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

All,

I got another question: is it possible to download maps such as those available from http://maps.google.com.hk/ These maps are in the language that I want. In general, I want the street name and etc to be displayed in the local language of the said location(ie. Chinese(simplified or traditional) in China and english for NA and etc)

Thank for your time,
Cheers,

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

MartinK, thanks for taking my suggestions into account.

Unfortunately the most recent version has many issues. The new submenu structure doesn't work, often showing empty menus on repeated touch-throughs.

And modRana is more-frequently locking my phone's input entirely. Keyboard, touchscreen, lock, and power buttons fail. Curiously, other running tasks (like mediaplayer + FM Carkit) were unaffected and continued to run until battery reseat.

I'm on the latest CSSU, and using sqlite tiles.

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

This was mentioned a few posts back. There is a stopgap fix for this here.

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

what happend to modrana after laste update?it has empty submenus and no gps????!!!!!

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

I'll look what can be done :) BTW, I'm thinking about changing the way map layers are selected, the current click-through method has become a bit tiring for so many layers :) I'm also thinking about a in-GUI layer editor (you can already edit layer settings/add new layers in /opt/modrana/map_config.conf).

Yep, really looks like that infamous SGX-freezing issue again - its really shame the drivers are closed, so no one can take a closer look on this issue... Thinks might be moving in the right direction, if slowly.

I still can't see a reliable pattern causing this, which would enable some workaround. I thought active GPS (liblocation) might be causing this, then someone reported he got a freeze while downloading tiles even with GPS off.
Someone reported on the related Maemo bug, that redrawing on the background might be causing this, so modRana now does not redraw on the background (which sure was bad anyways), but I don't think I got some feedback for this already.
So, did any of you manage to get the freeze with blanked & modRana running ? :)

I haven't been able to reproduce this yet, can you give me some more information ?

• which submenus are empty ? all of them (route,search,etc.) or just the new ones in options ?
• which sequence of buttons you need to push to get to an empty submenu ?
• no GPS = modRana is not activating the GPS and thus not tracking your position on the map ?

Also an xterm log would be really helpful :)

How to get modRana terminal output log:
Open xterm, type "modrana" try trigger the broken behavior (eq. enter the empty submenu) then close modRana and copy-paste the output here (or to pastebin, etc.). Thanks :)

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

Regarding the submenus, it appears that when you scroll down in the new Options submenus, it saves the position of the menu when you go to a different submenu.

I.E. when one submenu has 6 items and you downarrow-tap to item #5, the submenu stays at item #5. This means when you access a different submenu with only one item, you get the appearance of an empty submenu. Tapping the uparrow-button one or more times reveals the single menu item.

---

Thanks to everyone for the SGX driver issue notice. I'm confident the issue is not related to GPS, because I did not use the GPS during my trip. However, I can confirm that the freezes began happening far more frequently around 0.22-2 or -3.

Something is happening that the graphics driver doesn't like, and as a result input gets frozen. Curiously, other running tasks like audio seem unaffected.

I'll try and record stdout next time I use modRana.

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

I can confirm that this is the issue... Not a big one, however, since tapping the up arrow brings the menus back in sight.

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

Understadn, the SGX driver is the graphics driver, not the GPS driver. It seems that the graphics driver locks up more often when GPS is on, but that's not the only reason it locks up. Other things that can cause it are lots of re-draws happening and/or when the system is in a sparse resource mode. (eg heavy ram and/or cpu use.) It's also been shown that GSM activity can trigger it in some cases.

That's the reason other things seem to run ok, because they are. The only thing NOT running is the graphics driver, making the display useless. My script actually uses espeak to warn that the driver has gone bonkers and that it's going to reboot your device (just in case you're talking on the phone or some such...)

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

Yes I understand it's the video device. :) Apologies for not ordering my thoughts better in my last post. With luck there will be an open SGX driver someday. And a non-2.6.28 kernel! And... sigh.

Incidentally my device was in offline mode during these tests, to conserve battery life and avoid roaming charges. So my crashes couldn't have involved either GSM or GPS use.

If the problem continues, I will likely try your reboot script/driver. It appears to be a useful workaround, but I hate that such a workaround is necessary on N900 when other Linux systems are so robust!

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

I totally agree. For what it's worth, in the bug link the Nokia rep handling the bug points out the opesource portion of the driver in the git repository at Nokia. Apparently the kernel module is opensource, but loads in a binary blob that runs as firmware on the device. So it may be possible to at least "fix" this in the open part if someone can figure out what's going on.

From what I've read at the TI site, this "bug" apparently was fixed upstream by TI, but Nokia doesn't have the manpower (or is not willing to pay for the update maybe?) to fix it in the N900. Maybe that's something someone can tackle in the new community SSU?

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

@MartinK, about my issue of seeing local language for the specific region.. as it turns out...I get the same map with local language using the GMapCatcher. So, I guess if one uses google map, there is no issue.

Now, I have another problem:), I copied the download maps(tiles) from GMapCatcher to the .maps\Google Maps\zoomlevel_x\leve_y\... directories per hints in http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=451. I launched the app afterward but the app for some reason did not 'see' the already downloaded tiles and it wanted to go online to download again. Is there anything else I have to do? Is there a log somewhere that I can look to troubleshoot this?

Thank you for your time

Cheers,

PS: when I use the GMapCatcher, it created tiles zoom level from as low as '-2' and all the want up to '20'. My version of GMapCatcher is 0.7.5.0(on Windows).

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

If by blanked you mean "screen locked and off", then yes.

I've noticed that modRana's window doesn't go black when Ctrl+Backspace is used -- only when using the minimize button. I believe I've witnessed the freeze/SGX bug when the screen is blanked in both of these scenarios.

Still haven't spent more time with it, but I hope these extra details will help.

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

Sorry to bug you guys with this, but I've a problem with Modrana. I installed it and had it running without a problem. After changing some settings with layers, it now freezes upon startup. By this I mean that it acquires gps, but shows only a grey background and doesn't respond to tapping the screen or titlebar in any way. Otherwise n900 is responding perfectly.
I thought it might be some setting that is giving me trouble so as a quick fix I tried a reinstall to see whether it would reset settings, but they seem to presisting. A look into Modrana wiki didn't reveal where config files are located.
Attaching a xterm output

Sorry for being such a noob and thank you for any help :)
Attachment 17844

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

Looks like the new center shifting code is causing the issue - you have probably some unique mix of settings causing this. :)
Could you please post/send the /opt/modrana/data/options.bin file ? This is where modRana stores most of its settings and I can probably use it to easily reproduce (and fix) the issue in my local environment :)

Also, removing/renaming this file might be used as a workaround before this is fixed, as removing it will reset most settings to default values (uninstalling modRana, without using the --purge parameter, leaves options.bin in place).

BTW, I'll release a new version & reply to question in the next few days.

What will be in the next release ?

• fix for the options menu scrolling issue
• fix for the above mentioned shifting issue
• new optional map dragging method, that is much faster but less visually pleasing than the current one
• jumping to the map screen by long-pressing the "escape" button

And possibly more :)

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

am having problem with modrana,its estimation for distance is 8 meters,while its far more than that,and another thing can we change voice ?

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

Attaching options.bin. Removing it solved the issue. Thank you :) (I didn't use xterm to uninstall, I will next time)
Attachment 17855

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

Martin,
Could you increase the treshold for dragging a bit, I have about 50% chance that tapping a button still causes a drag (and disables auto-center) while driving the car. Standing still it works fine. And no, my car isn't that old that it vibrates a lot ;)

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

Great list of features and they all sound so good. I will have to try these all.

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

There are different options under 'mode'. Selecting these results in different data being displayed. (do modes have other effect?) Could it be possible to choose displayed data by checking from a list or similar rather than being fixed to preset defaults?

EDIT: oh, just noticed that configurable UI is already planned :)

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

mine now also gives the grey screen :(

edit: removing options.bin also fixed it here.
I think the last thing I did in the working state was play with some settings.

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

An idea for the next version:

How about a fancy interface for address entering and lookup? My TomTom GPS shows a list of known streets for a certain city, making it easy to pick the right one, even if I don't know the spelling 100%.

Maybe some frontend to Google to feed back suggestions if the entered name isn't found.

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

MartinK, OT:
Have you any estimation how many hours total you have spent with modRana? (planning, coding, testing, support)

The general feeling among the developers who know many programming languages and platforms, is that Python would be about 4x as productive as C++ development or 2x as productive as Java-development.

As for now already, I am sure everyone can see how rapid this modRana development has been compared to for example Mappero and Marble.

So would be interesting and educational to know some working hours estimates.

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

0.23-1 updated

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

Yep, modRana V0.23-1 is out ! :D

What's new ?

• new optional map dragging technique
  This is basically a very simple and fast trick - it takes the current screen content and blitts it with an offset back on screen during drag.
  As a result, ares not currently visible are not redrawn until the drag ends. It also takes everything thats was on screen, including for example menu buttons.
  This feature is targeted mainly on slower devices, like the Neo FreeRunner, where it is now set as default and finally makes map scrolling usable.
  On Maemo, you can enable simple map dragging in option->map->dragging.
  
  There might still be some middle-ground between continuous redraw and simple map dragging, that might be more pretty and fast, but I will probably rather start working on the long promised Clutter integration. :)
  
  
• long press on the "escape" arrow in the upper left corner jumps directly to the map screen
  To enable this, I actually had to add support for handling long-presses, which will be soon used to add a on-map context menu for fast POI creation (and other uses).
  
  Also, there might be some menus where this does not work yet, please report such menus, so I can fix them :)
  
• threshold for disabling centering by dragging can be now configured in options->map->centering
  You can even turn this off, so centering can be only disabled by clicking the centering toggle button.
  
• scrolling in options and that black-screen issue should be both fixed

Also introducing, the ultimate benchmark !
detailed modRana startup timing :D
Just start modrana from xterm to get this in terminal during startup. :)

Thats it for today, I'll handle all the accumulated questions tomorrow :)

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

First check which tile storage method are you using in options->map->Tile storage. You want to use the "files" or else ("sqlite") modRana will looks only in its sqlite tile database and will ignore all tile files and folders.

Also try to check if the tile structure you get from is the same as the one used by modRana in the other folders.

There should be no problems with the lower zoomlevels (modRana actually currently has no lower limit on zoomlevel number :) ).

Also, to check if modRana is actually using your tiles, you can disable automatic map tiles download by setting network usage to "only for important data" in options->network->network usage. If new tiles show up after setting this, they are loaded from local storage.

ModRana currently simply logs to stdout, so you can just start it from xterm and look at the output it produces. The output can be also saved to a per-session log file.

I took a second look on the modRana code that stops redrawing when the window is minimized and/or the screen is blanked. Turned out I forgot stop the function for invalidating the window content - the redrawing was paused but the X-server was still getting damage events.

This should be now fixed in V0.23-1, also, as a result of this, the thumbnail in task switcher is no longer black - it just freezes on the last shown frame.

So there should now be no graphic related activity originating from modRana when the modRana window is not visible - so please let me know if you still get those freezes when modRana is minimized or the screen is blanked :)

You mean that during the turn by turn navigation, the voice says the "in 8 meters do something" but the actual distance is much longer ? How much longer ?

Yes, this would be possible to add - espeak provides multiple slightly different male and female voices. But I still think the default voice sounds the best :)

Yeah, the "modes" are pretty much work in progress. The basic idea is to have an optimal interface for each use case. This means mainly a configurable per-mode UI elements layout. You might want larger zoom buttons while driving the car but not the route elevation widget you use while mountain-biking, etc.

The modes are currently also used while looking up routes - note how you get different routes when you are in the walking vs car modes :)

So the first step is to make the interface interactively configurable & make the widgets usable again.

I was also thinking about per-mode specific settings, like: Scale the map to 4x original size, but in only in the car and bus modes, in bike mode only by 2X and use the default for all other modes.

Definitely planned (with a quite high priority too :) ) - modRana has all the needed data available through the Google geocoding service (note how there is an estimated start and destination address for P2P routesa lready), I just basically need to extend the UI to show it.

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

Hmm, I don't really know - but I would say it would be, all combined, quite a few hundred hours since I started working on modRana a year ago.

Yes, from my experience, Python is definitely more productive that C/C++.

Its just so flexible and fast to write in - no unnecessary semicolons or parentheses, simple and readable syntax, flexible type system, huge but nice organized standard library...and so on :)

I also tend to start modRana all the time during development to incrementally test the code, so lack of compiling saves a lot of time & and makes the whole process more streamlined. It also means no esoteric tool-chain issues on different platforms - once some brave soul compiles Python + PyGTK for a platform, modRana can run on it. Although Java is also multi-platform, its such a monster I have yet to see a native mobile program written in it - or even an official JVM port for ARM (I'm excluding Android/Dalvik because it is not multiplatform). Consider how many Python programs are there in Maemo alone...

The lack of compiling is also a plus during testing - I just rsync my current development version from my devel. PC to the N900 or FreeRunner and can test how it behaves right away. :)

Of course, this is not totally black and white - not all libraries have Python bindings, while most have a C interface (I will be probably doing a simple CLI interface for Monav due to this soon :).

There are no ifdefs, which would be nice for printing debugging info without slowing down the release version with a million of ifs processed on runtime.

And there are some nice/dirty tricks that can be done when accessing the memory directly - GTK is probably using some of them internally for drawable->drawable drawing, and the new simple map dragging mode is thus very fast as result.

And native Python is slow - well, when compared to well written C. This is why I use well written C all the time in modRana - by using the Python standard library, which is from a large part written in C or has less-flexible-but-fast C versions for some modules written in Python (like Marshal vs cMarshal, etc.). :)

But Python is also not slow enough to matter in most cases - my profiling output shows, that modRana is already spending most of the time in GTK and Cairo, and all the python code is hardly visible in the call chart :)

Well, I actually think the progress is quite slow, considering the mountan of feature request, all the nice online services and data sources that could be integrated ...
Then I do a monthly progress report to the lab and after looking at all the features that were implemented since last time ("wow, did I really implement all of this ?" :D), , the tempo doesn't seem that bad for a while :D

Concerning development speed of other projects - well, all the time spent on typing braces, solving esoteric compile problems and memory leaks is time not spent on development :)

But what is the real reason I originally choose Python for this project ?
Well, that's simple.

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

WOW :D

Already grabbing my n900 with modRana first, leaving the tomtom for when my wife needs gps ;)

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

@MartinK
I have the latest version downloaded and the maps were set to google.I wanted to download tiles around 40 kms. From my home wifi I started to download but when i saw the size, i wanted to stop downloading but Modrana froze.It happened repeatedly.
@All
kindly consider this noob and explain me how to download goolgle maps from gmap catcher.i could manage them to be downloaded but i dont know where they are being downloaded in my UBUNTU system.Plus are there any specifications for zoom level?

your help is greatly appreciated.. regards

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

I love how far voice synthesis has come in the last 20 years, sounds marginally better than the currah microspeach on my zx spectrum :)

But hey, that is eSpeaks fault I guess, the rest of things is sweet in this software. Still not a viable replacement for my tomtom though.

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

I'm doing contract work for a company called Nuance, who deliver the TTS to all major players (including TomTom). I hear their output all the time, and it makes me say that eSpeak is utter crap :) It is decades behind commercial offerings.

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

If you have a better alternative, please post it! espeak is what we have to work with for now, so we may as well make the best of it.

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

Yes, I noticed the difference in modes while using 'bike' when driving (I just like the km/h display). It just couldn't find route to destination until I switched over to 'car' :)

Scaling: how about speed-related zoom-level? Set hardcoded/configurable triggers points so that when speed is increased/decreased past set point scaling is incremented/decremented by, say, x1. Example: When accelerating from 10km/h to 40km/h map zooms out. That way scaling is right for situation (and mode ;) ) and shows enough of the map in relation to speed. Maybe behind a toggle switch and if zoom button is pressed it stops speed-zooming. You'd have to re-enable it by pressing button.

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

I remember Nuance well of old - after they were borged by ScanSoft (who'd already acquired Dragon) they picked up Lernout & Hauspie when they went bust & they also bought Scotland's Rhetorical (whose superior TTS product they withdrew from their product range PDQ). The old Philips speech division is now part of Nuance too - they seem to have swallowed up virtually all competitors, so they now own the ball park in terms of commercial deployment.

But all of these large companies, now amalgamated, have thrown zillions at R&D over the years, so it's a bit unfair to even make a comparison with lil' ol' eSpeak. OK, it's not Dragon, but It's free, and it's intelligible, it'll do to get me from A to B :-)

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

hey, I didn't want to sound that negative about eSpeak, I just wanted to tell how it feels to listen to it when the rest of the day you hear these top TTS engines talking ;)

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

What froze, the device (= the infamous SGX bug) or just modRana, (so that it can be killed from the task switcher and run again) ? :)

I have installed mapcatcher and its layout is indeed quite confusing. You have to click on the blank button under "Query" label (I'd guess this is caused by a missing icons), then you can select "Options" where you can set where mapcatcher should store the downloaded maps. :)
But I have no idea how to set the zoomlevel range...maybe it does single zoomlevel at a time ?


Well, there are few issues that have to be addressed before this can be usably implemented:

• zooming up/down for the first time is not instantaneous - it takes some time to show the map as tiles are down-/loaded
  this could be solved by faster tile loading, reusing scaled tile from previous zoomlevel or preloading adjacent zoomlevels
  
• the user should know automatic zooming is on, so some form of notification would have to be provided

There is already a feature request for automatic zooming - just add a comment if you have some additional ideas :)

Also, once clutter is used for the map-view rendering in modRana, animated seamless zooming would be possible, which would make automatic zooming much more usable IMO :)

Concerning clutter, I've got a positive response from the PyMaemo guys about updating the obsolete PyClutter package from 0.8 to 1.0.
Also, because of the particularly sad state of the Pyclutter documentation, I have started gathering all the documentation and other resources I can find on the modRana wiki. If you find something related, let me know ! :)

@ TTS: Well, I'd say all is good as long the output is intelligible :D
Improvements would be nice, though. There are those mbrola voices, mentioned earlier in this thread. Also, looks like Festival is available from extras - does anybody have an idea whats the quality of its output ?

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

Though they sound better, I'd advise against mbrola, as it's not free, it's closed source, not worth it in my mind...
Yeah, I do a lotta messing with espeak and festival. Generally festival produces a much more intelligible output and better spoken. Its languages/voices are also quite good. So generally, as far as speech clarity is concerned etc., festival is a better alternative. However it is much heavier than espeak, that's why usually espeak gets chosen as a frontend.

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

Is it not possible to use pre-recorded voices, and then fallback on espeak if a certain recorded instruction isn't available?

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

Well...At the moment modrana gives instructions with street names. Trying to record these would be a nightmare. You could possibly record the instruction except for the street name, however that would sound kind of odd, and besides, espeak generally doesn't have much trouble with the rest of the instruction.
The other problem with this approach is that voice files take up a lot of room on a phone. This would probably double or even triple the installed size.

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

ModRana is also getting the directions from Google in plain-text, so even separating the street names is not possible (or at least very hard) .

This can change as other routing providers may supply directions in a machine readable format and IIRC both Monav and Routino supply preformated plaintext & machine readable instructions.

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

Question about that: might it be possible to parse the beginning of the plain-text command such as to extract things such as "turn left", "slight right", "merge", etc. and show an arrow indicating what the next command will be? I would find this very handy when I can't remember the last instruction, but I don't want to take my eyes off the road for long enough to read the blue box.

I believe you are using Python for modrana. Here is an example of what I mean:
My suggestion is that this be used to display an arrow, sort of like this:
http://www.gpsgazette.com/images/Har...on/GPS-500.jpg