Nekron | # 841 | 2019-09-01, 12:37 | Report

Hi Rinigus,

thanks for your wonderful work on Pure Maps and OSM Scout server application!

Coming back from a 500 km road trip by bike along the baltic sea I used Pure Maps for navigation in three major scenarios:

- I am lost: Which junction brings me back on track?
- Where is my accomodation located and route me there quickly
- Show me nearest POIs for supermarkets and drug stores to fill up water bottles or buy sun cream

The offline OSM maps and search functions where a bliss to use and got me quickly to the location I wanted. However one thing that should be improved is to use the build-in magnetic compass rather than using the GPS heading to rotate the map. In my use case I often turned on my Xperia X just to check if I had to choose the left or right junction while standing still. The matter is that while standing still the auto-rotation of the map is not working since GPS needs you to move to detect your heading so I turned it off. Therefor I did it the old classical scout way launching orienteering compass application to find out where North is. Then I switch back to Pure Maps, change my heading to point to North so that map and orientation aligns and choose where to go. It would be real helpful if the auto-rotation would use the magnetic compass sensor to rotate the map if your velocity is 0 (standing still) so that the need of a seconds compass application is not needed.

Otherwise it was a great experience and gave me a good feeling of never beeing lost!
A donation has just been submitted via Pay Pal.

Cheers and keep up your good work!
Nek

briest | # 842 | 2019-09-01, 13:43 | Report

I'd prefer map rotated according to where I'm going, not where I happen to look at the moment.

Maybe make the compass button tri-state? North, movement, device orientation?

rinigus | # 843 | 2019-09-01, 15:02 | Report

@Nekron: thanks! Compass rotation has been suggested earlier as well, see https://github.com/rinigus/pure-maps/issues/260. You and @briest - feel free to chip in with suggestions on UI.

Compass on Oneplus X has always been rather "interesting". After short calibration it shows +180 degrees for me right now. But if it is reliable on Xperia X, I can see a point in making it happen.

Nekron | # 844 | 2019-09-01, 16:00 | Report

@rinigus: Thanks for looking into this feature,

I have a few suggestions regarding magnetic compass support.

- Enhancing the orientation (auto-rotate) button as tri-state button is a good idea. However someone not always needs a rotated map but a pointer to the direction he/she is currently bearing at. Pure Maps uses a small triangle on the blue location mark to show the heading direction. If a dedicated magnetic compass switch (or preference setting) would exists you could combine auto-rotation of map with magentic compass bearing or GPS heading or leave the map as a calibrated map with North upwards but having the small triangle show your facing or heading direction as you prefer.

- Based on my experience with an old Garmin Etrex Vista I used for geocaching, a Hall
sensor eats a lot of juice. Therefor the compass should only activated if needed, e.g. when a bearing is useful (like standing still on a junction). The Vista uses some dedicated long-press button to activate and deactivate the sensor. Maybe a long-press on the blue location mark could enable / disable compass?

- On Xperia X compass works fine once calibrated (tested with orienteering compass from openrepos)

robthebold | # 845 | 2019-09-02, 23:10 | Report

Got my primitive car-control app to accept the geocode cut from the "share location" feature. Awesome! Now is there a way to send coordinates "automagically" to pure maps. I can paste a lat/lon string into search just fine, and that's perfectly acceptible . . . I was just wondering if there was a dbus call or cli param or other API feature to automate the process?

Thanks.

rinigus | # 846 | 2019-09-03, 06:05 | Report

For now, you could just run script "harbour-pure-maps" with geo URI. If Pure Maps is running, it will contact it to show that POI. If its not, Pure Maps will be launched.

There is a PR in review to enable DBus activation and I will look into it. As a result of that PR, DBus API will probably change a bit. In future, you could use DBus directly.

SaiFi | # 847 | 2019-09-03, 13:37 | Report

The compass in my Xperia X is also rather "interesting", I think it worked fine under Android (installed SFOS immediately after checking the hardware) but it seems I can't calibrate under SFOS. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is completely off.

As things stand, I'm happy that Pure Maps does not use my erratic compass, it would be super annoying if the map view started rotating every time I stopped (But how much should an app be built to handle random defeciencies lower down in the stack?)

SaiFi | # 848 | 2019-09-03, 13:39 | Report

And many thanks, @rinigus, for making the most enjoyable app on my Sailfish phone!

Amboss | # 849 | 2019-09-03, 13:45 | Report

Recently I found out, that I could press the mini map in Spritradar and it opens PureMaps with the location of the gas station. But if PureMaps is already open, this doesn't work for some unknown reason.

rinigus | # 850 | 2019-09-03, 19:25 | Report

Sounds like a bug in my script. Or in Spritradar, which I doubt. Tried to see how it calls Pure Maps, but couldn't find the corresponding code at https://github.com/xXSparkeyy/harbour-spritradar