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

BINGO

the tiles it downloaded are in fact not valid png files, they contain HTML which states the download was rejected by Google.

Moving on to OSM then...

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

So its finally solved! :) Hmm, I'll add mime checking for the downloaded tiles. :D

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

I'm betting this was the issue I was getting as well Martin, with the sqlite tiles reporting back failed. Never occurred to me to move to another server? :P

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

You are right, that would be it! :D I think there were also also quite a few other reports that could be summed as downloaded tiles not showing up...



Well, quite an enigma to be finally solved - big thanks to everyone for providing feedback ! :)

I've implemented mime checking of the tiles before saving them - this should get rid of all HTML tiles in the future. :)

I'm also working on retry support for failed tile downloads.

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

Confirmed... Using Yahoo and batch download is working fine in small chunks. Apparently you're pulling them too quickly now, and Google is shutting you off. May be worth detecting and pausing the download vs re-trying. :P

And popping up a display warning about changing tile service may be nice too. :)

Looks like off-line loading is working correctly now from the yahoo sqlite db after grabbing the areas I needed. Finally I'll be able to navigate those areas with poor cell reception without issues! ;)

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

indeed... downloaded the OSM tiles of the area and I can confirm it is all working well now... PHEW :)

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

V0.25-6 is out! :)

Most improvements concern the batch download feature. ModRana now checks the magic number of downloaded tiles (using libmagic) to check if they really are valid images - if they are not, they are discarded and marked as failed downloads. This should fix all the all the "tiles batch downloaded but not showing up" errors. :)

I have also added a counter for the number of failed tile downloads and modRana now re-tries failed downloads (up to 3 times).

There is now also a data transfer counter and the status messages should now be less confusing.

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

Thanks for the update Martin,

I see in the change log that there is some option regarding font size but could not find anything in the option menu. The route info page for me has overlapped text due to large font size.

Let us know your thoughts on this.

Thanks
Bipin

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

Hi, I instaled modRana (and now marble as well) after the stock ovi maps failed for me last time and used it last night for a trip.

I downloaded the route and let it download the tiles at home a few days before that and it all seemed to work well. however, while on route i noticed 2 or 3 tiles didn't show (network error).

Also, while driving, I noticed it displayed 'turn on to A12' with the distance increasing steadily. this was after that turn and i was already on the A12. Is this a bug or a feature? because i was on a long stretch of road the next turn was probably still far away but should it not display the next step anyway?

I tried to press the screen for the next step but it tried to go online for re-routing.
Can this have a time out or something, because I had my phone in ofline mode, it couldnt reroute and just kept displaying the message for ten minutes or so :rolleyes:

I stopped at a petrol station, went online and let it re-calculate the route and it worked fine after that.
When it was time to go home this morning I went online let it calculate the return trip, went offline again and everything worked perfectly :)

Couple of requests for improving this program :D

Can you make the background of the text that displays the turn info slightly darker for more contrast? I have it mounted on my motorcycle inside a RAM Aquabox and the text is a bit hard to read through several layers of plastic (box and helmet visor)

I didn't have it in full screen mode (to keep an eye on battery level) and noticed that it displays the time (which is displayed by the normal clock as well). Would be nice if this could be left out (when not in full screen mode) or make it configurable to display current speed or maybe ETA.

Offline routing, address lookup, automatic recalculating route when you miss a turn and automatic zooming would be nice too but will probably take a lot of time and work

I like the big buttons of this program, makes it easy to use even with gloves on and inside the aguabox:)

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

Reporting live from the field: the cached tiles are working :)
Usable GPS+modrana without internet connection.

Found one feature-request so far: the ability to have multiple POI shown on the map. Now I have to enable each POI I have set whenever I need to go there, and I miss the overview of seeing multiple so I get an overview of what is where :)

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

I am getting confusing behavior with the latest update:

I'm viewing Prague, with OSM T&H map. When at zoom level 17, the tiles download and display, i.e. I see a brief period of downloading when going to a new region, and then it's displayed.

If zooming in to level 18, it just gets stuck on Downloading forever, I mean at first I thought this was due to the fact of the tiles being generated on the server end, but no, even after a couple of minutes, just Downloading everywhere, no errors or tiles not downloaded, just green and Downloading...

Maybe the tiles at this zoom in level already don't exist, don't remember if I could zoom in to 18 before, but I don't get the tile unavailable message now...

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

Speed coding FTW :) V0.25-7 with support for multiple visible POI is out.

• once a POI is shown on the map, it will stay visible
• use "clear visible" to wipe all visible POI from the map

More later. :)

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

Clearing works charmingly | edit may 31st: v 0.25-7
Is there a way to clear priorly opened tracklogs as well?

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

Upgraded to the latest version and this behavior seems to be fixed. Indeed shows the tile unavailable info again...

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

Not yet but I'm working on it (there a similar issue wit the new batch download menu sometimes). :)

BTW, what about a modRana vs Marble vs Ovi Maps comparison ? :)

ModRana detect that you passed a turn-point by drawing an imaginary circle around it at than checking if you got inside it. If you miss the circle modRana won't detect the point as passed and won't switch to the next one - this can happen especially when the route is not marked in thy actual physical place and/or when you have bad GPS reception.
The size of this virtual circle is 30 m by default and can be configured in Options->Navigation->Turn by turn as Point reached distance. :)

Pressing the navigation box currently just trigger (online) rerouting. You can use the arrows above the box to switch between turns.

The info box color is actually themable (the navigation_box_background key in theme.conf) - but I'd guess that you want to just change single color and not to build your own theme. :)
I think I'll add something like "override navigation info box color" + color selection dialog, then. :)

The clock is a part of the unfinished widget layer - which is configurable using the user_config.conf file in modRana main directory (/opt/modrana/). Fiddling with config files on a mobile device is not ideal, of course - the widget layer should be fully GUI configurable in a way similar to how the Maemo 5 widgets can be configured.

Offline routing and Clutter map-view is my main focus for the currently running competition (once I finally register modRana to it :D ) + what else I manage from the heap of feature requests. :)

Automatic rerouting - I already how to do that, I'll just need to write the code for it. :)

Thanks, glad to hear that. :)

Select some tracklog - any will do. Then select "Tools" and then click on "no tracks visible". Yeah, this is wrong, hidden and unintuitive. :D -> I'll change this to behave like the visible POI clearing (top level "clear visible" button).

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

Could someone please make a page with instructions for download of maps and then update the first post?
Or in the first post make a link to instructions if they are hidden somewhere in the thread?

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

Yes, that would be cool (and something I can do), I'll start on it when I have some free time.
(I will also include CloudGPS which is basically just a map viewer with online search for now but has awesome map rendering)
A list of features and screenshots side by side I think
(I've used a Nokia N73 with GarminXT before but unfortunately lost it, would have been nice to compare it to that as well)

I initially thought this was for the destination point only. As it happened only once I have set it to 60 now. Traveling at 120 km/h is about 33 m/s. so I think it is more likely to happen at highway speeds as well.


True. and those are hard to hit while traveling with gloves on on the motorbike :p.
However the notification seems to stay on as well when you go online after it has appeared (I am not 100 % sure of that).

Didn't know that, thanks. I will probably just change it in the theme.conf
( I do have an idea of creating a steampunk theme for the n900 and maybe apps but currently just don't have the time for it. something like a brass/copper button background with the image kind of etched in.)

Aha, just looked at it, found out it can already display speed and time to destination as well. and I hadn't even tried the other modes yet. .conf files are not a problem for me ( I am using linux as my home system) but GUI configuration would make it much easier.
Is it possible to create a motorcycle mode (or own custom modes)?

Nice :)

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

is it possible to put an option to put an straight line of current location to poi? for offline purpose.

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

great idea :)

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

Sorry if this has been asked before but I could not find the answer - does the app support network positioning?

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

Do you mean A-GPS? Yes.
You can disable the GPS, I assume it then only uses network positioning, not sure though.

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

I can tell you from experience it does. I can also tell you from experience that A-GPS really sucks when it comes to figuring out where you are unless you're in a densely towered area (like a city). Also, the Nokia bits that update the location only do so when you change towers, so you'll go several minutes often between point updates in city areas, and 10s of minutes in rural areas, even going over 60mph (100kph).

If you're using it for a VERY long trip that you already know, and are just using it to help track about where you are, it's ok. But if you want turn-by-turn, A-GPS is not what you want.

Martin: Is there anything in the API that tells you the source of the GPS info you're getting? (A-GPS vs GPS vs wifi...) If so, is there a way to flush and re-request specifically when using A-GPS vs waiting for the tower change to trigger it in the Nokia lib? If so, adding that so it periodically updates if using A-GPS may be nice. :)

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

woody14619, you might want to read up on A-GPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-GPS)

What you are talking about is just celltower location based navigation, and while this info is used in A-GPS, it is not the same

(sorry for the nitpicking)

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

Sorry to break this to you, but when Nokia says A-GPS in their menus, they're really talking about cell tower location triangulation. If you look at the settings menu, Nokia allows you to turn off GPS and leave "A-GPS" enabled in the settings. Given the technical definition you linked to, that's a nonsensical setting, since you can't have A-GPS without GPS by that definition. What you're actually getting in that mode (which is what we're talking about here) IS in fact cell tower location, since it's not turning on the GPS hardware.

Nokia had the option in PR1.0 to use "A-GPS", but it didn't actually seed the GPS chipset with the start location, so accurate GPS locks still took upwards of 20 seconds for most people. As of PR1.1 (or 1.1.1) they started seeding the GPS location if this setting was on. To this day they still send the raw A-GPS hit as an authoritative location (with a huge error margin) based on tower location until the GPS actually gives back it's first "valid" location.

So while technically it may not be correct to call that "A-GPS", I'm using the term because that's how Nokia has labeled cell tower triangulation in the settings menu. To be fair, Apple and a couple other vendors also use the term A-GPS (albeit incorrectly) to mean cell tower location that may or may not be feed to an actual GPS system as a seed for it's starting location.

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

OK, you stick with the Nokia definition, I'll stick with the technically correct one ;)

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

As Mr. Webster will happily point out, the one that gains common usage often becomes the real definition over time, even if it's technically incorrect. That's why we park in our driveways and drive on our parkways, for example. :confused:

Even in the wikipedia article there's a note that the term "aGPS" is often used for cell tower triangulation, which unfortunately is very close to (and easily confused with) A-GPS. In fact, I would be quite surprised if Nokia is actually doing A-GPS (downloading the almanac and such), vs just aGPS and using that as a rough start point for the GPS.

I just wish it wouldn't give an "authoritative" location based on a bad-data triangulation return from A-GPS (or aGPS) being on. I have multiple levels of cached blue water tiles just off the coast of Africa thanks to that. :p

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

i'm new to this apps. just installed it today and i think i like it. however there are several things i might need to point out
i've found similar posts asking the same questions on earlier pages, however i still haven't found the expected answers yet (honestly i didn't read every single post in this thread. it's 70+ pages, so i'd missed some :p)

overall i like this apps. it's just the gui, i don't quite comfortable using it (big buttons, non-hildonized menu ie. you have to tap the big yellow button to back to prev page or instead of combo box, you have to tap a button until it choose the desired option)
i know you did this for "big finger friendly" feature, but it would be great if you could provide a theme that more n900-like

i found a 3rd party theme called modrana-theme-ios. though i've never get any screenshot of this, i tried to install it but seems it's not working for the latest version of modrana
there are only 2 themes available (default and night) and theme-ios is installed at /opt/modrana/icons/bitmap instead of /opt/modrana/themes
could be it's built for earlier version of modrana and no longer compatible with the new one. but can anybody tell me how to use it for this new version of modrana?

and for offline map download using gmapcatcher as told at some posts at earlier pages, how do i export it to modrana since it seems that they both using different file structure?

thanks

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

Hi Martin,
Did you get chance to look at this issue at all; I'm eagerly awaiting to start on an alternative TTS routing plugin.
Thanks!



Have a look at AGTL (in the repos); it can download maps and works well with modRana.

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

thanks but doesn't it mean i still have to download the map from the phone?
i wish there's a way to download it using pc and export it to the phone
thanks anw

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

On your PC you can use Mobile Atlas Creator. Set atlas format to "OSMTracker tile storage". There is plenty of information on how to use this tool including video tutorials. Just google it.

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

Good point - the idea that you might miss the point by actually going through its circle between position updates didn't appear to me before. :) Automatic enlarging of the circle size when current speed in m/s is greater than its diameter might be in order.

Sounds interesting. :)

Currently not, but I'd add it to the heap. :) Custom modes might be quite useful IMO - Geocaching mode, boat mode, etc.

Should be quite easy to implement, I'll look into it.

@A/GPS
According to the liblocation documentation I can try to force a specific location mode (best/cell/GPS/augmented GPS).
There indeed seems to be a cell-tower info cache but I don't see any API for flushing it. Also If I understand the API correctly, you can only set a preferred method but you can't find which method is currently used.

Yeah, i know this too. :D Basically every time I start modRana it jump somewhere for a moment and then in a few moment to the correct location. So what to do about it ?

• the location API seems to supply accuracy info - if the initial fix signals bad accuracy, modRana might just skip it and wait for a more accurate one
• or, worst case - just remember the "bad" coordinates (they are per country fixed IMHO) and skip all initial fixes with them

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

both sound ok, nr 2 would be more work I guess (to keep this list)

Have a look at what ZapLoc uses, it reports the positioning mode (cell/gps/...) in verbose mode, maybe it uses another lib to get the position info?

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

The problem with hildon is it availability - it works basically just on Maemo and nowhere else. I wan't modRana to be as multi-platform as possible so the main menu can't depend on it. Still, modRana already ususes the hildon app-menu for the most often used options and more will be added in the future (map layer selection having the highest priority).
I'm also not singling out the possibility of using hildon widgets instead of the default ones on Maemo, if I find a way how to integrate them seamlessly (touch selectors would be particularly nice IMO).
@tap-toggle buttons:
I agree, they are not particularly ideal if there are too many options - using it for selection is wrong and will be replaced by something more usable. :)

IMHO it was created before the current theme system was added. Maybe you can PM Skylooker and ask him if he wants to update it to support the new theming system ?
Also as a workaround you can create a new folder in /opt/modrana/themes and place all the IOS icons in it - a new theme entry should show up, named after the folder.

It should create a file structure like this:
/main_folder/number/number/number.png
Just take all the numbered folders in the main folder
and copy them to: /home/suer/MyDocs/.maps/OpenStreetMap I

Also check in options->Map->Tiles storage if you are using files. Sqlite is much more space-efficient for storing tiles but I don't know about any other program that can currently batch download into it.

BTW, modRana also works on normal Linux PCs. :)

Oh, looks like I forgot about this. I'll be right on it. :D

Status update
Now that Mieru is finally out of the door, modRana development should speed up yet again. :)
Main features planned for the near term:

• offline routing using Monav - it should have Python bindings in the near feature
• animated GUI using Clutter - I have already used it in Mieru
• drawing on the map - for trip planing, two-pass OSM editing or just doodling
• other features from the heap in no particular order :)

Also, modRana has been ported to the Open Pandora gaming handheld. The developer also mentioned currently working on a modRana theme. :)

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

great. so that means i can just run it on my ubuntu, download the map there and copy downloaded tiles to my n900 afterwards. nice...
thanks for your answer, and will look forward with the button tapping updates

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

OK, I'll check it out. :)

@voice string
I got it to work with this script, called out_test.sh:
placed in /opt/modrana
and voice string like this:
A new file out_test.txt should contain the last routing message.

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

Community survey :D
I'll by speaking about navigation on mobile Linux devices this weekend on Openmobillity 2011 (it is a local czech-language conference about open mobile technologies).

Since it is now about a year already since modRana was first released, I think it would be nice to also talk about how people use modRana in real life. I know from this thread, that people use modRana for long distance (1000 km+) car travel, while walking, biking, looking for pizza in Australia, navigating through Taipei and riding boats near New Zealand. But most if this information comes from fragments scattered in many comments and more feedback would be really helpful - for my coming talk & for modRana development overall! :)

So, tell me, how do you use modRana ?
What activity do you use it for ? How long are you using it already, how often? With which modes of travel (anyone used modRana on a plane yet ? :) )? On what continent/s ? Any funny stories concerning modRana ? Any interesting photos of modRana "in action" ? What feature you like/hate the most ? What features are you missing ? Anything you think might be relevant!

Where to submit ?
Just post post to this thread or use the modRana project e-mail address:
modrana at gmail dot com

Thanks in advance ! :)

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

I use modRana as navigation for car travel, long and short distance. In the beginning while it still had a few serious glitches I hesitated replacing commercial non-free (as in speech, not beer) software, but have long since deleted all non-free routing apps and use solely modRana.

Generally, I use it in the cities, with a go-to address, to navigate from here to the address. When sometimes the address wouldn't be picked up, I'd look the address up in an online map, then zoom to the address in modRana and route from here to point on the map.

Also, I use to look for alternate routes in places I know how to drive through, but when getting stuck due to traffic etc. especially in a lot-of one-way street areas - Moscow...

Recently, I've gotten accustomed to using modRana to just look around, i.e. I fly often, then when landing in a new city, I zoom in and out of the location, looking for interesting stuff, where I am, where I could go, beats any online map...

I've used it on hikes in Hawaii a lot, and in Czech Republic, when walking for many km, to see how far I've gotten and what's just around the corner, great for that as well...

In day to day, generally for driving and hiking...

Oh yeah, and also for considering distances, like I'm in a city, have to go somewhere that I know is five intersections away, look at modRana to get a feel for how far I'd really have to walk, and if it'd be worth to take the car or not...

For this I have a missing feature request that I've had lately, a visible km scale, so that you could judge exactly how far the point on the map is...

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

Hi MartinK

I was put off by modrana not being vector-based originally (and was trying to use Navit at the time because it IS). I don't have a data plan, so the ability to have everything stored locally is vital to me. This last year, my main use for maps on my N900 has been during bike tours. I generally plan the route in advance in google earth or some of the bike-centric map sites, and then download the track. Because the route is well-defined and pre-planned, i can download the tiles in advance, and the lack of routing hasn't been a major issue: modrana has served me well this last year. It's (subjectively, anyway) less CPU intensive than Navit and a bit smoother (being tile-based). The ability to switch between map sources has been useful on occasion, too. And now i'm forgetting which app had which features, but i seem to recall that modrana will show elevation profiles for tracks, which is very useful as a cyclist. There's very little attention given to grades in most GPS devices and routing services, which can be a literal pain in the butt when schlepping 14 kg gear and 10 kg of bike around.

So Modrana has been very useful to me. On the other hand, if on-device routing and driving use were important to me, modrana wouldn't have cut it.

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

Personally, I use it mainly for driving and on occasion for walking. I've used it once or twice to find local venues, though I've typically used my FourSquare client more for that.

The key things I use it for is getting from once place to another while driving. Often I use it for night driving, even when I know the route, since I tend to drive/navigate by landmark. Night driving is difficult for me, since I tend to miss turns when I can't see my cue, especially in rural areas. Nothing alerts you to having missed a turn better than "Robo" shouting "Turn left onto the street you just passed!" :D

I also have used ModRana for tracking where I've gone via the track logs. It's handy at times to know about what time I was at point X while driving to my destination. That's useful the next time I pass that point, since I can know roughly how far along I am. Often I can look back on track logs to help me figure out if a different route I took was actually slower or faster, or if it just felt like it was. An odometer can tell you how long a path is, but not how fast you traveled along it.

Probably the most "epic" trip I took with it was about 400 miles. It almost made it back in one go, but back then we were still having the redraw induced sgx bug, so it wound up locking up about 20 miles from home. :p

On thing I do miss right now is the ability to do off-line routing. I know, that's a big thing to do, but it's really the only feature I've missed on those rare occasions when cell service is not available. I'm sure there are plenty I'd love to have that I don't even know about! But then that's harder to miss before you have it. ;)

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

I use modRana for all my navigation needs: walking, biking and now also in the car (which has a dedicated tomtom installed).

The only time I get out the tomtom, is when driving further away from home, since the tomtom has all the maps (outside the country roaming is expensive and I just can't preload all those tiles), and tomtom has an up-to-date radar trap list (maybe a feature request for modRana :) )

Using the maps of ovi maps or navit would be a great future enhancement as pre-loading those tiles is cumbersome...