I use an ext2 filesystem mounted on /media/mmc2 to store maps on my mmc card.
It's 1KB block size wastes less space than FAT32's 4KB and much less than FAT16's 32KB cluster size (for my 800MB partition).

There's also a 128MB FAAT32 partition (for mmc1) and a 64MB swap partition on my 1GB card.

In addition to ext2, you can format FAT32 with 512-byte blocks (or any other power of 2 that is 512 or greater) using the -S option of mkfs.vfat. This allows you to share the benefits of small block sizes and direct Windows access.

Using small block sizes in general decreases the overhead to a sufficient level, in my opinion, especially if you filter out the 103-byte files (which I have considered doing directly in Maemo Mapper). The decision of whether to use the file system or a custom package format is really one of CPU vs. FileSystemSize efficiency. As the number of maps gets large, without caching all of the map offset locations (or wasting ridiculous amounts of file system bytes by keeping the index symmetrical), accessing a single map becomes a processor-intensive operation, even when using a quadtree-based index structure. And updating the database becomes much more difficult (which is why you suggested it as an "offline access" mechanism).

GPSDrive combines the worst of both worlds. It uses a file that specifies the file system locations of all available maps, which means that first it has to read in that list, then it keeps that list in memory and does an ugly linear search to find the "nearest, most appropriate" map given a particular lat/lon/zoom. This is fine on a desktop machine, but with limited CPU and memory it doesn't work. Moving to a determinate file system directory hierarchy removed all of that processor and memory overhead, in exchange for a little file system overhead.

gnuite,

I just want to say thank you-
your app is really killer.
For hiking cross country, navigating road trips, or just tracking for fun,
your app tracks my GPS unit, downloads the maps off my tethered phone,
and just basically WORKS!!

I too am colorblind, so I am also looking forward to being able to change the color of the progress and route lines.

Also, I read somewhere that you included a chime to go off at waypoint markers, in lieu of the flite voice. It looks like flite is in progress...
Was that chime only in the v2.0 for os2005?
(I have OS2006 and love it!!)


Thanks again, you're a genius :D

DCarter

There is no "v2.0 for os2005", at least not of Maemo Mapper. For Maemo Mapper, v0.x runs on the 2005 OS, whereas v1.x runs on the 2006 OS.

The chime is available only in Maemo Mapper v1.0.2, which runs on the 2006 OS.

oops- I get it now!

The application installer says my version of Maemo Mapper is v1.0.2, but perhaps it is not, because I cannot for the life of me find where to select chime on or off...

I bet if I uninstall it and reinstall it will be there!!

Anyhow, my sincerest gratitude; do you take donations on your site?

Thanks,

DCarter

It's not an option - the chime occurs regardless, and it happens when you approach a waypoint. It happens at the same moment as the flite announcement would be made, which depends on the "Advance Notice" setting.

Donations are accepted at the Maemo Mapper website by clicking on the "Make a Donation" button. Thanks! :)

Just a short note to those wondering that downloading maps doesn't work sometimes: Google is now showing captchas if they suspect automated map downloads :-(

How did you discover this? I googled for "google maps captcha", but I didn't find anything interesting.

Wasn't working today so I tried to open a topo tile in the browser and got the captcha. They seem to send it as a 403 error. Ican email the HTML if you need it. Any automated downloading tool would need to pause, open the URL in a browser and wait for the user to solve it.

Jens.

gnuite, I do have some more comments on the file system vs. map archive storage, but I guess dicussing this only make sense if "user" acceptance is on your list. With "user" I refer to the Joe Average user - not a linux developer - i.e. somebody who his not familiar with file systems or manually mounting ext2 partitions.

Jens.

I installed the latest version of Maemo Mapper for 2005 ITOS, just to play with it a bit. I tried it for an afternoon, managed to get some maps but, as I don't have a GPS receiver yet, decided I could do without it for the time. So I uninstalled the program, but all the map files are still in the cache!

How do I get rid of those memory munchers? And, more importantly, why were they not deleted when the program was uninstalled? This is not very user-friendly behaviour.

That kind of depends on the user
 

While this may seem like a limitation to you I see it as a feature I am glad exists. When I download maps, I dont want them deleted because I decided for some reason to reinstall. If you install xterm you can delete these files easily. Since your running linux maybe its time to learn how to access the command line :eek:

I am extremely grateful to GNUITE for creating and providing for free an awesome tool we can all use.


once you get in xterm run "rm -rf /usr/home/apps/maemo-mapper"

I think that has to be rm -rf /home/user/apps/maemo-mapper

But thanks for the tip: I installed Osso-Xterm and got rid of the leftovers (apparently Midnight Commander only works on root-enabled 2005 ITOS, which I haven't done, so it's indeed time to brush up on those long-forgotten CLI-skills).

I still think it's wrong: on a non-modified 770, the user has no access to those directories. It might have been better to use a default directory that is accessible from the (admittedly lame) built-in filemanager.

OK you got me, user/home home/user you get the drift. You can also make a link to root so you can access everything from filemanager if you prefer.

ln -s / /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/ROOT

I personally do not know why you would want one of these without shell access, its a must have.


;)

I agree, but they are sold without. :confused:

This is a good point. I've considered changing the default map directory to somewhere accessible to the file browser, but I don't know where to choose.

"/home/user/MyDocs/.documents/Maemo Mapper" ?

Anybody have any suggestions?

Maemo Mapper Maps ?
Dowloaded Maps ?
M&M&M's , :-)

Tried out some GPX route plotting apps on the web today, but Maemo Mapper didn't want to load the .gpx files for some reason =(

Here's a nice app that uses Google Maps: http://home.mindspring.com/~mfkenney/gpsroute.html

Maemo Mapper uses the "trk" tag, not the "rte" tag, so it can't parse routes generated by the above URL (or any other tools that use "rte" instead of "trk"). That may change in the future, but for now, "trk" is all that Maemo Mapper understands.

I think if pairing functionality is added to maemo mapper , these mysterious BT drop outs will go away.

And somebody please tell me does the dropput happens with all receivers or not. Does iBlue GPS receiver also face the same problem of GPS positioning not updating itself and one has to reset the 770.?!

Thanks

Tools for scanning your own maps
 

I've created a couple of Python scripts that should benefit people wanting to scan their own paper maps to use with Maemo Mapper (for hiking and such), plus some instructions so you don't fall into the same pits that I fell into:-)

Currently command-line only (MacOSX or Unix), but I'd love help on extending them, adding groovy user interfaces, porting to other OSes, etc.

Download at <http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jack/maemomapperhacks.tgz> and please let me know what you think!

Thanks go to scudderfish, with whose work I started, and of course to gnuite, without whose work this would be pointless!

Is it possible to reverse routes in the software or do you have to redownload the reverse direction?

Scanned Maps for Maemo Mapper
 

It's hiking season here in Bavaria and google maps aren't awfully useful.
So I tried integrating scanned maps into maemo-mapper repositories.
With the qt program mapfit one can interactively warp the scanned map until it (roughly) fits a frame of tiles taken from a maemo repository.

For more details and the program source (version 0.0.1) see
http://www.hoohol.ath.cx/Software/mapfit

Google URI Not Working Anymore?
 

I really love this Maemo Mapper after discovering this on maemo garage. However, after using this for approximately 2 weeks, the software has suddenly been unable to download maps using the example URI's given at the beginning of this thread.

Is anyone else experiencing this as well? This stopped for me last night (11/15).

Can't get maps or keep GPS working
 

Just grabbed this app and a Garmin 10 Bluetooth GPS device. I set the Google address and then detected the Garmin.

It then says downloading maps but doesn't show anything but a black screen. The GPS shows a satellite lock but nothing comes up. Then if I close the app and open it again it says it's scanning for the GPS device.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

first to get the maps you have to download them over a wireless network connection or follow the notes on copying then to the rs-mmc card. has to be in a specific directory structure.

i had some trouble downloading the maps, and went through my network settings. i didnt change anything, but save the settings again, and all was well (other apps had trouble too and they cleared after). i do notice once in a while, that the apps seems to drop the network stack and i have to close the app restart/reconnect to the wireless network and relaunch the app.

the new OS image seems to have tightened up the networking a bit and it seems better now.

Thanks. I'm on a wireless connection now and it does attempt to download maps and actually shows it doing something. I also have the cache dir setup for a folder on my memory card called "maps".

I did update to the latest OS release of 2006 and the GPS issue now seems resolved. I just can't get maps.

Same here as I tried the suggestions. Still not getting maps to download.

Got it working by changing the first URI to the second one below:

http://mt.google.com/mt?n=404&v=ap.6&x=%d&y=%d&zoom=%d

http://mt.google.com/mt?n=404&v=w2.29&x=%d&y=%d&zoom=%d

NO maps!
 

Only black screen now. Download msg ok, I have empty directories in cache. I tried the newer URI, same deal. I just ordered GPS last week. Hope I can get problem resolved before it gets here.
Eric

Cheap Bluetooth GPS receivers
 

I didn't see a link to this anywhere on the site, so I wanted to add it.
http://www.buygpsnow.com/
I found a Bluetooth GPS receiver here for 60 bucks!

bk

Update the maps cache
 

I still have a lot of pbm with my GPS bluetooth receiver : maemo lost its signal but doesn't notice it to me, so my position don't move on the GPS and makes me think i am somewhere i am not anymore.
That is really really annoying... For example when that make me miss exit on the highway (and when the next exit to run back is very far...) : 6 days ago It makes me drive 100 kms more than expected as there was 50 kms to reach next exit after the bug makes me miss my correct exit.

But i am not here to complain, but just to give u a short command to update your downloaded maps :
I have noticed that maps that was in my cache (since about 7 months) was much less detailled than news maps those could be downloaded today.
As I wanted to update all the maps in my cache (which correspond to place were I was or which interested me and so may interest me again in the futur), i have write this very short script, those could be executed directly on the Nokia if u have installed some of the usefull tools like wget and Xterminal :

First go in the maemo cache directory :
Then run that command :
If you dont have installed the required tools on your Nokia, u will have to copy the cache on a machine with bash and wget softwares (almost all Linux distribution for example). To run the command in the cache directory on this machine.

Note: in the command I call the variable "png", because downloaded files seems to be png (if using the file command). And i like to now why maemo use the .jpg extension with the files on his cache instead of the .png ! ?

Re: Update the maps cache
 

Have you upgraded to Version 2.2006.39-14? After upgrading I didn't have any more problems with my GPS bluetooth receiver (Nokia LD-3W).

Re: Maemo Mapper: GPS for the Nokia 770
 

:D John, great job on the updates!

MM loads faster now, remembers my last entered route which I love.... and you even implemented the larger fonts option :eek: so I can finally read the turn by turns safely while driving w/o having to squint.

Thank you very much, sir, once again you are the MAN! :D

Ciao.

GPS enabled cell phone as GPS Receiver
 

Very slick package. Thanks

I'm now considering my options for a GPS receiver and was wondering if it is possible to use a GPS enabled cell phone. It would obviously need to have a bluetooth interface with the appropriate protocol for sending the RMC sentence. This is just an initial thought without much research into available cell phone features.

Re: GPS enabled cell phone as GPS Receiver
 

I don't know anything about GPS-enabled cell phones, but assuming it has a bluetooth interface (to the GPS functionality itself), and assuming that interface emits NMEA, then Maemo Mapper should work with it. It might be more complex to pair it, but it should be possible.

Re: Maemo Mapper: GPS for the Nokia 770
 

Has anyone seen any strange problems with flite/route while in route. It has only happened one time, although I have only used it one time since getting my n800. It was 1.3.3 and I was alsmot home, and following my route and the last message was flite trying to say about 15 lines of gibberish


Each line in the information box was like this (example below) Flite then proceeded to try to say all that, which was almost kinda humorous.


jdpo31rkjs732237rucwpofewpoifpewjf
ewqjcqoifwhec9mdshf ls
dsfjlkjsd
219839$@$@F@@\3\`
saoid[poiugf

It was connected to the cell phone with auto recalc, but I was on track so I assume it must have gotten the garbage at the beginning of my route.

Re: Maemo Mapper: GPS for the Nokia 770
 

Ye I had that problem with 770. Haven't tried it again since though.

Re: Maemo Mapper: GPS for the Nokia 770
 

Are you kidding penguinbait???

The jibberish at the end of the journey is my favorite part!!!

:D

Re: Maemo Mapper: GPS for the Nokia 770
 

:P

I think I too would find that amusing! :)

Is this a problem with recently downloaded (i.e. within the last week) routes? Because I know this used to be a problem with the GPX Driving Directions web service (which Maemo Mapper uses), but I fixed that problem at least a couple weeks ago.

If it's still a problem, can you post a pair of source/destination that I can use to reproduce it?