Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

I am trying out Maemo Mapper with my brand new N810 to see if it suit my needs. It is brilliant for in car navigation.
Maps and images are loaded very fast and can be downloaded to the device. That is just great!

But for sailing I miss 2 features:

1. The ability to use scanned sea charts
2. Suppport for routes between waypoints (not between track points)

Are there any tricks to load scanned maps?

Are there any plans to implement route support in MM?

By the way: import of .gpx files is not very elegant. Tracks and waypoints can't be loaded from the same file. Geocaching .gpx files cant be loaded either.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

The process of converting scanned or otherwise non-repository maps to a MM database has been discussed a bit.
The search is your friend, and the MM documentation is very good as well, though I don't think it covers this particularly.

You can use gnuite's site to get a route between any points Google Maps can understand and route. I doubt that Google Maps knows how to get around in the water ;), so you'll probably need to examine the GPX file for some route and figure out how to generate one of those from some other source.

If by route support, you mean generating routes on the tablet, no; that requires vector maps (which MM doesn't use) as well as a routing engine. But you can already automatically download routes, or load any gpx route.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

It's not possible to generate a route from a scanned chart, but it is possible to generate a direct route between two sets of lat/lon. I don't think MM does this, but it's simply a matter of using a little trigonometry. You can do it with any spreadsheet, such as gnumeric, by using the formulae found at Ed Williams' excellent Aviation Formulary. You don't need turn-by-turn directions for sailing, just a distance and direction. There are various apps available which will do this, acting as a handheld GPS. I use Cetus on my Palm, but I haven't investigated any Linux apps. All you need is a pointer, with distance and direction to the destination. I think it would be possible to scan your chart into MM and have your waypoints displayed, but it won't generate a route. Perhaps gnuite could incorporate that, but it seems more trouble than it's worth for one user, perhaps as many as a few dozen eventually.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

Maemo Mapper has some very basic support for creating your own arbitrary routes (including waypoints) on the map. It's not the most user-friendly solution, but if you tap-and-hold on a location on the map and select "Tap Point", you can add either a route point or a waypoint to your route. (The difference between a route point and a waypoint is that a waypoint includes a textual description that usually defines instructions for what to do next, like "Turn left at Main Street.")

Unfortunately, you can't add route points by coordinate, but you have two options:

1. Use "View | Go to | Lat/Lon" and estimate the point that represents your desired latitude and longitude. This works best when zoomed in.
2. Add a POI based on the lat/lon, then tap-and-hold and use the "POI" sub-menu instead of the "Tap Point" sub-menu.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

Are there any chance, that Maemo Mapper in the future will be able to import Routes from .gpx files? I have lots of good (and well tested :-) routes exported from my old garmin gps45.
Right now Maemo Mapper imports waypoints (called POI) and tracks (which is not the same as routes).

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

It loads routes from gpx files right now. I loaded one this morning generated with GMapToGPX; if you try loading yours, but it rejects them, then GPSbabel can probably help; I've heard it's one of the best tools for translating among gpx variants (and other formats) to suit different GPS/GIS units. I've never had occasion to use it, though.

And waypoints are not POI; waypoints are part of a route. Essentially, as I understand it, a route point with directions or other text attached.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

If gpsbabel can't convert it, it can't be converted. It works with just about every file format there is.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

Thanks for the hint - GMapToGpx is cool. But Maemo Mapper complains about xml parsing error(s), when I try to open the simple testroute, I generated with GMapToGpx.
The installed version of MM is 2.4.1

Strange?

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

In offroad navigation a waypoint is a location with a name and maybe a description.
(in car navigation POI means the same thing).
When generating a route, waypoints can be chosen as route points.
When maemo Mapper imports "POI", it is gpx-waypoints, that is imported.
So route points are part of a route.
See evt http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/.

Anyway, here are a very simple example of a route, that cannot be opened by MM:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gpx version="1.1"
creator="GMapToGPX 5.7b - http://www.elsewhere.org/GMapToGPX/"
xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
<rte>
<name>route0</name>
<cmt>Vestermark to Vestermark</cmt>
<desc>Vestermark to Vestermark</desc>
<rtept lat="54.74952" lon="11.77151">
<name>GRTP-001</name>
<cmt>Koer mod nordvest ad Vestermark mod Ebbe Alle</cmt>
<desc>Koer mod nordvest ad Vestermark mod Ebbe Alle</desc>
</rtept>
<rtept lat="54.75109" lon="11.76584">
<name>GMLS-001</name>
<cmt>Vestermark</cmt>
<desc>Vestermark</desc>
</rtept>
</rte>
</gpx>

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

This is what I got from GMapToGPX; no massaging.
It seems to be saving it as a track, not a route, but MM imports it as a route just fine. On examination, it seems MM also saves routes as tracks.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

That's my point. I have some very good and well tested routes from my old garmin 45. It would be nice to load them into Maemo Mapper, which then would be usefull also for off road navigation.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

OK.
Try converting them?

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

Does gps work when you're scuba diving? That is, do the satelite signals penetrate water?

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

Not very far. Snorkeling, maybe.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

No, they don't penetrate water. A few millimeters of water will completely block the signals. The water in your hand will block the signals.

Re: Maemo Mapper as sea chart plotter
 

If you sail on Finnish waters, Maemo Mapper and topomaps work nicely:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/lahetkan/SDVfYO.../sea_chart.png

Of course you do it on your own risk as officially topomaps are not sea charts.

-kepler