Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

OK. Again, great application. I was thinking that you would have designed it to work as I expected.

But I paid close attention today and there must be something wrong. Even on straight highways at all zoom levels it keeps updating every few seconds. Not sure how you're making the off-course calculation, but the blue dot is always over the route line.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem? I am using an LD-1W a 770, and I have the speed vector line turned on. I'll try turning this off as well as the speed indicator and see if it makes a difference.

On a related note, frequently when I select >Download, the dialog box has the Auto update button 'grayed-out'. What does this mean? Most of the time if cancel and repeat, I have the option available.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Hm... That might be a bug... I'll test it myself and see if I can figure out the problem (and fix).

Sounds like a bug. It probably has to do with recent changes I made - I'll fix it in the next version.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

This is one of the gee-wiz factors that I see clearly when I use google maps on my Axim X30. On one hand, it doesn't have a cache, so it needs to be online to constantly download maps. On the other hand, it does such a slick job of visualizing the info. Traffic overlays, boom. Hybrid maps, bam. Is the CPU that much faster in the X30 or is it the cacheless design? The windows media version of google maps has no bluetooth GPS capability yet. Does that burden the CPU very much?

I'd love to see these kinds of bells and whistles in MM, but if my 770 can't update fast enough while driving, I'd probably disable them.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

One option I would suggest is (optional) gz compression of routes and tracks. As I see it this would have a number of advantages
1. Space saving
2. Quicker uploading of tracks to OpenStreetMap
3. Routes from http://gnuite.com:8080/cgi-bin/gpx.cgi would pop up a save dialog rather than displaying in the browser.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I insatlled Maemo Mapper 1.4.6 last night. I love it. Great app!
I tried to view the text route info (the turn by turn text as seen in google map search result) after download a route inside MM. I couldn't find a way to view the turn list. I searched the forums and the requested features. Haven't found anyone mentioned this. Did I miss anything?
This feature is very useful if you need pre-study the route like me.
Some thoughs on this feature:
1. Like My Place in Google Earth, after the route downloaded, display the turn list in a popup window (configurable)
2. Clicking on a turn will center the map to the turn.
3. Use first couple letters from the original and destination as default file name instead of 'file' for saving.
4. Able to demo the route (many GPS have this feature) like "Play route" in Google Earth

Can this feature be added before 2.0?

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Is it possible to make the upcoming turn sound louder or at somehow more noticeable? When I'm listening to my car radio, the only way to tell that I have a turn coming is the dialog box. I don't even hear a sound even when the 770 volume is turned all the way up.

I tried to use flite and enable voice, but the voice was too soft and difficult to understand.

Maybe an annoying buzzer sound to make you pay attention to the screen? Or can you flash the backlight?

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I would love to see two things;

+1 for the earlier suggestion to show time/distance to next waypoint. With a 7 month old daughter, it's critical to know how much longer it is to the next town or waypoint on a long trip!

- ability to upload current coordinates if connected to the internet. I don't know exactly what this would look like (ie, user specified URL, etc...) however it would be very cool to have the ability to share your location with others. (the ideal scenario would be a google maps url that would show current location) Like I said I don't know how this could be implemented, however some sort of timed interval coordinate upload would be cool.

thanks again gnuite for the fantastic application. It's folks like you sharing your considerable talents with others that really make this device shine :)

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

The sound probably can't be turned up enough to be heard in noisy environments anyway, so the best thing is probably to use the headphone output to connect to the car stereo directly (this is sometimes done even for dedicated car navigation devices).

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

It sounds like you can achieve what you want by using gpsd. With the right setup, it might even be possible to use Maemo Mapper with gpsd, but it will take some hacking...

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Thanks for the reply gnuite!

gpsd looks pretty interesting, however my understanding of the system is that it opens a port on the n770 so the gps could be queried, and I was thinking about more of a 'push' type solution (the n770 might have many different ip addresses based on different hotspots, gprs network, and the port may be blocked on the access points, etc...)

I was thinking about being able to craft a URL and have it sent on a regular basis (as long as there was internet access, or sent when internet access is established). Something like http://some.site.com/cgi-bin/upload.cgi?id=1&lat=<lat>&long=<long>. Of course I'd have to write a cgi script and find some place to host it, but that can be figured out later.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Hi gnuite,

Can you tell more, how to get mapper working with gpsd?

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Just started reading this long thread. How about GPSunite for a name? Uses all of the letters in "gnuite" and makes sense since it would work on multiple platforms. Oh yeah, no hits on Google.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

MMapper is near perfect as is. This being said, if I were to think of improvements they would include the following….

Specific Data Info Area -- similar to the existing GPS Info Panel create additional panels (same location, size, and form factor as GPS panel) for the following;
GPS Info Panel – as is
POI Info Panel – POI listings of POI’s that are on map the closest on top
Route Info Panel – Data for directions, turn by turns, with the next turn at the top so that as you drive it cycles thru the route. This would help due to N800’s volume issues, and the fact that the radio is always on.
Map Info Panel – zoom levels available for that location, size quantity, layer info
These could be visible one at a time in the same space as the existing GPS info, and prevent the need to access menus, something difficult to do when driving.

Layers – Allow transparent maps in overlays or layers. For example MS MapCruncher has tools to extract particular colors form a scanned map say the blue of a bus line and then use this mapped transparency to overlay as a layer the base map. This could be used for traffic info, bus routes, hiking trails.

It would be great to have a visual indicator of which maps are available at other zoom levels for that GPS location. This could be displayed as part of a Map Info Panel mentioned above.

If a Companion App is done for non – Maemo environments, it would be great if both could share the same db format and act as a method of loading maps, layers, POI information and creation, and trip planner (route generator) for example.

Hope I did not duplicate items in the forum already. MMapper is a great app and I look forward to seeing what is done for v2.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Hi there...When is version 2.0 going to be available? I am sure like me, there are a lot of viewers excited to see the release of version 2.0. Please tell me, rotated maps will still be part of this release.

Cheers
:D

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

It would be also very nice if there was an option to move the map directly on the screen (dragging it like google-maps), it would free the 4 directions button for usefull functions.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Although you can't currently drag, you can still use the stylus to effectively move you around. Whatever point on the map you tap will be the new center of the map so it moves accordingly (this may be related to settings for all I know -- I haven't changed any setting in months).

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Yes I know this mode but it is quite disturbing to the eye : it would be great to see the map graduately moving while recentering (or dragging).

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I know you all have been waiting patiently, so I thought I'd give you a bit of status regarding Maemo Mapper v2.0. This post is basically about letting you know what's working and what's left to be done. I still don't have a release date in mind.

Of course, maps are now stored in a database. I tried using sqlite, and the code to use sqlite is actually still there, but it's #ifdef'ed out right now because of speed and overhead concerns. I might allow the option to use sqlite in the future, but I don't see much point to it. The one advantage that it gave was the ability to avoid storing the same maps (those pesky 103-or-106-byte single-color maps), but even with that advantage, the overhead was still significantly higher than the solution that I chose (duplicate maps are both rare and small; ignoring them saved only maximum 5% disk space).

The chosen database solution is GDBM, which is a simple hash-map database with some decent in-memory caching. The one downside to GDBM is that it doesn't automatically pack the database when deleting a map (that space is instead re-used later when other maps are added), so deleting maps won't immediately reduce the size of the database. The packing has to be done manually, and I've been thinking about whether to perform that step automatically when Maemo Mapper closes, or to make it a button that the user presses to manually initiate the packing.

Anyway, the database solution works really well, and although it's a bit slower than using the file system directly (no concurrency in database access; same problem with sqlite), the file system overhead is significantly lower. I can't wait to get this enhancement to you guys, but I'm still testing it and working on my other v2.0 additions, like ...

I have completely changed the GPS data retrieval and map retrieval to ditch curl and asynchronous Gnome-VFS in favor of multi-threaded, synchronous Gnome-VFS calls. This doesn't mean anything to most of you, but the consequence is that Maemo Mapper can retrieve both map data and GPS data from just about anything that Gnome-VFS supports (HTTP, FTP, file on disk, GPSD). It also might fix the crashing problem when a bluetooth GPS device goes out of range. The map downloading works all right, although it may be a little slower. I'm still working out some bugs in the GPS data retrieval, particularly with out-of-range detection and subsequent retrying-without-failing.

Map rotation works, but it's not the fastest thing in the world. There are actually no GTK library calls to rotate an image by an arbitrary angle, so I had to do all the math by hand (matrices, yay). The rotated OpenStreetMap PNGs are actually surprisingly readable, but you will have a harder time reading them, especially if they are upside down. :) I did manage to keep memory usage low, but the consequence is that any change in the viewpoint takes up to 0.25 seconds or so to redraw (not as fast as v1.x). And yes, auto-rotate is implemented so that--when Auto-Center is enabled--Maemo Mapper will automatically rotate the viewpoint to follow your heading. You can also rotate the viewpoint manually with the directional buttons. You can still choose to map the directional buttons to panning, but you may not need to, because...

I've added drag-to-pan functionality, so when you tap-and-drag the stylus on the map, the map moves with your stylus. It actually looks pretty slick. The old "single-tap to center on a location" mechanism is still in place. I also added "tap on a waypoint to see the description."

And then there's the POI Search stuff that I mentioned in this thread. Check out the thread for details.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Very good news.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

gnuite rocks too :D

About the database : is it really not possible by using GDBM, to check duplicate maps ? You're speaking about 5% of empty duplicate maps... with Google I think, but using OpenStreetMap it's more about 90-95% of "empty" maps in France !

It's also great to know that you work on the "out of range" bluetooth problem, rotate functionnality, tap-and-drag (I'd love to see it !)...

Could it be possible to add some possibilities for mapping buttons ? I'd like to have a button-to-add-poi (like radars...) because when I'm driving it's difficult to tap exactly on the road where I am and when I pass the POI I want to add.

And yes, you "know", we are all "waiting patiently"...

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

If you are looking for a tester, I am willing. Of course I would only publish my results to you directly. Apart from that, great work!!! So go man go!!!

Thanks

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I can work on getting a dup-checking solution for GDBM, but it was really a lot easier with sqlite. As for the space savings, even if 90% of maps are duplicates, those duplicate maps are the smallest, about 106 bytes, whereas busy maps can be as large as 30k, and almost-empty maps are around 4k.

If 90% of maps are 106 bytes, and the other 10% of maps are an average of 15k, removing the duplicates (even with no overhead) saves you just 5.85% of your disk space. And, in reality, tracking duplicates requires about 16 bytes per duplicate, so it'd be difficult to obtain a savings that is worthwhile.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I must just take you (and other willing victims) up on that. I can't guarantee program stability; you'll probably lose map data and/or track data. But it definitely can't hurt to have some sort of beta program to help iron out the bugs.

Anyone else interested? I'll contact you through ITT PM, if I decide to host a beta.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Count me as a tester if need be ...
Do you think we can have the two versions at the same time on the tablet ?
Fred

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I could try it. What i need is the poi import feature which is missing from the Mapper 1.4.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I'm very interested for a beta test.

For the empty tiles, you must be right : they are insignificant since we use a database ; otherwise it's consuming some more space for an complete cluster for each file/tile : 8k ?

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I am also interested in testing.

I have no plans to go any where for next 30-40 days except roaming in my home town (which I know very well), so even this beta version not working well, it is not going to harm me in any way.

EDIT: by the way I am using 770n with OS2007.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I too may act as a beta tester. I am sometimes on the road for long trips (300-500 km) twice or more a month, while I travel anyway a lot during my "regular" life.
Today I am 500 km far from home and will return here next monday.

No problem if I'll lose tracks or whatever since I also own a Sony TH55 loaded with Tomtom so I can find anyway my way home ;)

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Please count me in for beta testing. I'm interested in performance on the 770 with all the changes you're making.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Count me in!!! Please!!! lol...I would be more than willing to beta-test here in South Asia

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I can beta test too please!

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Is any one tried google maps with blackberry or some sort of phone which is supported by google maps. I mean this http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html.

If any one tried that can some one tell me how those maps acts while driving, i mean to ask, are those maps always in the same direction like current version of MM (no matter what direction your are going) or those maps will be rotated depending on our direction of moving?

If those are rotating then we may research on those mobile application and implement same logic in our MM.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Cool you can email me at markjdavenport@gmail.com I have used TOMTOM and iGudance still do on my other devices. However, the larger screen on the 770 is something I look forward to...

Mark

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Gnuite: Have you looked at the Chinook developer kit yet? It probably is not too long before it is released (yes, for N800 too... not only for "the new tablet"...). And apps compiled for current OS likely do not install on Chinook OS.

Hopefully it is nothing more than just recompiling...

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Good tip..

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I will be willing to beta test if you're looking for volunteers.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Me too, im willing to try you new creation, email me at nightwing452@msn.com =)

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

I have both tablets and a habit for making bugs pop up ... so I'd like to sign up for a beta if it will be called into existence by gnuite :) My email is convulted <at> gmail.com.

Cheers!

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

Map Bookmarks and MM for Linux and Windows

I use MM as a geographic assistant for literature; right now I am learning about the places mentioned in the book Westward Ho!, many near Bideford, England. It would be nice if I could bookmark specific views.

Also, I can't find anything free as good as MM for my Windows and Linux computers; I would love to use MM on them. I guess I could run it in a virtual window; perhaps I'll try that.

Re: Plans for Maemo Mapper v2.0
 

If there was ever to be anything usable without GPS... maybe it could be able to iterate through the route trackpoints with descriptions (and read the descriptions for those trackpoints easily)