to switch to the real thing. Maybe a button in the GPS Settings to "Redetect GPS Module" might make things easier. Since I had an xterm installed and now know about hcitool, getting the BT HW Address is easy now but I was a bit stumped initially.
- it would be nice if the autocentering was not reset to "none" when the fullscreen button was pressed. I did figure out that you can cycle through the centering modes once you are fullscreen with one of the other buttons so it is a minor annoyance but I think that the setting should be preserved when switching to and from fullscreen.
- being able to adjust the centering lead without going into the settings menu. Maybe you can but I haven't figured it out. But the only way you can effectively adjust it to you liking is while you are moving and simultaneously fiddling with menu entries and driving is a bit dangerous :] Maybe a hardware key combination of the button used to switch centering modes with the zoom in/out could be used for this.
- information text overlay displaying speed/position/bearing/etc. that you can toggle on and off. I am not sure how well the message notification text box in the upper right corner deals with dynamically updated info but that might be a good spot for it.

Regardless, thanks for the great application! The GPS hardware stores should thank you too as I can see that I am not alone in maemo-mapper motivating me to buy a BT module.

That Settings dialog box automatically does the "Audto-detecting GPS Receiver" thing whenever it is started and the MAC field is empty. If you empty that field and then save the settings, then the next time you start the Settings dialog box, it will do the auto-detection. A little cumbersome, I know, but it's only ever done once in the life of Maemo Mapper. It will get better with a future release, though.

The auto-center mode is not changed when the fullscreen mode is changed. At least, that's the behavior I experience. Is anyone else seeing differently?

Devoting a sub-menu or hardware button to this is not ideal (especially since there are no more hardware buttons I could use!). I agree it's a little dangerous, but I would change the setting only in a still position. Once you get the setting to your liking, you never have to change it again, so it's a one-time inconvenience.

I've have a few requests for something like this; it will be in a future version of Maemo Mapper (though personally I'll never use it, since I prefer to see map, not text).[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the feedback!

Erasing what I had in there and leaving a blank field and pressing OK was what I tried first. If that is how it is supposedto work then that is quite intuitive. However, the 00:'s were stuck in there until I fed it a valid HW address. I just tried deleting my current address and it will not get rid of it. It comes back even after restarting mapper. I am doing all this with the GPS Enabled toggled off to avoid the GPS search box popping up always. I am not sure if that factors into things.

I can confirm, I've experienced the same behaviour.

My colour blindness makes it difficult to see the route line over main roads. The track colour stands out better. Is there any chance to make these colours adjustable? As a fallback position I'd be more than happy to try out a few combinations and report back which one looks OK. (For once I could make good use of my defective X chromosome... every 8-10th male has it BTW).

The maps are downloaded straight from the map service. You'd have to edit the map colors by detecting colors. If they do anti-aliasing, that would be hard work.

I meant to change the colour of the route line drawn by Maemo-mapper, not the colour of the roads.

Yeah, I can add that to a future version of Maemo Mapper. Thanks for the suggestion!

Maemo Mapper v0.2 has been released. See the Maemo Mapper v0.2 thread for more details.

tiny hack to make 'Download Area' easy to use (in v0.1)
 

I added a few lines of code to maemo-mapper v0.1 to make 'Download Maps by Area' easy to use:

The coordinates of the current and previous View Center are automatically filled into the fields for Top-Left and Bottom-Right Latitude and Longitude in the 'Download Maps by Area' window.

Thus, to download an area, just tap two opposite corners of an imaginary rectangle on the current map, and then go to the menu 'Maps' -> 'Download Area...'. The corresponding values will have been filled in. Of cause you still can edit them. Now the only thing that remains to be done manually by you is to select the Zoom levels on the second tab of the window.

My change is only 16 lines of Gnuite's v0.1 source. A patch can be found here: http://armin-warda.de/maemo-mapper-0.1-aw-0.1.patch

An executable with this patch applied can be downloaded here: http://armin-warda.de/maemo-mapper (Sorry, no .deb - simply replace the original /var/lib/install/usr/bin/maemo-mapper with it.)

P.S.: Just finished this before I read that v0.2 is available now. Will have a look at v0.2 to determine if it needs this hack, too.

Armin.

gnuite,

your MaemoMapper is a real killer app for the N770! I have been thinking about offline usage and supplying map data that has been downloaded previously. With a lot of small files, the wasted space can become as large as the actual data. My first idea was to package this and use the Gnome VFS to access the archive. I know that there is a module for TAR archives, but the TAR format is a really bad idea when accessing map files randomly. ZIP would be better suited for random access, but there is no module that can do it on the fly (without unpacking to a temp folder).

The alternative would be to create our own package format, basically consisting of a header and a large BLOB with all the image data. The header would contain meta data (package, covered area), information for one or more maps (map type, URL) in one or more zoom levels and most importanly 2d arrays mapping tiles to offsets in the BLOB. Map data can also be pre-processed during packaging, e.g. "103 byte street tiles" and corresponding topo tiles being removed etc.

My Maemo experience is still very limited. Assuming that I would create a tool to build such an archive, would you implement the necessary lookup and config dialogs in MaemoMapper?

I know that in a few years, this might not be necessary anymore, but with roaming data access being quite expensive, this is still interesting when traveling to foreign countries.

Jens.