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

Awesome. :)

I think the idea was more to make a "jump to zoomlevel" setting. I know often I want to zoom-out to see the full path (say level 9), and then zoom back to the level I use while moving (level 16). Right now, I need to hit +/- 7 times, and it tries to load those tiles as I'm zooming, which I won't ever want to see. And turning off auto-download isn't a good solution, since I want that on most times to update areas I haven't been through before.

Maybe a screen widget can do this? Can the widgets do things like "jump to zoom level 16"? If so, I could make one for 9, and one for 16, and just jump between them.

Another issue: The reason I need to zoom back is because there's no way I've found to jump to the destination on a route. When using address lookup, I like to verify that the target looks sane, since I've seen Google return bad results at times when it doesn't quite know where something is. (eg. Putting you in the middle of a town when it can't find a street.) Being able to jump to a turn or the destination would be a nice feature. :)

That would be great. :) Also, saving routes is currently broken. When you go to save, it says "loaded in XXms", but doesn't give you the option to give it a name, and thus save it as a route. It does auto-save it with a time-stamp name, but with no way to rename it, it's not so useful. :)


Mappero stops drawing when the screen is off (may be worth a look to see how they do it). He also has a bit of code to keep the display on if the device is in motion. Handy if you're doing a short trip and don't have the device plugged in to a charger.

Ah... right. Forgot that. :) Hopefully they'll be able to use the same backend. For now, I've found I've been using modRana much more than the others. But then I already have 2 copies of maps (1 for Nokia, 1 for the rest)... so really, whats 1 more? :)

Thanks again for this awesome app!

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

Thanks. It seems there's room for both, so that would be great.

Actually i was looking at the code on my flight home and it seems it uses powers of 2 to specify the range around the origin to download. Based on that it seems that only 2.5 km is available, but it's likely i missed something. Could you please explain what that power of 2 number is and how one could specify an arbitrary distance? It was trivial to add the button to request 2.5 km but i haven't had a chance to test if it actually works. It does make me wonder if the range is in km--it almost seems like it might be instead some multiple of the current map scaling. That would make my experience with downloading tiles make more sense.

Hmm that's not really what i meant but that is a good improvement.


woody's interpretation of what i was trying to say is right. The disabling of downloading works great, and i like having it. What i'm looking for is a way to disable certain levels of zoom that i don't use.

Sure, that would be great. If it's close enough to the track it would be better from a UI standpoint to skip the query.

Should be, but i can get the same results with MAME (others have verified that), so the watchdog isn't doing its job or something. There are two different problems--one is that the ui gets frozen in whatever state it is in. The other is that the device crashes and shuts down, so maybe the watchdog catches it sometimes.

Please. Also, if this fixes the lockup/crash problem it will be a bonus.

I don't use the "follow location" mode, so that's not important to me, but sounds like a good idea.

I really appreciate your responsiveness to issues and work to improve modRana.

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

Well, sorry in advance if I will now repeat myself or someone else here but just where is the "save position" option in this app?+?????
I mean: here I am, in the middle of totally unknown place, in a foreign country, some smiley driver has just brought me to some sort of a hotel. Ok. I'm still alive and that's definitely a good sign. I grab my N900 with ModRana in it, all nice and ready to go but....how the heck do I pinpoint my, what they call, hotel on the map in my device so I could at least hope to find my way back?
Come on, people, isn't it the BASIC service of all the GPS software in the whole jumping world??? Or have I not spent some 30 mins yesterday thumping my fingers out in search for that simple option and supposedly basic option in Modrana???? Name it whatever you want: "My POI", "Favorites" or "My stuff" but that's what you need to have in ANY GPS...or am I dreaming?
I mean....I've been receiving every now and then messages from this stack on improvements - this is just great! But how about improving it so it fits the end user BASIC needs?

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

@reeby - not an answer, but a workaround:
at your hotel, do menu-> search -> near position -> sleep -> hotel
this will (hopefully) show you the place you're at as the closest of the returned options. Select it, and then
tools -> add to POI will save it so that you can later refer to it (menu -> POI then Go to/Show map/Route to etc.)

It's still devel software, remember :-).

ps. I haven't used the track logging stuff in modrana, but I'd assume that if you log a track starting FROM your hotel, that would let you later view the track to help you plan a return?

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

Thanks, but it wouldn't be a nice option in the middle of Siberia.

Nice try. Thought about it. It it would probably be a turn-it-on-and-put-it-in-your-pocket solution if Nokia has turned on their brains (or whatever they have up there) when they were making a decision on equipping this monster with a 1200 battery.
No hard feelings but that's how all the great apps originated, didn't they? Devil, primers, betta or what else they called them those days. But that's the start. And on how attractive this start is, depends how successful the software will become. After all Microsoft has started in a stinky garage.

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

If you have been following this thread then you would know how responsive a developer MartinK is. Need a feature? Ask nicely and I'm sure he would consider it. In fact a huge amount of the changes/additions to the program since its initial release are as a result of users' suggestions.

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

Exactly my thought two months ago:D
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=118
I have all the respect in the world for this guy. And I'm sure like every talented person he could use some voice from the dumb user, devil's advocate opinion, fresh look.
What use for me all this "squilte" options if the app is missing the essentials?
I mean, yes, I could always go back to Mappero but...I do like the developer's drive and attitude and (believe it or not) still have all the trust in the app. That's why I'm sharing my concern here and now. Otherwise, I would've just pressed "uninstall" last night.

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

Just create a gps track for a few minutes. It will show you where you where (the hotel) and the impact on battery life is very small.

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

Fair enough, and I agree that the ability to add any random map location as a POI would be very useful (i'm sure MartinK will consider this when he sees your post, probably just an oversight that he missed your original request).

However, POI's or Street names will work as I described in 99% of cases, so I don't see it as a biggie to wait until the developer gets around to looking at it for you. The other stuff he's working on is important to optimise download sizes, and if you're ever caught in your siberian wastes then you'll be needing a large preloaded set of map data regardlss of POI's (as you'll have bugger all mobile coverage I reckon).:)

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

Updated and giving the sqlite a good work out. Some things i've noted so far:

1) On the initial switch it didn't import the tiles i already had into the DB. Not sure if this was just doing something wrong on my part or if that just how it is.

2) When downloading for a particular zoom level, it downloads according to the zoom level used in the map scaling preference. For instance, if i have it on x2 scaling and i tell it to download, it downloads the levels below, which it should but it's not clear if that is all it is getting or if it is also getting the actual zoom level you are on (assuming "0 down/up" as the batch download setting). Of course when i first fired it up i was forgetting i had the scaling on and so when it told me it needed 330,000 tiles i was a bit taken aback. 5KM around from my location at the zoom level i was "at", visually anyway, is only about 25 tiles when using the scaling. I figured out that it was downloading the actual zoom level and not the current displayed level of zoom.

3) When there are large numbers of tiles being downloaded, say over 400 (as i've done a couple different batch downloads), the count downloaded doesn't update until it is finished, so you have no real idea how much time might be left in the download.

4) When there are large numbers of tiles to download, and you "click to estimate size", it simply freezes the phone for about 30 minutes and then causes a hard reboot. Download sizes that have caused a reboot when estimateing, 48K, 98K, 330K, 498K tiles. I've since stopped asking for an estimate and have just gone ahead with downloads (though i jumped from 400 to 98K in my downloading. The data counter is spinning so i know it's working, but as mentioned in 3 the display in modRana isn't updating). Even with a small amount of tiles (400), the estimation took a long time to finish and hung the phone for a few minutes.

EDIT:

5) Large tile downloads take a lot longer to download than you would think. I get about 100KB/sec down here at work but the download (which is using almost 96-100% cpu) is only piddling along at about 12.4KB/sec. is there any way to get it to us more bandwith and finish sooner?