[Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system - Page 41 - maemo.org

7thd | # 401 | 2010-12-12, 21:47 | Report

Wonderful app! Particularly the tracklogging which I like for sailing (one can determine when to tack).

<problem> I lost the crosshair/fix/pointer as well as the tracks and start/end pointers. Latest build no improvement.

Last edited by 7thd; 2010-12-12 at 21:55.

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woody14619 | # 402 | 2010-12-13, 19:26 | Report

Martin: In the bug on causing the SGX driver to lock up, the Nokia rep noted the problem may be from sending too much to the drawing system. (Bogus, I know, but...) One thing of note was placing an entry in /etc/powervr.d/ for the program to "increase it's GL command buffer". I'm not sure how this is done though. Thought maybe you'd have and idea?

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jj0 | # 403 | 2010-12-13, 20:11 | Report

v 0.20-3 fails in postinst while chmodding /opt/modrana/cache/images/

It fails since there's dirnames with spaces in this dir, if you've downloaded some files, and the busybox `chmod -R' doesn't cope with these it seems...

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7thd | # 404 | 2010-12-13, 22:37 | Report

in addition to forementioned problem

Originally Posted by 7thd View Post

<problem> I lost the crosshair/fix/pointer as well as the tracks and start/end pointers. Latest build no improvement.

Modrana won't start at all now. I have only tried out setting buttons and have not tried to reinstall or other installs. I'm quite ignorant of the technique so I have no real clue.

Start in Xterminal shows the following

Code:

~ $ modrana
 == modRana Starting == 
 device string (first parameter): n900 
importing modules:
 * menu: Handle menus (30.00 ms)
 * example: A sample pyroute module (10.00 ms)
 * clickHandler: handle mouse clicks (10.00 ms)
 * waypoints: Lookup nearest town or village (80.00 ms)
 * messages: Handles messages (120.00 ms)
 * onlineServices: Module for communication with various online services. (170.00 ms)
 * mapView: Controls the view being displayed on the map (0.00 ms)
 * display: A platform independent display device control module (0.00 ms)
 * icons: Draw icons (10.00 ms)
 * log: A modRana logging module (0.00 ms)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "modrana.py", line 476, in <module>
    program = GuiBase(device)
  File "modrana.py", line 411, in __init__
    self.mapWidget = MapWidget()
  File "modrana.py", line 85, in __init__
    self.loadModules('modules') # name of the folder with modules
  File "modrana.py", line 106, in loadModules
    self.m[name] = a.getModule(self.m,self.d)
  File "/opt/modrana/modules/mod_options.py", line 25, in getModule
    return(options(m,d))
  File "/opt/modrana/modules/mod_options.py", line 33, in __init__
    self.load()
  File "/opt/modrana/modules/mod_options.py", line 369, in load
    newData = marshal.load(f)
EOFError: EOF read where object expected
~ $

Would it help to uninstall or sth? Or can some1 provide info on a detail?

I'm not experiencing other big failures other than some widgets falling out. I have toggled 3G/GSM while running Modrana by the way

<edit> I have tried reinstall (OTA). Xterminal session of modRana still shows the above. I can safely say that I left mod_options.py untouched, so far as I made no textual alterations whatsoever.

I miss this app with its k i c k a s s tiles, could anyone help restoring this modRana 0.20-3?

Last edited by 7thd; 2010-12-14 at 21:27.

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MartinK | # 405 | 2010-12-15, 00:37 | Report

Originally Posted by woody14619 View Post

Get outta town! You had a FR too!? Small world.

I have a GTA02v5 sitting on a shelf right now collecting dust. I keep meaning to bring it into work to flash it with the latest qtmoko (they just release v30 this week), but I keep forgetting it. (I don't have a windows box at home anymore, and the linux tools for FR never worked right for me...) I hear it's almost working as a reliable phone now... But then I heard that from some people the whole time, and mine was never good at keeping a GSM signal, yet alone handling calls or text. :P

I think I have seen a lecture about QtMoko by one of the developers (maybe it was even the main developer ? I'm not really sure) on the OpenMobility conference, that took place april. It looked very usable even then

BTW, there is a (bit old) howto for running modRana on QtMoko

BTW, concerning flashing - I have been using dfu-util in Linux to flash about everything in Neo, including rootfs (SHR), kernel and even the non-hardwired bootloader quite recently - without issues once I set the correct path and usb id.

Originally Posted by gkuenning View Post

Of course, none of these solve the "Turn left on Street Andrews Street" problem; I'm not sure how that could be handled without true natural-language processing.

Well, the street names actually come enclosed in <b></b> tags. The enclosed text could be taken as a whitespace separated string and only those St. that have no whitespace behind them would be substituted

IMO, this looks like a textbook use-case for a regexp ->
I think I'll just add support for adding custom regexps to the filter file

Something like:

Code:

regexp;your_regexp_code

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post

You need to be careful with these, they do not work as expected, which relates to the previous post also. Basically modrana just does a plain substitution, not whole words. I.e. if you have

Code:

St;Street

this is wrong as then for instance "Park Street" will be read as "Park Street reet"
so maybe it should be:

Code:

St ;Street

Yep, its just really simple exact-match (including whitespace) substitution right now. It also applies ALL the rules, one after another, going from the first line to the last.

So you should use either

Code:

St. ;Street

or

Code:

St.;Street

, depending on how the streetnames are shortened and also watch out for substituting to something that might match match a rule further down the list

Originally Posted by gkuenning View Post

I'm pretty sure it just overwrites things, unless the file has been specially marked in the distribution. One way to handle that problem would be to auto-merge it with a similar file in the user's home directory; then the one in /home/user could be used for personal localizations.

OK, upgrade-time merging seems like the best way, it might be less confusing than having two separate default (always overwritten by upgrade)/user(never overwritten by upgrade) filter files, etc. I just hope all the needed utilities are there in our (quite) limited busybox shell

Also, there might be problems with order of the rules in the merged file.

Also, thanks for all the new substitution rules!

Just a question to the gkuenning ones:

Code:

Ave;Avenue
Cir;Circle
Hts;Heights
Hwy;Highway
Ln;Lane
Pde;Parade
Pkwy;Parkway
Pl;Place
Plz;Plaza
Rd;Road
Sq;Square
Tce;Terrace
Trk;Track
Wy;Way

Is there really no period behind those abbreviations ? It hight potentially mangle some unabbreviated street names (5th Avenue -> 5th Avenuenue), like jj0 mentioned earlier.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post

BTW, the new version is MUCH slower in loading the individual tiles for display, must be doing some caching or what-have-you, but now there is a noticeable lag, and the "Loading..." text showed for about a second or so, with every tile upon first display, then when it's redisplayed, i.e. zoomed out and back in, it's instantaneous, but it used to be instantaneous before...

I have changed how tile drawing/loading works. The drawing function previously handled everything - not only drawing but also caching the tiles (loading from file/sqlite or starting download threads) in case they were not in the memory cache.
This froze the whole GUI once there were enogh new tiles on the screens, because the drawing function waited for all the new tiles to load. There was also no limit on the number of concurrent download threads, which is another matter. I think you can imagine what happened if you entered an area with poor network coverage at hight speed without any thread-count limit

I have changed how tile drawing works like this:

the drawing function now only draws tiles that are cached in the memory cache, if there is a cache miss, it sends a loading request for the missing tile and loads a "Loading..." placeholder tile in the cache - like this, only one loading request is sent per missing tile
a separate consumer thread handles the loading request queue - it either loads the tile from local storage (file/sqlite) or sends a download request to the download request pool
a second consumer thread is responsible for starting the download threads, it also makes sure that the number of concurrent download threads never exceeds a given limit (20 by default), unprocessed download requests time-out after 30 second

The slower apparent loading of tiles might be caused by the default once-per-second screen refresh.

If you are not dragging the map, modRana updates the screen only once per second, as this is the shortest interval I can get a new fix in. Not much sense to update more often IMO. The first redraw draws the "Loading..." tiles and sends loading requests. And only the next redraw that happens a second later shows the actual tiles that were loaded to the cache in the meantime.

I think sending a screen redraw request once a tile is finished loading might improve/fix this.

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MartinK | # 406 | 2010-12-15, 01:27 | Report

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post

Hmmm... very interesting. Could it be that the sqlite db has some internal errors and that's what is messing up the download. Though the log is not reporting any...

Anyhow, I backed up the .maps folder, then created a new empty one, and am now downloading maps for a 80 km area around a point.

It's been going on without errors for some time now, now at 39 thousand out of 360 thou...

Have you tried how the batch download to sqlite fares in 0.20-3 ? I have made the database access sequential in this version as I suspect that concurrent access to the database might be causing for all those "database locked" errors.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post

Also, there might be some prob in navigating tags, as for the past couple of days, driving around I've had modrana say:

In XXX meters turn right on XXX Street reet slash emphasis

I.e. the "Street reet" part was because of the St; substitution, but pronouncing the "slash emphasis" seems like it's reading a </emphasis> tag...

It doesn't do it all the time though, so not sure if only when it's ending in "Street"...

The emphasis tags come from SSML are used so that espeak puts emphasis on important words, like street names or the turn commands. IMO it is reading the tag because it is somehow mangled - either the is a < missing or the <emphasis> opening tag is not where it should be. Does it happen for all turns or just from time to time ?

Originally Posted by woody14619 View Post

Martin: In the bug on causing the SGX driver to lock up, the Nokia rep noted the problem may be from sending too much to the drawing system. (Bogus, I know, but...) One thing of note was placing an entry in /etc/powervr.d/ for the program to "increase it's GL command buffer". I'm not sure how this is done though. Thought maybe you'd have and idea?

OK, I'll try to investigate if I can find something about this mysterious option.

BTW, modRana is not actually drawing that much, but it does redraw the whole screen each time. ModRana redraws frequently only when the map is being dragged, otherwise the screen is redrawn just once per second, (as mentioned earlier). The weird thing is that most of the freezes that have been reported for modRana so far were IIRC not while dragging the map but while just looking at it or even when the screen was blanked.

Maybe it doesn't like when applications redraw while the screen is blanked ? I think I have noticed something in this sense in one of the new comments to the freezing bug.

Originally Posted by jj0 View Post

v 0.20-3 fails in postinst while chmodding /opt/modrana/cache/images/

It fails since there's dirnames with spaces in this dir, if you've downloaded some files, and the busybox `chmod -R' doesn't cope with these it seems...

Well, this folder should be empty, as all map tiles should be by default stored in MyDocs/.maps on the N900. Otherwise the 2GB partition with home and opt would get filled by tiles quite quickly. So this might be a double bug

Originally Posted by 7thd View Post

in addition to forementioned problem

Modrana won't start at all now. I have only tried out setting buttons and have not tried to reinstall or other installs. I'm quite ignorant of the technique so I have no real clue.

Start in Xterminal shows the following

Code:

~ $ modrana
 == modRana Starting == 
 device string (first parameter): n900 
importing modules:
 * menu: Handle menus (30.00 ms)
 * example: A sample pyroute module (10.00 ms)
 * clickHandler: handle mouse clicks (10.00 ms)
 * waypoints: Lookup nearest town or village (80.00 ms)
 * messages: Handles messages (120.00 ms)
 * onlineServices: Module for communication with various online services. (170.00 ms)
 * mapView: Controls the view being displayed on the map (0.00 ms)
 * display: A platform independent display device control module (0.00 ms)
 * icons: Draw icons (10.00 ms)
 * log: A modRana logging module (0.00 ms)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "modrana.py", line 476, in <module>
    program = GuiBase(device)
  File "modrana.py", line 411, in __init__
    self.mapWidget = MapWidget()
  File "modrana.py", line 85, in __init__
    self.loadModules('modules') # name of the folder with modules
  File "modrana.py", line 106, in loadModules
    self.m[name] = a.getModule(self.m,self.d)
  File "/opt/modrana/modules/mod_options.py", line 25, in getModule
    return(options(m,d))
  File "/opt/modrana/modules/mod_options.py", line 33, in __init__
    self.load()
  File "/opt/modrana/modules/mod_options.py", line 369, in load
    newData = marshal.load(f)
EOFError: EOF read where object expected
~ $

Would it help to uninstall or sth? Or can some1 provide info on a detail?

I'm not experiencing other big failures other than some widgets falling out. I have toggled 3G/GSM while running Modrana by the way

<edit> I have tried reinstall (OTA). Xterminal session of modRana still shows the above. I can safely say that I left mod_options.py untouched, so far as I made no textual alterations whatsoever.

I miss this app with its k i c k a s s tiles, could anyone help restoring this modRana 0.20-3?

This might be caused the by corrupted settings file. Try to delete/move somewhere else this file:
/opt/modrana/data/options.bin
ModRana will create a new one with default settings if it cant find the old one. This might even solve your other problem with missing position indicator.

Also, failed loading of the options file should really fail more gracefully, with a "loading settings failed" notifications and not with a crash... I'll do something about it

Last edited by MartinK; 2010-12-15 at 02:25.

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romanianusa | # 407 | 2010-12-15, 01:34 | Report

No voice nav?

petur | # 408 | 2010-12-15, 08:40 | Report

Originally Posted by romanianusa View Post

No voice nav?

yes it does (if you can understand it

)

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Wikiwide | # 409 | 2010-12-15, 09:33 | Report

Originally Posted by romanianusa View Post

No voice nav?

No, it doesn't recognize your voice commands as you speak them.

Yes, it does pronounce the route turn-by-turn, with help of espeak, if you have Internet to get routing from Google.

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jj0 | # 410 | 2010-12-15, 13:57 | Report

Originally Posted by MartinK View Post

Well, this folder should be empty, as all map tiles should be by default stored in MyDocs/.maps on the N900. Otherwise the 2GB partition with home and opt would get filled by tiles quite quickly. So this might be a double bug

So maybe this dir is a historical remnant from an old modrana installation. On a clean install the postinst script doesn't bomb obviously, I'll try to use it for a while and see if anything gets placed in the dir...