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

Love the new POI interface. Very nice, and makes it much easier to enter POIs. I've added several, and they all seem to work nicely. Well done! I also have been using modRana as my primary GPS for about 3 weeks, since my Magellan decided it wanted to pretend to be an N900 and spit out it's micro-USB connector (ripped right off the board... and it even had posts and everything....)

So, I have two old request, and three new requests to throw on the "to do" queue I hope? :)

Old:
1> Provide a user-editable replacement table/script for text->speech. (I'm still getting "park saint" and "lilly doctor" for park st and lilly dr. ;) )

2> Add a way to rename track logs (and/or route saves). It would make saving a track log that much easier. And yes, sometimes people save tracks and would like to use them as routes later. Having modRana "remind" me of a turn when driving in the dark can be quite helpful, even on a route I know well.

New:
1> Add a way to disable GPS while downloading maps. (Preferably a toggle button on the download page itself.) When I download maps, its usually for a large area overnight. No need to run the GPS while getting 500k tiles... You may also want to "nice" the process for grabbing tiles if you're getting a lot of them. (eg >20K)

2> A tool to create/look-at/modify the database for maps. (Remove/add map tiles at a set level, etc.) I'm sure I can load any SQLLite editor and use select commands to remove the entries by hand. But it would be easier to do this in a UI. (eg remove all tiles except those in levels 12 & 18.)

3> Repeat texts over voice a little more often for long spans. My old Magellan would tell me the instructions 3 times, with a 4th warning when the turn came. Once when I started on the path (after the previous turn), once at 5 miles out, and once at 2 miles out. Then it would "ding" or say "turn right/left" when I hit the fork. Seems right now I sometimes get a message mid-road, but not always. And the repeat before the turn is happening a hundred yards or so before the turn. Not helpful when going 60mph and it's telling you to exit at the exit you're passing. :)

This app has really come a long way in a little time. It's seriously at a level where it's better than the OVI maps already, which is saying something. Major thanks for all the work you've put into this. Is there a "donation" link somewhere I can hit? :)

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

Unfortunately, the first log ends with
"Clicked, sending set:Menu:None
Menu knows menu changed"
but phone rebooted itself with modrana running. :/

The second log ends with
"Sending message: notification:7 tracks loaded in 6570.00 ms#1"
after it rebooted itself the second time with modrana running. So, i can confirm 100% modrana is causing reboots, but unfortunately not offer any details on why.

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

There is text document somewhere in /opt/modrana...
named
directions_filter.csv
Yes, graphical user interface for it would be welcome.

There is a way to set name to the log _before_ you record it. Yes, an option to rename existing logs could be useful.

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

There actually a CSV file that does this since a few versions back:
/opt/modrana/data/directions_filter.csv
Its content is like this:
Basically just a target and substitute, separated by semicolon, one pair per line. You can just edit this file and add your own lines for now, but I guess that doing this from the GUI should be quite easy to add.
NOTE:
I don't really know how the package manager handles installed files, that were user modified, so I'll advice to backup your changes to this files in case it is overwritten by the next version.

Also, EVERYBODY:
Tell me which substitution pairs should I add to the default set !

OK, renaming should be quite easy to add. Storing driving directions for tracklogs should be also doable by basically storing the routing messages in GPX description tags :D

OK, I have added a ticket for this. A (by default disabled) sound notification of a finished batch download. Preferably a creepy "Sir, your tiles are ready." espeak message :D

Why not :) This might be quite complex to add, but fragments like showing how many tiles per layer are stored or visual map source management might show quite soon. Tile update could be also integrated into this (most map servers supply "last modified" in tile metadata, this might be used to update old tiles).

There should be two warnings per point, but it is possible that some warnings are just skipped. This is because Espeak can of course say only one message at a time, therefore messages that come while it is speaking are just skipped, as they would be obsolete by the time it finishes. This might happen when there are many turns in short succession.

Why are there just two messages ?
The first on triggers in predefined distance, supplied by Google together with the routing messages (make sure you are in the car mode when getting the route), the second once you enter the "capturing radius" of the turning point.

A quick way of adding more messages might be by just adding the more messages of the first sort with multiplies of the predefined triggering distance.

A more robust but more difficult is to use a custom current speed depended triggering distance estimation. Then it might be possible to even specify a rough time interval (say 120s,60s,20s before turn) for the warnings.

Thanks! :) I have added a donation button to the modRana project website. And there is a donation link on the bottom of the first post of this thread.

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

"set:Menu:None" means that you just went to the map view. BTW, does the freezes or reboots always occur while looking at/manipulating the map or also while in menu ? BTW, were you in fullscreen when the reboot happened ?

This message occurs after batch loading of tracklogs is completed. Batch loading is mostly used by the track drawing code, to quickly load all tracks that need to be drawn. Maybe you can try if modRana reboots when there are no tracks with enabled drawing ?

BTW, I find it still pretty weird that just a simple application can freeze, let alone reboot the whole device...

I have tried some little stress testing (PR1.3, vanilla):

• started a 1,7 K tile download
• did a "draw all on tracklogs", including one 2000 km long one
• let it sit a while

Nothing strange happened, the device only got slightly warm. I have also used it to play music the whole time, without a single hiccup (they really did a great job at this in PR1.3!).
I guess I'll have to do more testing then.

(This does not mean that I have never seen modRana freeze the device, but its quite a while since this happened to me last time. On the other hand, my N900 recently restarted while the Nokia pano ap was processing a new panorama.)

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

I've had panaroma lock my device in the same way. I think the defect is in the OS, but unfortunately manifests itself in unpredictable ways while using apps.

Both times the reboot happened while the screen was locked. It takes long enough to trigger that i've never had it happen while actively using modrana. I share the logs to show that nothing unexpected was happening. In the first case it showed the menu message because i closed out the menu after enabling the log. The second log reflects just the initial loading of the tracks i have, which it does every time.

I will try disabling the tracks and see if it helps. I first starting seeing the freezes/reboots when i started using the track feature, but that wasn't long after i started using modrana, so that may not mean anything.

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

How so? I looked for a way to do it, but didn't see a way to.

Awesome to know there's a file to change the filter. Btw: If user changes happen, the app manager will make a backup and then replace it with the package contents by default. apt-get will prompt and ask what to do. :)

Will do, once I play with it, make some changes and test. :)

Awesome. :) Was hoping both would be easy. I've been renaming them in xterms for now, but having it in-GUI would be nice. Also having it save routing messages in the GPX seems a sane thing to do, just in case it's used as a route again. Is there a way to load a GPX as a route? I see a way to load it as a track log, and to activate the track, but not a way to call it a route so that voice directions can be started?

This is good. I think part of the random reboots some of us are seeing are related to GPS usage. :( I've had 3 random reboots since the PR 1.3 update, once while using the camera (with geo tagging on), once in Modrana while getting lots of tiles, and once while running bariosquare, all use GPS. If we turn that off during a long download it would also save battery quite a bit. :)

That all sounds great. :) I'm just thinking it would be handy for cases where +/- gets bumped and it caches some tiles outside the range I normally use, etc. In the old method I could just nuke the offending folders. Not so easy with a database.

I've seen that behavior, but that's not what I mean. For example, theres a trip I take weekly that routes me onto a highway for about 20 miles, then another for 5. This past weekend I took it with ModRana on. On getting onto the highway there was no notice about how long I was going to be on (except for the very small text in the re-route box). At 1.6 miles before my exit, it told me the display text. And again as I was on the exit ramp minutes later it re-read the display text, then told me to exit, then read the new text for the upcoming turn. The next segment was 5 miles, and I got no further warning until I was in the turn that I should turn.

Optimally, I would have preferred a read of the text near the beginning of the highway entry, at about 2 miles before exit (did that part well once), and just before the exit. :)

I know it can be tough to guess at how far before an exit to announce. Generally I've found the value (750 * (mph/10)) yards works well. ;) But putting in an announce point about 2 miles before a turn on any segment over 2.5 miles would seem a pretty easy thing to do, which would help a lot for those of us using it for longer stretches.

Awesome! Ironically, this will be the third GPS app I've made a contribution to for the N900. When put together I probably could have purchased a cheep dedicated GPS online. :rolleyes: Ah well.

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

Yes, really looks like an OS issue, but I wonder if there are some possible workarounds.
I'll add more priority to finally implementing the "is the window visible" detection, which would enable stopping the drawing pipeline when the screen is locked or when modRana is running in the background and its window is not visible. Mappero reportedly works like this.
This might help, if the lockups/restarts are graphics or load dependent and should also save some power :)

There is a "enter name" button next to the "tools" button in the log menu for this.
It is currently only possible to name the log before hitting the start button, not after logging is running. This is quite impractical, so I guess I'll add rename-while-logging when I get to it :)
Good to know, thanks ! :)
BTW, what about the graphical front-ends ? I wonder whether they show the prompt too...
Normal GPX files normally don't have the needed routing info, so its not possible to use them for a meaningful turn-by-turn navigation.
For navigation you basically need:

• some points from the track designated as turns
• routing messages for turns - "turn left", etc. - this is what espeak reads
• optionally some additional info, like recommended trigger distances for the voice messages, estimated remaining time, etc

Provided I manage to cram all theses needed info together with the track when saving a route, the resulting GPS file should be usable for navigation in the same manner as the online routes.

I have summarized the possible improvements to a new ticket.
Basically:

• make the remaining distance text bigger and easier to read
• maybe also add a graphical indicator, to show howm much remains from the current segment
• add more routing mesages
  • a "next turn in N km" after entering a new segment (without turn description, as this might trigger right after the last routing message for the previous turn - it might be confusing to hear two different routing messages in such a short order)
  • hardcoded message triggers at 2 and 1 km from the next
• near term support for current-speed-aware trigger distances

Did I forget something ? :)

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

Just to chip in, I have not used modrana in a while (have not taken a long drive) but I too experienced multiple lock up have to remove the battery issues. I think if I recall it happened mostly when calculating a route.

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

Ah.. I was talking about renaming the saved gpx files made for when you get a route from online, not the logs you make yourself, though that is handy to know too. :)

I know HAM does not. I don't use FAM, so I don't know about that one. HAM makes a backup of the existing file (with a .dpkg-dist extension) and replaces it with the one contained in the package. (This is why the PR1.3 update reset lots of people's customizations for LED patterns and camera setting...)

Yeah.. I picked that up from last time... Though even if you saved it as a track log with just and indicator of turn points (even without text) it would be enough to "bing" or such when coming close to a turn. But finding a way to save the turn text and such would be nice as well.

What format does it come in from the route server as? Maybe you can just save it in that format (with it's own extension) for later loading. I wouldn't mind having a difference between routes and logs, especially if I can make a route (say on Goggle maps) and export it in some way that modRana would understand.

Looks nice, except for one tweak. I was thinking the alerts would be more like 10k and 2k out, vs 2k and 1k. When you're going 100kmhr, 2k isn't much warning, especially on a multi-lane highway. It can take 3 or 4K just to get over to the proper lane sometimes.

This is all "icing on the cake" as it were. I love where it's at right now (esp with the POI stuff working so well).

In the not too distant future (Thanksgiving-ish) I may have some time to work on porting a tile server to the N900. If so, it could act as a local server (backup) for non-networked usage. I've made some pretty extensive changes to an opensource tile server for a group I've been working with, and think it may be pretty doable to get it up and running on here. :)