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

I wonder if reverse-engineering the POI database would be any easier? I'm always surprised at how much useful items it contains - one of the more useful being that you can search for bus routes and it will return the nearby bus stops serving that route.

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

Hi,

i'm really impressed with this application and have been testing it for a few weeks recently. the auto-reroute is working well. i'd like to make the following feature suggestions...

1. remember the last position when exiting modrana so that a sensible position is used by modrana at startup while it waits for a valid position from the gps.

2. while waiting for a map title to download, use one from a different zoom level if it exists.

3. this is a big request, but it would be nice if the installation of off-line routing and maps was integrated with the main gui.

even without these, modrana is the best opensource navigation app i have seen. thanks for your work.

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

I recently decided to try out MoNav instead of Google for routing since I ran out of bandwidth on my data plan, and while routing itself works, I seem to not be getting directions properly.

I get "None to <Road Name>" (replace <Road Name> with whatever road) or just "None" when routing.

I am running modRana v0.42.1 git:41a67b2
I am in Malaysia.
The language for directions is set to English.
I am using this data pack: http://modrana.org/data/monav/asia/m...nei_car.tar.gz

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

Are you trying to search using street names? AFAIU MoNav packs don't store street names. If it doesn't work even point-to-point routing, what's the console output?

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

modRana 0.43.2 has been FINALLY released ! :D
This release should fix most of the recently reported issues, such as:

• the annoying Xlib bug when starting navigation
• address search now works again and uses Nominatim instead of Google
• directions should again look fine when using Monav (no more "None to First Street")

There are also various improvements, such as:

• The QML GUI now can do address search (can be also used to search for named restaurants and other amenities)
• The QML GUI now should look fine on high-DPI devices
• multiple background tasks can be canceled individually in the GTK GUI
• better address display in route info menu
• the Monav routing server is now started asynchronously

There was quite a lot of invasive work going on regarding of how asynchronous routing and point search work, including the integration of a thread manager component from the Anaconda installer project. :) This should make support for new providers and usage of the data from multiple GUI front-ends easier.

Since this is "done" and working, releases now should again happen more often. :)

Changelog:

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

Hi Martin, thanks for the awesome release .. but I cannot find the Harmattan package for the new version .. could anyone please point me in the right direction .

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

Harmattan packages are not yet out - I've been using the late MeeGo COBS to build them, so I'll have to set up the Harmattan SDK. Should be soon. :)

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

Up-to-date modRana package for Harmattan is out ! :)

It can be downloaded either from the modRana project website:
http://modrana.org/packages/harmatta...43.2_armel.deb

BTW, all new Harmattan packages should show up in this folder:
http://modrana.org/packages/harmattan/

And the modRana package on OpenRepos has also been updated. :)

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

Hello, thanks for your updates!

I have experienced a bug with the latest GTK version on N900, though: when I choose 'Route' - 'Address to address' it shows just a black screen instead of the address dialog.

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

Can we have a separate mode for mapping with a button to add POI with just a name? Currently I have to click minimum 5 times before I can enter a name and 3 times after that to get back to the map (Menu - POI - Add - From map - point on map; skip description - select category - show on map) while it can be done in 3 clicks total: Add new note - click on map - enter the name and submit it.

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

Just to expand my report:
When I search an address from the menu, find it, click Options and choose 'Route here', it doesn't do anything.

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

Hi,

I've just installed the latest version for the first time (i.e., not upgrade) and this application is great! However, the "Route" and the "Download Maps" options aren't working. I am using a PR1.4 N9 (OOTB, no strange changes).

Did I miss anything?

Thanks!


Gabriel

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

Yeah, sure. :cool:

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

Argh, sorry, PR1.3 I meant.

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

FWIW, this happens [in the command line] when I hit maps->download:
Will have a closer look at some other point...

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

Thanks! :)

It's simple and kinda a fault on my side - it is just not yet implemented in the QML GUI modRana uses on Harmattan. Is I've been getting similar questions lately, I really should finally:

• add a "not yet implemented screen" for those features or hide the buttons for the time being
• implement that stuff :)

BTW, to clarify - all these features are supported by the modRana core and available from the GTK GUI used on the N900 and elsewhere. It is just the QML GUI that is lagging behind in exposing those features.

More specifically what needs to be done:

• create the corresponding QML pages for Download, POI, Routing, track logging, etc.
• expose any data and function needed from the modRana core to the QML context using QObject wrappers (provided by PySide)
  • The recent POI and routing provider rewrite should make this easier.
• implement marker display in the QML GUI for showing POIs on the map
• implement polyline drawing in the QML GUI, so that routes and tracklogs can be shown on the map

The page is just not there yet - and looks like it is even incorrectly named. :)

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

Thanks, MartinK - it is certainly nice to know. I suppose I can install it elsewhere, download maps and sync them to the N9. Lots of fun to be had.

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

Sure, that should work just fine. On the N9, map data is stored in:
/home/user/MyDocs/.maps/

modRana runs just fine on desktop Linux distributions and it also defaults there to the (for the time being) more featured GTK GUI. You can download the map data here and sync them to your N9. :)

Alternatively, you can also use dedicated map data downloader, such as for example GMapcatcher. The format used by most of them is compatible with modRana.

EDIT:
And of course modRana on the N9 stores all tiles it "sees" on the map. Such tiles will not be downloaded when requested again, but loaded from local storage (from the above mentioned folder).


Thats for sure! :) Also, any feedback is welcome & needed for further modRana development. :)

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

Yeah, there are a few out there. I tried jTileDownloader (or something like that), and to be honest all I'm interested in are the URL's, then I can do a wget on a headless server and leave it downloading at home.

I'm pretty sure I'll bump into an inode hard limit on the N9 at some point.

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

I am really hoping for routing support on the N9 soon! Just twice in the last week I have become frustrated with Nokia Drive because it will locate my ending address and then tell me that I can't get there from here. Modrana is the reason I still use my N900 as a GPS even though I can't charge it anymore due to a broken USB port.

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

modRana 0.43.3 has been released! :)

This is mainly a bugfix release, but it fixes A LOT of issues. :)
There are also some improvements and new features, such as support for switching between files and sqlite for tile storage in the QML GUI (in Options->Map).

If there are no issues with the package in the next few days, I'll push it to Extras-Testing, so that the modRana package in Extras (currently at version 0.36.6) can be finally updated. :)

Harmattan package:
http://modrana.org/packages/harmatta...43.3_armel.deb

And also on OpenRepos:
https://openrepos.net/content/martink/modrana

Changelog:

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

Thanks! But I'm sad to report both
Route->'Address to Address' and
Search->'address online'->Tools->'route here'
not yet working.

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

Well, as it seems to be working fine for me (when trying both on PC and on the N900), it must be cause by some specific factor of your setup.
Could you start modrana from the terminal (just type "modrana" and press enter) and paste the output here ? That should get me started on fixing it. :)

BTW, address to address routing currently does not work with offline routing, as offline routing is currently strictly point to point (or to be more exact, it finds routes between two geographic coordinate pairs: lat1,lon1 -> lat2,lon2). There is unfortunately not yet any support for turning plaintext address string to a coordinate pair, so offline address to address routing does not work.

Hopefully this can be sorted out in time, as everyone probably noticed most commercial car navigations do offline address to address routing just fine. The Monav preprocessor used by modRana actually already generates a custom address lookup format, called Unicode Tournament Trie, but I have not yet been able to find any tools for working with this format from Python.
And the Monav routing server that modRana uses for offline routing doesn't seem to support them either.

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

Thanks for the fast reply.
Should I post the whole log?
When I click Route->'Address to Address' it shows this in the terminal (multiple times):
and on Search->'address online'->Tools->'route here' , it shows:
.

I'm in my home country (Czech Republic :) ) with mobile internet, so I'm currently using online navigation only.

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

Yes please. :) If its too long, you can put it to pastebin/privatepaste. If you think it has any sensitive info, you can send it by PM or other private channels. :)

Looks like the routing module blew up on startup and was not correctly loaded. That's why I need the full log - there is probably a traceback generated by the routing module during startup, detailing what went wrong with it.

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

I was just about to post an extended error code when I saw your answer.
I will send the whole output to the e-mail address specified, if needed, but this is the unusual part.

I tried searching this error on the internet and solved the issue by upgrading python-protobuf to the extras-devel version. Now both address-to-address routing and routing from the search result works, but you might need to specify the python-protobuf version in the dependencies.

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

Ah, thanks, that appears to be it ! :) I've bumped the python-protobuf dependency to >=2.4 and I've also removed that monav_support import - it will be imported once needed, so it was just slowing down startup. :) I've just sent 0.43.4 with this fix to autobuilder, should show up in Extras-Devel in a few minutes. :)

BTW, while doing the release, I've discovered a glitch that caused 0.43.3 to actually miss the last two weeks of commits. :D Therefore and upgrade to 0.43.4 is very much encouraged, provided you actually want all those fixes that should have been in 0.43.3. :)

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

Please implement them :)

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

Man, if you could enable offline routing and address lookup, I think it would be a killer feature. I dont know if any other phones or navigation apps do that, but it would be absolutely great for travelling as the data roaming isnt yet free in Europe. If anyone, you MartinK can do it. Go MartinK.

And ofcourse again thanks for the great software we got already.

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

I just came back from a journey and entered this thread to report that "avoid highways" and "avoid toll roads" are ignored in N900's non-qml version (never really run the qml version and I guess the error was in the core, but reporting here for completeness). Great you fixed it, I'll update today and test on the same data (address-address) it failed earlier(was: later), if something's still wrong - i'll report back;)

Thanks for this great piece of software!:)

Two questions:
1. Do you have a "todo" list available publicly to see what you're planning? Or is your bugtracker only source for such data?
2. I have espeak on my N900, but modRana doesn't speak:( Did I miss some option in the settings enabling it?

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

Have same problem as 'nodevel'.
When will 0.43.4 be ready for Openrepos.net?

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

I tried to download the offline routing data for Finland at

http://modrana.org/data/monav/

But the pack is only 61 bytes in size and the package seems to be empty. I also noted that the packages of other countries were also very small in size. The whole Europe pack seems to be correct size, (4.3gigs), but I'd rather download only the countries I need? Is there something funny going on with the offline packs?

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

I known about this and I'm working on a fix. :)

How did it happen ?
While updating the repository, all extracts present on downloads.geofabrik.de are are downloaded (in sequence by a single thread) and processed (by many, MANY threads :) ) into Monav routing data packs. The size of the input data downloaded for each repository update is about ~100 GB and each update takes about 5 hours from start to finish.

After running an update recently, I've noticed it took just about 2 hours. I've investigated and found that downloads from Geofabrik started to fail with a 503 error after a certain amount of the data needed was downloaded - I've contacted Geofabrik and indeed, the download was tripping some overuse protection they have (recently ?) added to their repository.

I've cleared the situation with them and they granted the modRana repository a usage exception.

Still, I agree that downloading about 100GB from their repository is not very efficient and I've started working on a better long term solution.

Plan of action
The repository needs regional extract that it can turn into Monav routing data packs (and hopefully in the future also other kinds of useful geodata). Geofabrik obtains those extract by splitting the master database dump periodically released by the OpenStreetMap project, the so called Planet.osm file.

So I've decided to to implement the same procedure for the modRana data repository. A the planet file is about 25GB in gzip compressed PBF format and about 45 in uncompressed PBF. Thankfully, it can be updated incrementally using the osmupdate utility, so the amount per repository update should be drastically reduced from the previous ~100GB to maximally a few hundred megabytes per update.

Splitting the Planet.osm file can be quite demanding, but can be very efficiently parallelized. Thankfully, the machine that has been so kindly provided for shared used by the Natural Language Processing laboratory of the Masaryk University in Brno (Thanks! :) ) the modRana routing repository has about 48 logical CPU units, so it can do the Planet-cracking very well. :)

All in all, local splitting should both massively spare download bandwidth and make the modRana repository independent on Geofabrik. :)

The work is already about 50% done and I plan to finish it in the next few days. Of course I'll let you know in this thread once the first new update run is done. :)

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

The modRana Harmattan package has been finally updated to 0.43.4 !

I how again have a scratchbox using Harmattan packaging script, so in future the Harmattan package should be always released together with the other packages. :)

Link:
http://modrana.org/packages/harmatta...43.4_armel.deb

Also the modRana package in OpenRepos has been updated. :)

Still no reaction on route button!

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

MartinK, any cheat script/advice for migrating all the tiles that are in files to the sqlite format? :-)

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

One thing I notice after switching to sqlite is that if I select an area, download all the tiles (max up and max down) and then start navigating that area, modrana keeps downloading maps (and the sqlite DB keeps growing).

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

Hi Martin,

After updating modrana and installing the updated map from here: [URL="http://data.modrana.org/monav/europe/europe_car.tar.gz[/URL] offline routing doesn’t works.

It only shows loading but not the internal map. I did the adjustments found here: [URL="http://wiki.maemo.org/ModRana_offline_routing_guide[/URL]

Also the map (Germany big) comes with the same behavior after updating modrana.

I installed this one half a year ago from here: [URL="http://monav.openstreetmap.de/mapsets/Germany_big.zip[/URL] and bfore updating modrana it works pretty fine.

Please find Xterm output attached.
Any help is appreciated.

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

Don't worry I'm working on it - but it is kinda complicated and will still take some time. But I sure make you all aware once routing is implemented in the QML GUI on Harmattan. :)

Sure, there is the sqlite import script by Beermad:
http://modrana.org/trac/wiki/SQLiteT...rtPerlScriptEN
Looks like Beermad changes his site, so use the modrana.org mirror for the script:
https://nlp.fi.muni.cz/trac/gps_navi...tEN/mapconvert

And eventually, I would like to integrate this functionality as a modRana CLI option, but have no timetable for that yet. :)

That looks like a bug, I'll investigate it.

BTW, were there any download errors during the download ? Could be that you got banned during the download for downloading too much tiles (some tileservers do that) and some tiles didn't get downloaded.

Also try to do the batch download with "redownload ON", which can be set from the "edit" menu. This makes sure that all tiles are downloaded for the given area, even if there are already some (corrupted ?) tiles present. Might help. :)

This is probably caused by the botched Monav data repository update described above. I'll be ready to do a new update run in a few days that will hopefully fix this corrupted data issue. So please hang on until then. :)

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

Martin, can modRana do retries for on-demand downloads (during driving)? Yesterday I seemed to have a crappy connection and from time to time a tile was missing (showing an error tile).

Might be a good idea to try to redownload on failure *if* the other tiles are downloading fine. No need to retry if they all fail (except maybe at a slow rate for when the network connection dropped for a slightly longer time).

Or maybe this is already present somewhere? I'm running a clean install after my complete device got corrupted :(