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

Quick message...
First, if you open modrana-qml, and then lock screen and keys, it will regularly unlock-activate the screen - why?
Second, if you open modrana-qml, and switch to window-manager (where multiple windows are displayed), modrana-qml will close itself with Segmentation fault, quite quickly (well, no more than ten minutes).
Neither of these problems happens with modrana-gtk.
[Edit]You could also consider adding OpenSeaMap as one of layers.[/Edit]
Best wishes.
_________________
Per aspera ad astra...

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

Thanks a lot! I hope you'll be able to add it to GTK GUI too. First, it's still only one gui usable for real-life - second, GTK GUI have many fans (including me, I must say, that it like it more). There also more arguments against using QML - having GTK and QT bits loaded at the same time is memory hog, while we have GTK loaded anyway, due to Maemo. QT also fails at respecting hardware keyboard remap (3/4 special keys won't work), etc...

Not that I disregard work on QML GUI - it's just personal prefference to use GTK (reinforced by hard technical facts).

/Estel

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

Yesterday I turned on tracking on modRana and tried to listen to Someplayer at the same time. The problem was that the music playback was very broken up and unlistenable.

I tried cutting the logging to every 5s and saving every 15s but it made no difference. The music is on the external sd card (I notice the playback often gets broken when locking/unlocking the device, so it may be a player issue?).

The maps were pre-saved so there was no internet activity going on (or does modRana check with the server for versions?).

So, are there any other settings I could change to make the playback bearable, or would switching to a different music player work (a lot of my music is in ogg format, which limits choices a bit)?

Or, is there a lightweight tracking only map app that can export in a format that modRana can read?

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

Quick message...
I have created white versions of mode images (bus, car, cycle, train, walk). I use them in night theme; they fit especially well into QML interface, since other icons (fullscreen, current position) are also white, not black.
Best wishes.

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

There is GPS Recorder which can also convert to .gpx format which is readable by Modrana but I havent tried that. It doesnt have maps so it should use a bit less system resources (not loading maps etc.)

However as fellow someplayer user I noticed that as well. Its very easy to interupt by doing other things. I now regulary use Open Media Player and the stutter is much less, the default media player was better at playing in background as well. Something to do with the player engine if I remeber correctly.
I usually record music from streams and listen to it on the phone (offline) and the lower bitrate (128 or 96 kbit mp3 ) work fine :)
I also noticed .mp3 uses slightly less cpu compared to .ogg when playing music of about the same quality

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

Many thanks for that, I'll try out both.

The problem for me is I already had an sd card full of ogg music files from the last several years when I got my n900, so moving to mp3 will be a bit of a hassle.

I did wonder about trying just mplayer, but that will involve setting up scripts and shortcuts, which though I could do, will take some time too.

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

ModRana postpones screen blanking every 60 seconds, so that the screen stays on when you are using it. Looks like the Qt API for this (QScreenSaver I think ?) not only does this, but also unlocks the screen. :)

A check if the screen is locked will probably need to be added to the code.

There were some issues with segfaults caused by both GTK & GObject stuff and Qt stuff being loaded by modRana, but I think I have already fixed that one.

So this might be unrelated and quite possibly the cause can be somewhere inside Qt or PySide - BTW, someone got an idea how to debug a library that makes a Python application using it segfault ?

OK, noted. :)

Yeah, it shouldn't be that difficult.

At least short term, I plan to concentrate at the QML GUI to get it to feature parity with the GTK one. As I'll be also improving the general modRana data models while doing this, the GTK GUI should also benefit from this quite a bit. :)

BTW, at a glance, some + and - for the GTK and QML GUI:

GTK
+ has the most features
+ works even without CSSU
+ works on desktop (but is not very desktop like :))
+ has the most features at the moment

- quite tedious to add new features due to lowlevel implementation
(The GTK GUI is written in Cairo, so for everynew layour or special button you
have to actually tell Cairo which lines, glyphcs and rectangles to draw and on which coordinates. You have a full control over the graphics, but it is really quite tedious. :) )
- no hardware acceleration, everything runs on CPU
-> the whole screen is redrawn every time (due to using Cairo for everything)
-> no kinetic scrolling
(well, there is this, integrating it with the fullscreen-Cairo-widget might be an issue)
- very old GTK version (not that big of a problem actually)
-> how long will be GTK 2 supported on desktop ?
- bad support for more recent mobile operating systems
-> basically no support for anything non-X
-> this rules out Android, BB10, etc.


QML
+ very fast and easy for UI development
-> mainly due to the build in elements and property bindings
(bindings save a HUGE amount of code)
+ fast, even on the N900
-> even the built-in Javascript interpreter is surprisingly fast
+ kinetic scrolling and animations are not a problem
+ good multi platform support
-> Harmattan, Android, BB10, etc.
(BTW, I have basically all I need to start making modRana packages for Android and later BB10 (BB10 has Python 3.2, which complicates things a bit))

- stability issues on the N900
-> also requires CSSU for proper functionality (PR 1.3 Qt is too outdated)
-> and that issue with loading two GUI libs to RAM
- Qt Components are usually unavailable on desktop
-> makes running the QML GUI on desktop problematic
- no Python bindings that support new Qt5 features
-> there seems to be some progress from both PyQt and PySide, but not timetable just yet
- QML/QtQuick lacks some important features and sometimes feels a little unpolished
-> no programmable imports (which is problematic if you want to support multiple component sets)
-> no really asynchronous image loading interface (the current implementation triggered by setting the async flag for Image is severally lacking)
-> no control over the image cache, no explicit cached image reloading
-> issues with nested data models
-> the PySide bindings sometimes have issue, for example with nested data models or automatic QObject wrapping :)

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

I have noticed the same issue and I think this happens because someplayer doesn't use the media framework (which uses the DSP and seems to be quite optimized) but runs the playback on CPU only. A modRana can also tax the CPU quite a lot (rendering the GUI, downloading tiles at once, checking if you are on route during navigation, etc.), the might both fight over the (single-core) CPU, which might result in interruptions in playback.

On the other hand, if modRana is not the active application, it should do that much even when logging (no GUI rendering & no tile downloads) and the playback should be OK.

Ive optimized the logging quite a bit last summer, so it is not incremental and should be quite light on resources. :)

If it can file the tiles locally, it won't do any online requests. You might also disable network usage completely in options->Network->Network usage. :)

So I would say - try the default media player and see if you have the same issues. :)

Nice, thanks ! :)
I'll add them to the night theme + looks like I'll finally have to add theme switching to the QML GUI. :)

Maybe the DSP can't handle ogg so it is decoded by the CPU in both cases ?

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

Thanks for the extra information Martin.

I *think* Someplayer was the active application, but as I was setting both up at the same time, I might have that wrong. The problem was I didn't really have time to play around with it at the time or give the applications too long to settle down. Next time I should have.

I hope to do a test with an altered set-up today and/or over the weekend. I'll post back what happens.

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

Am I missing something, or is it not possible to route to anywhere on the N9? I go to the menu and both "Routes" and "Search" do nothing when tapped.

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

Tried it with OMP and it worked no problem. Thanks to everyone.

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

Yes, it is not yet implemented in the QML interface. The functionality is of course still there in the modRana core, just not yet exposed through the QML interface.

BTW, if you install GTK and use the GTK interface, routing works like on N900. :) Just not sure if Espeak is available for N9. If it is, even voice navigation should work.

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

Is OSM POI search planned? At least for WCs in Kyiv Google is way behind OSM (5 results in my case versus ~100 in OSM).

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

When is the next update of monav routing files is planned? I've found a major problem in Kyiv with pedestrian routing, it thinks that the main entrance to the biggest island is closed, trying to fix it:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/26228652

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

Guys can this work with having sygic on it too?

Because i think the maps files for sygic are also located in
/home/user/MyDocs/.maps/

Will this cause conflict?

Cheers.

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

No, Sygic uses its own propriety format that is incompatible with anything else.

//EDIT: Also, screw sygic.

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

Yeah screw Sygic!
Time i got rid of it!

Goodbye sygic hello Modrana.

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

I have installed ModRana.

Really love it it looks much better than Sygic.
Had a listen to the test voice and it sounded a bit robotic.
Are there voice packages which can be downloaded or am i missing a known feature to enable it?

Thanks guys.

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

Yes, look up "mbrola" in this thread. Installation could be somewhat trial and error (it was for me), but worth the effort if you like a more natural sounding voice...

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

Ok ill look that up thank you very much.

Also how do i make the map view not showing above but to show in front of me as im driving?

Thank you.

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

It certainly is one of my short term plans is to add POI search to the QML GUI and I will probably use that occasion to make the search functionality more modular, so that more search providers can be used.

BTW, regarding OSM search, what about this:
* using the current presets by assigning appropriate osm tag combinations to them
* and also some sort of raw custom search by tag value ?

I'm just doing it manually from time to time, but as it seems to work fine, I should finally put it in a every-3-days cron job. :)

OK, I'll run an update once the extract for Ukraine on Geofabrik (which is what the modRana data repository system is using as data source) gets updated. :)

+ other issues:

• can't generate own data packs
• also probably can't redistribute the existing ones

Anyone interested in making a short guide for this ? :) I can add it to the modRana & Maemo wiki. :)

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

Just finished messing around and setting up mbrola myself
Not really that complicated but I did it with the help of Midnight Commander and dont know the console command from top of my head.
(mostly copied from page 62 in this thread)

I´ll assume espeak is already working so the next step is getting mbrola.
http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbr...nux/mbrola.rar
extract it from the rar, and move it in to /usr/bin
I used mc for this and set permissions from the menu to executable by everyone (mc started as root)

then you still need a voice file
http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/
I downloaded the us1 zip and unzipped it to MyDocs

next is copying the actual voice file to /opt/espeak/data/mbrola/
in this case the file is: us1

now it should work in espeak
test with : espeak -v mb-us1 "Hello world"

if that works you´ll only have to change the voice option in Modrana
voice parameters to manual
and voice string to
espeak -v mb-us1 -p60 -s120 -a %volume% -m %message%

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

Espeak is available for N9, but it's not in any official repositories; I put it on my server, the packages you need are espeak, libespeak and espeak-data.

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

Thanks, I'll add it to the Wikis. :)

Nice ! Would be really handy once the QML GUI matures enough to support routing. :)

@int_ua: I've updated the Monav routing data, so you can check if your fix solved the issue. :)

In other news, I had some success with the Kothic realtime vector map renderer - looks it takes the coordinates as longitude, latitude - which is reversed to the usual format. So I was not getting anything displayed, because I had data for a part of Czech Republic, but was looking on the middle of some middle eastern dessert instead. :)

That does not mean there will be Kothic vector map rendering support in modRana right away, but it is definitely getting closer. :)

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

Say, is it possible to use Foursquare as a POI source in modRana? Google Local is quite incomplete for my country and many small locations are not available there, but are on Foursquare.

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

Any idea if they provide some anonymous interface (so that modRana doesn't have to handle Foursquare login credentials) ?

In other news, modRana 0.40.3 has been release !
The main features of this release are:

• possible improvements to automatic and batch tile download performance
  Previously some GTK & Gobject thread initilazation methods were not called at startup, which according to the documentation meands that up until now, threads run by modRana might have been dependent on GTK events happening. This would explain slow batch tile download with blanked screen (modRana does not redraw the screen when it is turned off). So see for yourself and please report any findings related to possible performance improvements. :)
  Bsically, everything that uses threads in modrana (online search/routing, automatic tile download, batch tile download) might be influenced.
  
• the map selection dialog in the QML GUI now shows all map layers and is group->layer nested
  It now shares the same map layer data model as the GTK GUI, so both should now show the same (full) nested list of map layers.

This is how the new nested layer selector looks like:
http://modrana.org/images/qt_gui/mod...r_selector.png
http://modrana.org/images/qt_gui/mod...p_selected.png

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

Looks like I forgot to post the changelog: :)

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

Quick reply...
Thank you, but I am not updating until night theme is usable in QML GUI (and mode image is used for the menu button).
For now, a question: there are were hard-coded values for "layers" in both PinchMap.qml and MapPage.qml. However, MapPage.qml values take precedence, as I found out while hard-coding my preferred values of mapnik-0.5 and vaer-0.5.
By the way, the slider for opacity can be somewhat annoying, especially when there is no way to check the exact value of opacity. Not that important, though, when I can simply hard-code them instead of going through Graphical-User-Interface.
Best wishes. Will post a screenshot later, probably. I am looking for filter-negative for QML Image.
_________________
Per aspera ad astra...

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

Hi Martin,

I have compared various mapping tools exists on N900 and concluded that this is the most feature-rich and most actively developed one. However, it is slow comparing to Mappero, especially when I overlay a long track (A GPX file with 10K) makes the app and phone unresponsive. Is there any developments in this regard?

Thanks.

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

Did you push an update to the N900 repos?

You wrote here that the newest version is 0.40.3. I have V0.36.6 git:c59ca30 installed here, for some reason app update doesn't show this new version.

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

@gsever100,
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...21#post1330621

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

Got it, sorry, forgot about that extras-devel option. Still the latest version is very slow loading tracks and navigating on map.

Try yourself one of the Tour Divide maps from: http://topofusion.com/divide/gps.php

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

Hey martink howslife !

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

Sorry for the late answer. :)
The latest code in Git already has theming support in QML, just not any user interface for it just now. :) My plan is to add a button for setting the theme from QML + add your icons and then release it.

It is basically like this - PinchMap is a stand alone map element/widget and MapPage is the page that is showing a full screen version of the map element/widget. Currently, only MapPage is using PinchMap, but in the future, it should show up in various places, like overview maps for POIs or search results or maybe a small "orientation" map that would show a larger area around your location.

The hardcoded values you see - the one in PinchMap is a default for all PinchMap elements and the one in MapPage is just default for the PinchMAp instance on MapPage (bit redundant as it is the same as the default for all PinchMaps). :)

BTW, as the QML UI still does not remember selected layers, you can just hardcode them in MapPage for now. Notation for the current modRana version would look like this:

Well, they are configured to jump by 10%, which IMHO should be a good compromise for not having to show an opacity value for each layer. Also, it should be quite easy to set stuff like 50% or to set the same value for multiple layers - there are not that many steps. Now when I think about it, just having 0%, 25% 50%, 75% and 100%, like in GTK GUI, might also do. :)

That's a good question. The negative filter in GTK GUI is using the Python Imaging Library bot something with only Qt as dependency for the QML GUI would be nice. :) BTW, I've even tried how fast it would be to do the negative in pure Python and it was about 900ms for one 256x256 tile. With PIL, it is almost instant. :)

Zoom in. :) ModRana processes every GPS tracklog it loads internally to a series of nearby point clusters. Then it only cares about the points in the clusters that are currently visible.
On the other hand, if the whole track is on screen, it indeed draws all the 10k points. Which is arguably not very fast. :)

There is certainly room for improvements, such as simplifying the track at zoom levels - modRana already does this for the track logging trace, just not for tracklogs. BTW, now when I think about it, I haven't touched the tracklog drawing code in about 2,5 years. :D I think it is about time I do something about it. :)

Sure, good testing data is always welcome. :)

A bit busy at the moment with finishing my masters thesis. :)

BTW, last Saturday, I made modRana Python 3 compatible with these 60 commits. :D Of course it is also still fully compatible with Python 2.5 on Maemo and works just fine on the N900 as usual. :)

This was needed mostly due to the BB10 port, as there is only Python 3.2 available out of the box on that platform. Of course might come in handy elsewhere as platforms slowly migrate to Python 3. :)

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

modRana 0.41.1 has been released !

What's new ?

QML GUI improvements
The QML GUI now supports theming and in Options->UI (the options menu finally does something, yay ! :) ) you can enable showing mode icon on the menu button.

Android support
ModRana QML now works on Android ! Due to the Android porting work I worked on at the start of the year & due to all the wonderful improvements Aaron Richiger did on it (thanks a lot ! :)),

modRana now works on Android and can be also easily packaged for it. BTW, for more info about making Python applications for Android see the guide & the pydroid project.

The installation package is available here:
http://modrana.org/packages/android/modrana_0.41.1.apk

The package is standalone and you can just install it on your Android device as any other Android package. As it uses Qt and you have not yet installed any Qt applications on your device, it will point you to Google Play to install the Ministro Qt library manager. Once you do that, everything will continue automatically. The APK supports Android 2.2 and up, so it should work on more than 95% of all Android devices.

Please note that this package being the initial modRana QML release for Android, there might still be some rough edges here and there. Also, GPS is not yet supported, so it is basically a very fancy map viewer for now. :)

Some further notes:

• after installation, the APK (Android stores them for some reason) & modRana take up together about 50 MB due to all the depndencies that need to be bundled (Python, PySide, Qt Components)
• map tiles are stored in /sdcard/modrana/maps
• screen size is detected automatically on startup and automatic screen rotation is supported
• modRana looks really good when running on a tablet ! :)

Python 3 support
ModRana now works with Python 3, shile still being Python 2.5. As a result, it still works just fine on the N900, but should also work with Python 3.2 on BlackBerry 10 once I finally get to packaging it. :)


Screenshots
http://modrana.org/images/android/mo...oid_tablet.jpg
modRana running on the HP TouchPad with Android

http://modrana.org/images/android/mo...id_mappage.png
the main map screen on Android in landscape

http://modrana.org/images/android/mo...d_portrait.png
main map screen in portrait on Android showing showing a couple of overlaid map layers

http://modrana.org/images/android/mo...id_desktop.png
this is how it looks like when you minimize modRana on Android

http://modrana.org/images/qt_gui/mod...options_ui.png
the theme switcher & co

http://modrana.org/images/qt_gui/mod...ight_theme.png
the new night theme

http://modrana.org/images/qt_gui/mod...rmal_theme.png
for comparison, the same screen with the default theme

http://modrana.org/images/qt_gui/mod...ht_theme-1.png
eventually, there should be two sets of icons - black ones for the default theme and white ones for the night theme, the mode menu is the first one completely converted

Changelog

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

I haven't used GPS on my N900 yet, but I am going to do so shortly, and I will use modRana. What an awesome and flexible program, thank you for the continued development!

Quick question: Is there a way to save maps for a specific region? Like all maps in the U.S. or in California, or within 100 miles of a specific route? And can this be done with different maps, like OpenStreet Maps and Google Maps? I don't have a data plan, and downloading map tiles for offline use would be perfect.

Thanks again for this awesome program!

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

There is the download button in the menu, where you can find the options for downloading maps around your location, view or route. I think it downloads the map you are currently using, so just change that to the one you want to download.

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

Really? That simple? modRana is incredible. I'll look into this, thanks!

EDIT: I see this is mentioned also in the first post. Shame on me for not reading it. :o

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

Is there any chance of downloadable map packs for ModRana?
It can be a pain downloading around this area at different zoom levels.
In past tests if you set to download maximum amount of tiles for around my area, it slows the system down so much it becomes unresponsive.

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

Although I still haven't tried doing this, I'll believe you, and agree that downloadable maps might be a good idea.

If modRana has a i386 Linux version, I suppose this process could be done also in a PC.

I have a question, which will probably reveal my absolute lack of knowledge in this area: What modRana needs to navigate and give directions is embedded in the map data, but that metadata is separate from the graphic tiles? Because it would be a good idea to just download that metadata without downloading the tiles (or just downloading very low resolution tiles) and it seems it would save a lot of space. If you have voice navigation this would even make more sense.

Does modRana even need any tiles to be able to give directions?