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

A small Sailfish OS/Qt 5 GUI specific update has just been released. If you are having some issues with the compass rose, last used layer restore or tile loading this update might fix them. :)

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

I had that issues with 1.0.8.21.

Now I have SailfishOS 1.1.0.38 (Uitukka) installed an did the uptate to your 0.49.7, Jolla is still a test phone. Tiles are not loaded if "Sqlite" at "Options->Map" is selected, with "files" it works.

I deleted all at "~/.local/share/harbour-modrana/maps/" and started modrana with option "Sqlite". A "lookup.sqlite" is created, but ist stays empty, same on the screen (no map visible). Back to "files" the tiles are loaded and displayed correctly.

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

Weird, I'll check what's wrong. Thanks for reporting this! :)

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

I noticed that modRana's routing instructions are not audible when the phone's 'silent' profile is selected.

I think that 'on-demand' sound should be played in that profile.
It would be great if this could be fixed.

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

Well spotted.

This is a common thing that developers have to workaround on the N900.
IIRC calling aplay directly?

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

Yes, I've noticed that in other applications as well, not only modRana and Marble. The olden radio applications showed this phenomenon, too, and I stopped using them because I didn't figure it out at the time and just thought they were broken.

Anyway, I just found this, maybe it is of help:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...lay#post734307

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

I added a Wiki page on how to set up modrana to use mbrola voices for navigation: http://wiki.maemo.org/Setting_modran...on_with_mbrola

I also added a link to this page under the Resources section of the main wiki page.

Let me know if you have any issues, and sorry it took a while. My main N900 died a few days ago and I've been recovering everything. :)

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

Maybe as a future goal we should look to package some of these if people are actively using them.

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

A couple thoughts. And bear in mind I haven't packaged anything yet for maemo, so some of this might sound stupid.

Mbrola is not open source. This is no problem, is it?

The voice data files are on the bigger side, but I guess packaging per langiuage would be fine. However, there are too many data files for some languages (for example Spanish), so we might have to split those up per country.

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

I just noticed this was already implemented. :o

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

A little request: In the user configuration file, you can set the map folder and the tracklog folder to be anywhere. However, modrana insists in reading POI data and offline navigation data from the MyDocs/.maps/ folder. I think it would be more logical for modrana to read those from wherever the user has configured the maps folder to be. Especially since FAT32 doesn't support linking.

This should be an easy change. Pretty please? ;) My MyDocs partition is kind of hosed...

Or at worst, add two additional configuration variables: nav_folder and poi_folder.

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

I have Modrana installed for years but it never worked. I keep updating in the hope that it may start working, but no cigar.

I have the latest version installed and the problem is the maps never show. All i get is blank gray screen. All the files are at /MyDocs/.maps/.

I tried changing from sqlite to files as suggested a few threads ago, but did not make a difference. I have attached two log files. Can anyone please assist me.

Thank you in advance.
Sunil

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

1. If you are connected to the internet, do you see maps? It sounds as if you are only having problems with offline maps, but I'd like to be sure.
2. What map files do you have, and how did you get them?
3. Are you sure that the maps you have selected in modrana are the same maps you have offline data for?
4. Are you sure you are not trying to use a zoom level for which you don,t have tiles?

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

On a freshly flashed N900 with CSSU installed, I've installed Modrana. However, when I open Modrana-QML from the applications menu, the old GTK+ interface appears. If I run modrana-qml from the terminal to see debugging output, all of the messages refer to GTK+, there is no mention of QT at all. What could be the cause of this?

I see that modrana-qml is just a bash script with the following contents:

I do indeed have qtm libs in that directory. Why isn't modrana-qml seeing them or acting on them?

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

@malfunctioning, sunil said the files are physically there but not displayed. That sounds like a rendering problem, not downloading. Just in case, I would start by going to MyDocs/.maps and checking a few random maps from there if they can be displayed with stock Photos app. They are just plain JPG, so that shouldn't be a problem. If they still show as grey squares and especially if they are all the same size, then it is a download problem indeed. Something somewhere is blocking your maps downloads. Do you live in Syria, Iraq or one of other "restricted" countries?

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

But if he can see the maps when he is online, then this has nothing to do with his country potentially blocking downloads. He just has to turn on the setting to save the tiles locally as they are downloaded during use.

Or maybe your point is that he is indeed in a blocked country, and that he must have downloaded these mapfiles some other way. In that case, good thinking. It hadn't dawned on me some countries would care about that stuff.

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

Hi guys,

Thanks for the quick reply.
1. I connect to internet, but still grey screen. I tryed downloading maps within 5km, +1, -1, wich completes successfully but does still not display.
2. I have 3 folders in .maps - movav_data (empty), OpenStreetMapI (lots of folders & files) and OpenSteetMapII (with only one file - lookup.sqlite 4kb).
3. The map files are in the folders (.png) and I can see them on Photo app.
4. I also have Marble installed and it works just fine, Its just that I dont like using it. I have been using the Stock Map application instead.
5. I live in South African and have no download restriction at all.
6. Store Downloaded Tiles is turned on.
7. Zoom level was set on 18.

Hope this helps.
Kind regards
Sunil

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

Well, that sounds like the files are being downloaded fine. For the completer piece of mind, just check the maps downloaded at your current zoom level (MyDocs/.maps/OpenStretMapI/18/...) are shown correctly in Photos. Otherwise it looks like a render problem in Modrana.

The last thing I would try before blaming Modrana is, delete all the maps (just rename OpenStreetMapI and OpenStreetMapII to something else while Modrana is not running), then start Modrana and let the maps download again. There may be some weird caching problem.

I don't see anything suspicious in your log files, BTW, but I am hardly an expert.

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

If you can't see the maps when connected to the internet, then you seem to have a more basic problem.

It goes without saying, but I'll ask anyway. You do get a satellite lock, don't you? ;)

First, I would change the map configuration (only set 1 layer, and change the map provider to something else, for example Google Maps).

And if what pichlo and I recommended doesn't yield results, then uninstall and install modrana again.

1. sudo gainroot
2. apt-get remove modrana
3. <Move your modrana data folder somewhere else, or delete it>
4. apt-get purge modrana
5. Go to Application Manager and disable extras testing and extras devel repositories.
6. apt-get install modrana

(Note: 5. is optional, but I recommend it, since I'm still using the "stable" version of modrana and it works fine. Besides, you can upgrade later on).

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

I don't know, but modrana QML is deprecated, to the best of my knowledge. Everybody seems to use modrana (no QML).

It's the same thing with cuteTube and cuteTube QML.

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

I renamed the directories and started modrana, but still grey screen. Tried downloading tiles, which completed, but I noticed that the only new directory that was written under .maps is monav_data. There is no new OpenSteetMap I or II folders. Modrana is not writting new folders and saving the tiles. Changed to Google maps and still nothing.

@malfunctioning
Yes, I connect to internet then start Modrana and wait till I get a GPS lock before doing anything.

I tried Marble and again, it works well. It wrote a new OpenStreetMap I folder and saved new tiles under 16 folder.

It seems something is wrong in Modrana. I thought I would mention this before I reinstall the application as suggested.

Thanks to all for your help so far.
Sunil

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

One more thing to try - try renaming the ~/.modrana directory - this is where all modRana settings are stored. If you (re)move it, modRana will recreate it with default settings.

BTW, from the log files it looks like you are using the sqlite tile storage backend, so maybe also try to switch to the files backend. :)

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

This path was initially used for compatibility with Maemo MApper/Mappero - the modRana POI database format is based on & compatible with the Mapper/Mappero one. POI database sharing is off by default but can be enabled in Options->POI->POI storage.

Sure, it definitely makes sense to add a configuration file option to redirecting the POI database storage path, so noted. :)

Yeah, unless someone steps up to maintain it or to develop it further, it is pretty much depreciated at this point. Still, I think I'll try to at least keep it working in its current state on a reasonable effort basis. Also I'm thinking about splitting it to a subpackage as it currently drags in quite a big amount of dependencies even for people using only the GTK GUI.

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

Understood, and thank you very much, M4rtink! :)


I assume you want to maintain at least minimal support so as to not abandon completely that part of your project (which you have devoted many hours to)? When I started using the N900 I naturally gravitated towards using the QDL version of programs like modrana and cuteTube, because I assumed the QDL versions would be newer and more full featured, which then I learned isn't true. I wonder if anybody at all uises modrana QML. The idea of a separate subpackage is good!

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

MartinK: Any plans connected with Mapnik? You said you were to test it shortly after then.

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

Bingo, it worked. Renamed the .modrana folder and it created a new one and it all works perfectly. Apparently the user_config.conf on old folder was dated 2012, so when the versions were updated, this file remained intact, hence messing the sofware.

Fyi, i did try switching between files and sqlite but it did not help.

I now, finally :), have Modrana working well. Will keep testing and let you know if I find any bugs.

Thank you very much to all for your kind assistance.
Sunil

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

I've (finally!) started on the actual modRana vector map rendering support. The plan is to have a pipeline like this:

• vector geometry data source
• filtering
• styling
• rendering

The idea is to have the individual stages more or less independent so that different implementations can be swapped out. Also in some cases multiple stages could be covered by a single implementation (this could be the case for Mapnik - it looks like it should be able to cover styling + rendering and maybe even geometry filtering).

At the moment I'm about done with investigating various existing vector data formats. So far none of them seems to be really suitable for what we need - they are often quite undocumented, don't have fast geographic area access (eq. you can't quickly get data for a given geographic area) or require complex dependencies to generate and/read them.

Therefore I'd probably just settle for a semi-custom vector data storage format based on the time-proven modRana sqlite tile database format. Just instead of the png/jpg blobs stored for the individual tiles there will be (optionally compressed) OSM data for the given tile.

Once I have a working data source (which should be hopefully quite soon), I'd like to start investigating rendering backends, including Mapnik. :)

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

It's great! :)

There are lots of vector maps to be downloaded from the OSM webpage for the whole countries (for example this: http://download.geofabrik.de/europe/poland.html). It's particularly useful as you can download the maps for the whole country at once. Will modrana support this?

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

Haha looks like 3d maps are near :D btw able to download whole countries would simplyfy things and are there plans for including here maps ?:)

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

This sounds great.

But I'm moving out... setting up an Xperia Z3 Compact and it will be my main phone by the end of this week.

Martin, thanks again for your work, it was a donation well spent!

If you (or anybody else) goes to Fosdem, let's meet and have a beer.

And I'm looking forward to modRana on Android ;)
(f-droid is a great FOSS repository for Android)

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

MartinK: Can you please fix this offending egg: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...postcount=1641

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

These are raw OpenStreetMap data and the available formats (XML & PBF) are not really suitable for direct usage for vector map rendering (you can't efficiently get data for a bounding box). On the other hand these file formats (especially PBF) are suitable for efficient conversion into other formats suitable for vector map rendering.

So it should be possible in the future to use these OSM data dumps for generating suitable datasets for modRana to use. :)

I might be able to do something similar to the global Monav offline routing data repository, but no promises just now. ;-)

Their data format would need to be documented, redistributable and supported by the tools modRana has available - so not very likely.

Thanks to you too! :)

Sounds like a plan! :)

Well actually things finally got moving in this area! Thomas Perl managed to get my hacky Python 3+PyOtherSide+Qt5@Android efforts into a usable state over the weekend and there is already a Gpodder build using this available on the Play store ! :D

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.gpodder.android

So if everything goes well and I don't hit any other substantial blockers, then some preliminary modRana (with Qt 5 GUI) packages for Android should show up in a matter of days. :)

Gosh, the egg strikes again! I remember having issues with it before on other platforms - I see what I can do to get rid of it on Maemo. :)

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

ok, so does Modrana have any of these features:
1.Support for using Google Transit GTFS data (specifically displaying stops on the map and then getting info about those stops just like Google Maps does)
2.The ability to download an entire area offline by name (e.g. "Australia" or "Brisbane") without needing to manually figure out the coordinates for the area I want to download (I have a very fast ADSL connection at home but when on the road, my internet is often slow or non-working so I need maps offline but having to manually select coordinates and areas to download is too hard given the vast size of the greater Brisbane area and all the places I go to)
and 3.The ability to search by address or location and see where it is on the map.

Does modrana have these features? Nokia Maps has #2 (my most important feature for a mapping program), if modrana can do #2 and at least one of #1 or #3, I will switch from Nokia Maps to modrana.

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

#2 and #3 is present, #1 is not, AFAIK (to be precise - you CAN view layer with traffic overlay on top of, for example, satellite map, but not some fancy other things.).

/Estel

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

No GTFS support at the moment, but some of the map layers such as the Public transport overlay (looks like this) show public transport lines & stops.

Well modRana currently uses tiled maps for the map layers and you can tell it to download an are either around where you are on around middle of whats currently visible on the map or around a route. You can set are radius and number of upper and lower zoom zoom levels to download. Just note that it might take some time & not all tile providers like batch tile downloading. Also the tiles can consume significant amount of storage if high level of detail is being downloaded.

And if you plan to download a lot of map tiles, make sure to use the "sqlite" tile storage backend - unlike the "files" backend the tiles can't be shared with other applications like Mappero, but the tiles consume much less space (the "sqlite" backend eliminates the wasted space issues for many small files stored on FAT32).

In the future when the planed vector map support is working, I would like to make it possible to download (& update) vector map data pack directly from modRana (eq. Berlin, Australia, Europe, etc.) but that is still a bit in the future. :)
Yeah, as long as you have Internet connectivity though. And not only address searches but also Wikipedia and local amenity searches (find me nearest pizza, pub, atm, parking, etc.).

BTW, modRana is open source and mostly written in Python - and I'm pretty much the only one working on it at the moment and I can only do so much. So if you consider a feature important but it is missing, the best way to get in into modRana quickly is to send me a patch. :)

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

Great except that I couldn't write Python code if my life depended on it :)

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

Which python modules does Modrana use? Your app could be a guinea pig for testing how our ported modules work with python2.7 ;D

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

Looking at the dependency list:
python-dbus, python-protobuf (>= 2.4), python-imaging, python-location, python-osso, python-conic, python-hildon

Of course it also uses pygtk but for some reason it is not declared in package dependencies and yet it works. :P

And for the Qt4/QML GUI:

python-qtmobility12, python-pyside.qtgui, python-pyside.qtdeclarative

If problematic these could be split to a subpackage (modrana-qt4-gui) and I'm probably going to do the subpackage anyway so that modRana does not drag in so many Qt dependencies for people who only use the GTK interface.

Anyway, to test just run:

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

should be possible to use mbrola in modRana?

voices with mbrola+espeak are less robotic

this is a small guide on how to use mbrola arm version on the N900 for Navit turn-by-turn voice instructions

Download mbrola arm version from this link:

http://www.tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis...nux/mbrola.rar

i downloaded on my pc, extracted, and transfered the mbrola binary file via ssh to N900 in /usr/bin/ folder. (maybe is possible to save some rootfs space putting the mbrola binary in /opt and then create a symlink from /usr/bin to the file)

for voices i found to ways:

you can download voices from http://www.tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis...brcopybin.html

download your favourite voice package, i downloaded it4 package (italian female voice), extract, cause you need only the it4 file. then put the it4 file in a folder in MyDocs.

mbrola will search voice files in /usr/share/mbrola/voices/ so you need to create a symlink /usr/share/mbrola/voices/it4 linking to the file in MyDocs

another possible way, not tested, is to use some mbrola voice files already present in espeak folder /opt/espeak/data/voices/mb/ (so no need to download a voice file)

to let mbrola work with navit , you just need to edit speech.xml file like this:

<speech type="cmdline" data="espeak -v mb-it4 -s 150 -a 150 -p 50 '%s'"/>

and the new voice works!

-s sets the speed
-a sets the volume(av. 100)
-p sets the pitch(av. 50)

please check if can work with modRana too ;)

And for future vector maps support, should be possible to use something similar to Navit Planet Extractor?

so you can choose the map area to download, and it generates a mapfile.bin

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

Actually, it looks like modRana can work with Mbrola and there is a modRana specific Mbrola guide on the wiki. I haven't tried that yet myself though. :)

Looks like a nice idea! :)

I have though about various methods easy user-accessible vector data access, such as:

• easy osm/osm.pbf -> routing data converters
• global repository with per-country data packs (like the current global Monav offline routing data repository)
• build in support in modRana for downloading OSM data and importing them to the vector database
• or something similar to the online Navit tool

But that will heavily depend on the actually data format used, how it easy will it be to generate and how big the resulting data files will be. That will show which of these ideas are doable and which not. :)