Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I do not really wish to make extra work for Martin who has done so much work already to make Modrana an excellent program, but it would be nice if in a future update that in options there was a picker or text entry box to set the location where tiles are stored.

As the collection of tiles increases, it really does seem better to move them to a memory card, & editing the config file seems to often to lead to typo problems, etc.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

And even better put them in a loopback mounted file with less cluster size (each little tile uses 64KB on eMMC).
See here
Or consider using SQLite DB, MartinK?

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

The reason is simple - Google doesn't like batch downloading and block further downloads once it is detected.

Nope, thats just the prefix used to build the URL, a valid one looks like this:

http://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=m@1770...pp&x=6&y=6&z=4

Well, you still need to get tile tiles somewhere first. :)

Unfortunately, I don't have a Fedora installation at hand at the moment - well, you can try to just install everything with "sqlite" in name and check if it fixes the issue. :)

Yeah, the naming should really be changed to be more descriptive.
Only For Important Data means that no map tiles are downloaded but online routing & search are still allowed.
So maybe "Routing & search only" would be a better name ?

OK, I'll have a look at it once I have some spare time, shouldn't be that difficult. :) IMHO, entry box is a better choice, as the default Hildon folder chooser is dog slow & doesn't usually show all available folders (does it even show invisible folders ?).

Already implemented. :) The modrana.org wiki has more more information about how it works. You can also use the (above mentioned) Perl script to import the tiles you have already downloaded to the database.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

But the tiles location is shared between multiple map applications and if you use them to view the same location you will have the tiles stored twice, right?

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

Looks like Google Maps shouldn't be used when one needs to preload some areas (for instance before travelling abroad). Hoping
Google will change policy about that.

I got the point about the URL. My fault. My fault also the misinterpretation of mapconvert: I understood its aim was to download tiles off-line - typically on the PC.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

It is possible that many tend to use one map application - I do, anyway. It does seem like the default should continue to be the shared maps directory.

Then, if someone is using Modrana & really needs additional storage space, the option is there to move the tiles to a memory card. It would be ideal if the other map applications also made the tiles directory configurable, but all things can't be made ideal!

I just thought of another feature that might be useful - POI's with alarms. Since the GPS is on already, & you can enter POI's, it could be useful to associate an alarm with the POI so you don't drive past it. I would add POI's for speed limit change signs & set a bong sound in areas that I sometimes forget to to speed up or slow down in.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

Yes, I think so. Or, if tiles are the only things not downloaded when Only For Important Data is selected, then perhaps it could be named Don't Download Tiles.

Thanks very much Martin, for maintaining this package; it's by far my favorite map program for the N900.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

Yep, but:
Also if you use sqlite tile storage, there are so far no other navigation apps with support for the format other than modRana. This might change in the future as the format is open & documented here and the Cloud GPS developer mentioned having support for it on his roadmap.

I think most probably support this through their configuration files.

This is actually already a ticket for this from a long time ago. A new table in the POI database with rows bound to the POI ids would be needed. This table would store all the various alarms (more than one alarm per POI would be supported) & their metadata (distance, beep/spoken message, enabled/disabled, etc.). and you would have to assure that alarms are removed when a POI is deleted (this might be automatic given proper key arrangements are done in the database).

While I still think this is the proper way for implementing POI based alarms, your question got me thinking it there is another, more simple way how for handling alarms. :)

I asked myself a couple questions:

• do the alarms need to be bound to POI after all ?
• how to easily add an alarm without making a POI ?
• how to make it easy for users to add many alarms at once (eq. with a script that generates them from a list of speed-limits/whatever) ?

Result: Plain-text alarm lists !
The alarms would be just stored in one or more plain-text files, one alarm per row with CSV notation.

Row notation might look like this:
Explanation:
lat - latitude in decimal format
lon - longitude in decimal format
distance - trigger distance
enabled - 1 = enabled, 0 = disabled
name - displayed name
alert - any string other than BEEP or SAY would go directly to text-to-speech, BEEP triggers some default alarm sound, SAY: says whats after the colon (so you can SAY:BEEP :D)

What about elevation ?
A friend of mine is a glider pilot so the idea of 3D alarm coordinates has crossed my mind. Still, I want the format be as simple as possible (so that users can basically just generate the lists in excel/calc) and elevation would probably not bee needed 99% of the time. As a result, elevation support can be added in the future - probably into the distance field with some prefix (eq. ELEV:375,200)

How to add new alarms ?
There would be two ways: editing the alarm lists from the outside (just create a valid list and modRana will be able to use it) or interactively inside modRana (create new lists, add alarms from map/poi/coordinates, enabled/disable alarms, activate/deactivate alarm lists).

And now the most important thing:
What do you thing about this idea ?

• did I forgot about some essential alarm parameter ?
• any ideas for a better row format or an other technical solution overall ?
• implementation/scalability concerns ?
• or anything else ? :)

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

The fact that sql-format of tiles database is documented and no other map application in N900 is using it, is IMO just a prove only modRana is actively developed and the best navigation software for N900. It is a shame the other map-application developers do not implement the sql-database system, which could be shared between applications.

I think I've installed all available map-, gps-, navigation- applications available for N900, but modRana is what I find most useful.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

IIRC, sqlite tile's database is on it's way for Marble too.

But, those whirlwind of development convinced me to try ModRana as well :) sounds like really nice tool.

/Estel