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Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mentalist Traceur (Post 917048)

Okay, just had two crashes in quick succession. It SEEMS to be some mix of actively having a GPS lock, and rapidly being made to change orientation between portrait and landscape.

Not sure. I was going back to dorm from the aforementioned second class, shut everything down except for Columbus and two X-Term windows, went into a Starbucks. I had locked the screen earlier with Columbus in portrait mode (status bar showing). I decided to check on it again. Lifted phone out in landscape mode, pushed the lock switch thingy - nothing happened, not too unusual, I'm never sure if it's software lag or a hardware glitch or me not pushing it all the way in - so I slid open the keyboard. Screen came on as normal, showing Columbus in portrait mode, and then Columbus closed/exited. I relaunched it, it got the lock back almost immediately. So I kept it open, status bar out (I think). For a while in line I kept rotating in one spot while slightly moving my hand around to see how accurately I could get the compass to report direction. Because I wasn't moving more than a foot in any direction, not very, but that's to be expected.

I grabbed a sandwich, ordered my drink, payed, moved into the waiting area. Some of these were done with the same hand that my N900 was in. I basically had it in my hand the entire time, so it got more random movements than normal.

As I set my stuff down and went to put my card and receipt away, I glanced at my screen and saw Columbus had exited again. My memory is not precise enough to be 100% certain if I actually SAW it close, or if it had closed since I last looked (which would've been within a minute at the most), and I don't like falling victim to all those little faulty quirks of human memory (in this case, being certain you remember something based on what you logically know about the situation, when you really don't necessarily remember it if you really pay attention).

So yeah. I tried replicating it when I got home, no success, but I'll admit, I didn't try too hard to walk around flailing my arm or anything like that.

In the four hours I've had columbus and other stuff running, battery got drained. I am pretty sure most of that was the browsing and wifi connectivity, but Columbus did noticeably contribute over time. (But not more than I would expect from something running the GPS system non-stop.)

(Edit - for the part where I did wifi browsing/VNCing, I had lxp's injection capable driver running, not the normal wifi driver. So there's a change that had to do with it. Doubt it, but it's possible.)

Thank you again for your time in testing, I'll look into the crashing issue, it may be completely unrelated to portrait/landscape but I'll see what I can do. If I can replicate it then I can fix it ;)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by slender (Post 917065)

If battery is depleted, programs crashes or phone is switched off by accident then is the log file lost?

No, the log file should be up to date until the crash occurs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by slender (Post 917065)

- All graphs have scale lines but what those lines exactly represent? What is on y-axis and what is scale? They look nice but to me they do not exactly tell too much.

You can ascertain the statistic graph scaling by looking at the min/max altitude values to the left and speed should be scaled similarly, I know they're not that accurate as measurement views which is something I'm thinking about currently. Those graphs aren't finished, there are a few bugs but I'll work through them :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by slender (Post 917065)

- Would it be possible to loop around screen indefinitely?

It would be possible, though I'm not that inclined to do so :P

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mentalist Traceur (Post 917076)

Actually, it would be great if a future version allowed you to see all of the first screen in portrait mode. (Current version hides two two rather informative graphs - I personally really like the graph that tells you how much signal you have from each satellite. It'd be nice if I could scroll down to see it in portrait mode on that page/window/tab/screen/whatever, since right now it only shows when you're on that screen in landscape.

I've been thinking about, though not got around to, making it so when you click on the lower area in portrait mode "lat/lon/alt/etc" values, it cycles through the graphs then back to those values.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by fms (Post 917138)

Latest version crashes after 3-5 minutes of operation with location displayed. Seems to be ok until it finds the location.

This is not an issue with gaining a location lock, as no one else seems to be suffering like that. Can you uninstall, then reinstall. Also, seeing as you're saying it crashes after 3-5 minutes that makes me think you've already had a lock for at least 2.5-4.5 minutes as I usually get a lock in under 30 seconds.

If this issue continues, let me know and then we can try and debug it properly (as long as it seems to happen 100% of the time)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by scavenger (Post 917103)

Hi there,
Managed to get around 1.5-2 hrs of usage before total battery depletion. Did some web surfing using wifi & music/video listering simultaneously while running Columbus via bluetooth. So far no problems arose during the abovementioned test run. No disconnection or lag etc... Upon finishing recharging back the batt, restart back Columbus to see if any problem arose because of improper shutdown. All I can say is that Columbus seems to be running ok.
I did notice 1 thing though, my N900 did became a bit hot. If i scale 1 to 10, it would be around 7-8. That hot. While testing, i did OC to 950Mhz with active animated livewallpaper. Wonder it's because of my OC'ing?
Anyway, my report is that Columbus seems to be running rather well on my end. I'll post here for any updates/faults/hanging etc,.

Sincerely,
-Scav-

If you're actually viewing the UI, then it will hammer the CPU (and battery) quite intensely due to the animations, which may cause the device to warm up a bit.

Streaming over bluetooth will probably effect your battery life quite substantially, though I've not done any serious power tests yet.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by tswindell (Post 917178)

If this issue continues, let me know and then we can try and debug it properly (as long as it seems to happen 100% of the time)

It *is* happening 100% of the time to me. Also, it is true that it got the lock almost immediately after I started it. It then crashed in about 3-5 minutes. And has done so every single time.

Now, the initial time a ran it, it spent spent several minutes getting the lock, the a few minutes showing the location, then it crashed.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by fms (Post 917216)

Okay, and you've tried reinstalling it?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by tswindell (Post 917160)

Hell, even I can't replicate it currently. Latest round of tests - another class, then went to post office to drop off/pick up mail, and got some snacks - hasn't had any problems. No Columbus randomly exiting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tswindell

It would be possible, though I'm not that inclined to do so :P

I recommend making it a settings choice in Options then, if it's not too much of a PITA to code. Gives it to the people who want it, lets you keep it off by default for yourself and everyone else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tswindell

I've been thinking about, though not got around to, making it so when you click on the lower area in portrait mode "lat/lon/alt/etc" values, it cycles through the graphs then back to those values.

Didn't an earlier version have everything get resized slightly differently on that screen, so that the graphs all fit? (Your click on it to cycle idea works just fine too, though.)

@scavenger's results: If you're both overclocking and using bluetooth, that kinda makes sense. I'm not sure, how much the CPU is able to stay sleeping, and at what minimum frequency you put it - so I don't know how much overclocking WITH Columbus running is more or less battery conserving. Columbus runs fine for me without the overclock, so I say don't do it unless you see it fetches you better results battery-wise. Overclocking is only battery efficient when the N900 is able to get it's processor awake time reduced enough to outweigh the extra power draw spent on higher clock speeds. If the task keeps the processor awake non-stop, and doesn't let it drop down to a lower frequency... *Shrug*

Bluetooth radio being on on the otherhand, and actively streaming all that data from/to whatever it's streaming it to/from would make sense on the two-hour battery run-out.

I mean, with mine running using the internal GPS, I lasted over 4 hours, even with one of them spent actively being on the wifi.

Heat-wise, I THINK it's also mainly the bluetooth and the overclocking. Depending on voltage, especially the overclocking. I HAVE occasionally gotten heat from the GPS chip (or what I THINK is the GPS chip), but I normally only get it from battery, or heavy wifi/processor usage.

Both battery depletion and heat makes sense in context... Not sure if there's any way Columbus could be optimized to reduce those things, but it definitely seems to be no less optimized that most programs in that regard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fms

Now, the initial time a ran it, it spent spent several minutes getting the lock, the a few minutes showing the location, then it crashed.

I think the GPS system does that normally - the first lock (one that's done for the first time recently in the area you're in now, or that's done in a different area than your last lock if your last lock is still cached somewhere), takes a while, because it uses some heuristics to shorten lock times based on the location of the previous lock. If the previous lock is in a totally remote area, or was too long ago to count, it can't use those heuristics.

So unless you moved a few hundred miles between the first lock and consequent quicker locks, that's standard behavior...

I don't know about the crashing though. Perhaps there's something to it though, and it may be correlated to my two-quick-succession crashes... What do you have installed that's likely to be running in the background while Columbus runs? I have the lxp injection-capable drivers loaded, X-Terminal windows open (I was browsing some directories, also editing the ~/.config/menu/submenus/ files that you can edit with ApMeFo to create folders in your menu structure... But with vi and X-Term instead of through ApMeFo because I'm a hardass like that.

I have a bunch of Python-based status menu applets running (Advance Interface Switcher, Advance Power, Advanced Clock Plugin) in the background, but updating and showing because I had status bar visible...

Ummm, I also have ShortcutD, I'm pretty sure I have SSH server up in the background, as well as a the regular slew of system daemons. The only thing out of norm is the power kernel's module that reports battery values, like temperature; I have that loaded at boot by default. But that wasn't being accessed to fetch any values at the time by anything that I can think of... I have the 'swappolube' mods, but I do it the old school way before swappolube - manually - and they're not standard swappolube values.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by tswindell (Post 917239)

Okay, and you've tried reinstalling it?

Yep. Same effect. I have XTerm, Conversations, and Phone running in background. Maybe it is running out of memory somehow? Are you by any chance making any dynamic memory allocations with malloc() or new while your program is running?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] Columbus Navigation Toolkit

Quote:

Originally Posted by fms (Post 917363)

It's quite hard to write a useful program that doesn't. But n that wont be the problem. I use it with much more than that, use top and you'll see how your N900 is resource wise.