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

does modrana download maps automatically, where can i find the database of maps for this app?

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

yes, it can download maps on-the-fly. It can get them from multiple sources (openstreetmap, google, ...)

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

If you go to Settings > Map or Map overlay (which uses two map sources to mix them together) you can see which maps modRana can access online and download.

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

Thanks ! :)

I actually already played with the Monav Python bindings a bit, but just got a bunch of errors. :) I'll try to compile a more recent version if it is still broken fill a bug. Also, any help with figuring how to get this working (eq. to a state I pass it 2 coordinates + path to the routing data and it returns a route description) is much appreciated! :)

I have absolutely no idea. :D I'd say that due to its name it might be related to the recent rewrite of modRana code to properly use os.path.join in place of simple string concatenations, but how imagemagick got involved... Maybe some transient path screwup during the rewrite caused it to be copied from some other directory ?

Looks like there no (official) Python 2.5 anymore Ubuntu Natty which I use for development. I'm aware of the differences (no built in ordered dict, where needs to be imported from __future__, less collections, more flacky sqlite without extension support, etc.) and I also test on my N900 a lot, using a simple rsync + run script. :)

The rounded icon backgrounds are generated at runtime, cached and drawn from cache.
Module that handles this is called mod_icons.py
excertp from documentation for the getCustomIconMethod:
The positional parameters create a unique hash that is used as a key in the icon cache.

ModRana also supports creating icons from multiple layers (both parametric and image based), using the > operator:
For examples how this is used "in action" look in mod_turnByTurn.py into the drawScreenOverlay method. :)

BTW, it might be good to make also the default icon shape themable.

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

hey guys i'm having some problems viewing the map, in fact, all i see is a blank screen.
i start the program up and it shows several tiles marked loading and the gps icon flashing, and it stays this way for quite some time, however when i check Mydocs/.maps i can see some maps of my country there.
what am i missing??

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

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

Is this app downloading maps, or I need to manually put them in .maps folder? Is there any way to forbid downloading maps (cuz 3G is expensive in my country) and to manually add maps?

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

It works for me :)

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

You can do either/both. There are settings for it. I only have 2.5G here, IF I'm in a signal area. I usually download tiles via wifi for area's I'm normally at, and then just use the cached tiles when out on the road.

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

Hmm, is there some dependency on fonts or something, i.e. that I don't have some system font installed which modRana uses to display CJK?

I still have the old behavior, i.e. see the Kanji when selecting the POI, but then when it's displayed on the map, the POI name is just boxes...:(

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

Wow... I have mine forced to 2.5G unless I really need faster, 3G and WiFi eat too much battery. And for me 2.5G is perfectly capable in downloading tiles as I drive. This may explain my suggestion to start downloading tiles a bit earlier (zone right outside the display) as there is a short moment where a bit of blue/green tile shows up.

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

Here is a quick grep of dpkg -l for "font" and "ttf"

Are you sure you have the latest version ;) (mine reports v0.28-2)

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

What do you mean by "some maps of my country"? Currently i have those directories:
GoogleVector
OpenStreetMap I

Directory used depends on the renderer used.

Are there subdirectories containing .png tiles or something else? For example, OSM (Open Streetmaps) use one directory for each layer (0-18), and then further subdirectories for tile IDs.

GPS fix takes often a long time, if you do not use network assisted position and/or moved some distance since the last position updated.

If the receiver did not have a fix by now, you won't have the position to load the tiles for, neither from network (on demand) nor from disk cache, regardless if there's anything on disk already.

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

Thought it might be the chinese-font, as I had uninstalled it. Installed it again, but no change.

In the POI list, I see the proper kanji, in the POI info see the large POI name in kanji, on the map - just squares.

Even created a test POI, just to see there were no issues with the last one saved, but no, still the same behavior.
I'm pretty sure, I upgrade all the time, and apt-cache show modrana gives me 0.28-2, so should be the same as yours...

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

I have a feature request for modRana:

- allow to search for destination/display it on the map, by entering the latitude and longitude;
- display the lat/long for a point clicked on the map, so I can use it for other purposes, i.e. sending a lat/long reference etc.

Should be doable easily...

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

Well, modRana is written in Python so no recompilation is needed, I have myself modified the modRana source "in the filed" many times. :)
You can just edit the source, implement your improvements and then send me the diff vs the original source and I'll merge it to the "main" version if it looks OK. :)

Try different may layers and check your Internet connection. :)

I'm glade you like it ! :D I have actually sent about five postcards already on the addresses shown in Paypal but your reaction is the first I got so far. :) Maybe the addresses were incorrect and/or the postcards got lost somewhere.

Yep: options->Network->Network usage and switch Unlimited network usage to Only for important data.
With this setting modRana will not download tiles automatically but online POI search and routing will still be possible.

You can switch between additional layers in options->Map->Map layers. :)

If the GPS is OFF, modRana should resume on the last available position fix. It is also possible to set the current position on the coordinates of a saved POI.

I have just tested this by serching for restaurants in the Tokyo metropolitan are and it seems to work, no boxes anywhere and all kanji/katakana/hiragana literals seem OK.

OK, should be easy to add. :)

Also, I'll be on a vacation & offline for the weekend, returning monday. :)

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

Uhm.. :rolleyes: I got mine and though it was cool, but it was literally the day before I was off for vacation for 2 weeks, so I forgot to reply about it when I got back. So at least 2 of 5 made it! :D

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

I'm having problems with self created POIs.

If I use all Chinese characters for the POI name and description then after selecting which category to place the POI, the name and description are both shown as "None".

If I use ascii characters for the beginning of the POI name (and description) followed by Chinese characters then POI is entered and listed correctly. However if I choose "show on map" then it only shows ascii characters with rectangular outlines instead Chinese characters. In other words the behaviour is similar to that described in my earlier post

On a different matter, I have problems batch downloading tiles when using Google map/satellite/overlay. All the tiles fail to download. They get downloaded properly when scrolling around the map so had I just spent a couple of happy (:mad:) hours scrolling around the place where I'll be visiting tomorrow to cache the tiles.

Batch downloading Virtual earth satellite hybrid and OSM tiles work fine.

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

Thanks to kureyon's post above, I checked also:

In fact searching for online POI in Japan, they indeed display fine, i.e. no boxes.

However, displaying my created POI's, the problem persists, i.e. kanji shows fine in POI information dialog and POI screen, on the map, just boxes.

If I enter, as kureyon hinted part name in kanji and part in ascii, the ascii part displays fine, kanji just boxes.

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

Google monitors I guess how fast subsequent requests for tiles come in and if it deems they're machine generated, then fails to serve the tiles.

What might help, if you REALLY want to download google stuff, instead of just boycotting it, would be to set the download threads to max out at 1 if possible (or is the lowest number 5?, don't remember), that might help it...

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

I suspect they use some sophisticated heuristics to detect batch downloads. If it were simply based on speed of requests then I would expect at least the first few tiles to download correctly before the "speed limit" kicks in. All my attempts to batch download google tiles have failed (not 1 single tile downloaded). I zoomed out quite a bit then did a download 1km around view with zero levels up/down. This results in only 9 tiles to be downloaded, but all failed.

I've no intention of boycotting them since google's map source (Mapabc) for China is by far the best of those available in modRana. In fact the other "commercial" providers Virtual Earth Map and Yahoo Map provide practically no coverage for China and OSM although a lot better than those two is still far from "complete".

The lowest setting is 5 and still total failure :)

I'm wondering whether there are any differences in the modRana code to download tiles when scrolling around map and when doing the batch download.

Google Map Saver (GMS) seems to have a workaround for downloading a bunch of tiles at once:

But that workaround involves the opening of a browser window and most likely uses google's javascript thingies to do the heavy lifting then GMS probably trawls through the browser cache to stitch together the tiles.

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

I didn't look, but then there probably is a difference, as download threads also affect the downloads when just flipping through the map, so if you can flip through google's maps at will and it will download hundreds of tiles, there is probably something different, like an ID string that gets sent or what have you...

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

I never got a postcard, though my donation was a long time back, so perhaps before Martin started sending them out? Anyway, what a nice idea from an all round good guy!!

Regardless of postcard envy:rolleyes:, the ongoing support & development of modrana is all the thanks I need for my donation :-) I used modrana for the first time in ages last weekend and it performed perfectly. Really hope you've had more than just 5 donations for all your hard work, Martin.

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

Amen to that, don't need the postcard, my money was well spent :)

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

Is there already another way to load GPX-files to Modrana than saving those to /opt/modrana/tracklogs?

Big thanks for this great app.

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

OK, I'll fix the custom POI in the same way the online ones were fixed.

The current modRana version no longer uses /opt/modrana/tracklogs but /home/user/MyDocs/tracklogs, which should be user writable & accessible through USB mass-storage. :)

Progress update
ModRana is taking part in the MeeGo coding competition and I'm using the current release-freeze to implement some more invasive features and also for a general code cleanup and streamlining.

You can expect a new release once the competition vote - which should start any day now - finishes. :)

Things I'm working on:

• more efficient menu drawing (done)
• Wikipedia search (done)
• a module for handling map markers (working)
• handling multiple results from address and Wikipedia searches(done)
• show labels and detailed menus for the results(done)
• improved listable menus

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

*drool* :D

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

There's a minor problem with modrana.py. The first 2 lines are:

The line with the shebang (ie 2nd line) should always come first. The problem is masked when running on the N900 because it is started with a shell script which explicitly starts python. If you run it directly ie:
it dies with the following errors:

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

I'm having difficulties to route tracks in Israel. The places and roads are shown correctly but when attempting a point to destination route, it completely ignores my request. Any idea?

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

MartinK, this is a feature request:
Can u please add a location based alarm? ie, if we mark a point, when our position comes within, say 100m of that point, the alarm goes off.
This will be useful for people in trains or other public transport, where one may doze off and miss their destination. In this mode, the gps need to be polled only every minute or so.

What do you think? Is it possible?

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

I was going to ask this same feature last summer when I was using public transportation a lot and had to transfer between different buses on previous unknown (to me) locations. One should be able to set several POIs with alarm in advance. So prolly the most logical place to have it would be with POIs where one could select if the POI is an alarming type or not.

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

As the competition vote seems to be still blocked by technical difficulties, I'm reading for a new modRana update.

What will be in the new update ?

• faster (2 click) map layer switching - done
• online address and Wikipedia search + routing to the results - 90% done
• options now can respect current mode - 75% done
  With this an option can have different values, depending on the current mode. So for example modRana can remember that in the "bike" mode, centering should be ON and OpenCycleMap should be used and in the "foot" mode centering should be OFF and OSM Mapnik used as the main map layer.
• the height profile now properly uses imperial units on its Y-axis when in imperial units mode
• GPSD support fixes (not really relevant for Maemo :) )
• other improvement "under the hood" that are not that visible from the outside, but make modRana faster and make future development faster :)

NOTE: When the competition voting starts, please vote for the version that was entered to the competition (V0.28). :)

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

I think having a quick way to change between modes would be nice too. I now find myself switching between car and walk mode a lot (like everytime I start modRana, it is in the wrong mode :) )

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

Thanks as usual MartinK. just wanted to say that I've used Modran a lot over the summer, for the first time actually relying fully on it (i.e. without a backupfolding map) to take me to a variety of rural/urban places by car & on foot while abroad.

With pre-download of the tiles around my routes (and with 25MB/day of mobile roaming data available to help when required), I have to say it performed impeccably and I found it incredibly useful. Even the wife (not known for her love of phone-based GPS's in general, or n900 geekery in particular!!) who was driving while I navigated, gave it a ringing endorsement.

It's nice to see a quality project develop over a couple of years from a promising start right through to an mature, reliable everyday tool - and one that is still being enhanced :-)) Keep up the good work.

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

Thanks for the update MartinK. I just fervently hope that the location-based alarming feature is in your to-do list.

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

What about a long press of the menu icon triggering the mode change menu ?

Update: done :)

I'll look at it once the current update is out of the door. :)

BTW, progress update: :)

• faster (2 click) map layer switching - done
• online address and Wikipedia search + routing to the results + storing the results in the POI database - done
• options now can respect current mode - 75% done
• GPSD support fixes (not really relevant for Maemo :) ) - done

The update will be released once that options stuff is done. :)

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

@martink: for your info regarding GTFS, tho you may well have read this independently...
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1109724

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

Hi MartinK,

Just installed modRana for the first time: looks nice! Thanks.

When I dragging the maps around, they tiles load fine. When I try to batch download using the "download" option, they always fail.

Looking at the tcpdump, the successful http requests look like:

where the unsuccessful ones look like:

I don't know why you'd include the full protocol and host name in the GET request and it looks like the web server is unhappy about it.

I'm not too hot with python but it looks like you're doing your own http requests - is this an easy fix?

Thanks again!

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

Apologies, it looks like the crucial difference was not with the GET URL, but the fact that the "on-demand" tile downloads were single requests per connection (using "Connection: close" header) and the batch downloads used persistent connections.

The "andy.sandbox.cloudmade.com" server appears to barf on persistent connections.

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

Hi MartinK,

I use ModRana quite a lot and I would like to check if you are planning any ability for ModRana to import a .kml file that can be downloaded from Google Maps as input for a set of POIs?