maemo.org - Talk - [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system

maemo.org - Talk (https://talk.maemo.org/index.php)

- Applications (https://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=41)

- - [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58861)

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by skykooler (Post 984437)

I have a weird problem. When approaching one exit, this is what Google says: "Take exit 340A on the left toward Lincoin Dr/Kelly Dr".
Modrana always says "Take exit three hundred and forty A on the left toward Lincoin Doctor slash Kelly Drive."
Apart from the misspelling of "Lincoln" (Google's fault), why does it say Doctor the first time and Drive the second?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mentalist Traceur (Post 984443)

My guess is that since the parser has no "human" way of understanding language, and it's meant to speak for more general/broad uses than JUST routing, "Dr" can be either Doctor or Drive - by extension, it uses heuristics to guess when it means what - in this case, it sees "Dr" at the very end of the string of text, and presumably assumes that that can't be Doctor because English never uses "doctor" like that, at the end of a sentence as an abbreviation.

However, the "/" doesn't make sense to it as the termination point in a clause, nor does it parse that "[something] Dr/[something else] Dr" means is two swap-able sub-clauses, both of which are thus to be seen as to be read as if they were at the end of the sentence.

Since this is the first time in a long while that I've looked at this thread, I have no idea what modRana uses as a text-to-speech backend.

Of course, you can't even take out "Doctor" as a reading of "Dr" even in Nav software, because you can't assume you won't run into a road called "Dr Stevenson Dr" or something.

I have added a Dr/ -> Drive substitution rule, but I have not tested it yet. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by petur (Post 985476)

this weekend brought up two bugs related to GUI rotation:

1) when you have modRana configured to auto-rotate, and you start it while holding it in portrait, it will not rotate and stay landscape. After rotating the phone to landscape and back, it follows.

2) when configuring the GUI to force a certain rotation, it will only use that when you restart it.

The above two made me stop on my bike to get the rotation right (had to take it out of the holder to get the orientation right)

Thanks for reporting ! :)
I have found & fixed both bugs (in the current not-yet-released version). IMO nr. 1 might be quite important due to the rotation improvements in CSSU I have heard about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by petur (Post 985476)

I also discovered that while in bike mode, it will not route nor find/accept any address given to it. It seems that for bike routing it gets that info elsewhere, and this is not working. Good thing the route is maintained when switching between modes - this was my workaround ;)

This might be related to the fact that in bike mode modRana first tries to use a special bike-directions-mode from Google (while in "walking mode" it also uses a special walking-directions-mode), which is unfortunately not available everywhere (well, I'm not suer if it works at all :) ). If routing fail, normal (=car) routing should be used - this fallback mechanism might be somehow broken in the bike mode with address routing. I'll take a look at it. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by skykooler (Post 989377)

One other suggestion: When two turns are close together, concatenate the directions, for example to make it say "Turn left on Elm Street, then turn right on Main Street", or even "Turn left on Elm Street, then turn right". This would help immensely in the city, where the notification distance for one direction is often passed while another is being spoken.

Nice idea ! I have created a ticket for it in the modRana project issue tracker.
It might come be pretty handy for dense urban areas with many turns.
The only downside might be that there would be much more text to display and even the voice messages might be a bit too long - but no show - but this should be solvable by configurability (people use modRana in various environments) & sensible defaults :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by jose6a (Post 989437)

hello, can some guru help me ? I had installed modrana with the aptget method but here is the problem :

[...]

process 7592: arguments to dbus_connection_get_data() were incorrect, assertion "connection != NULL" failed in file dbus-connection.c line 5757.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
process 7592: arguments to dbus_connection_set_data() were incorrect, assertion "connection != NULL" failed in file dbus-connection.c line 5721.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
Aborted

Quote:

Originally Posted by handaxe (Post 990637)

to uninstall and remove all settings etc as root:

Code:

apt-get purge modrana

Those errors should not be fatal, at least they are not when I get them on a desktop system

This looks quite strange - I would recommend first doing the purge handaxe suggests followed by a clean install (it shouldn't matter if you install from the command-line, HAM of FAM).

If this doesn't help, try to install python-hildon - this might be unrelated to the error you are getting, but it looks like I forgot to include it in the dependencies even though the last version already uses it. Most people probably already have something else that depends on it installed.

Progress update
The new rotation method that draws only visible tiles finally works with all modes (scaled map, center shifting, overlay,...). Overlay is now cached and really seems to be as fast as single layer map once the tiles are transparently combined and cached. BTW, it would be possible to add support for overlaying more than two map layers. But I just can't come with any use-case for this. :)

Next is bigger text for directions and some smaller stuff.

And on a related note - after fighting with dpkg for two days, PyClutter 1.0 is now packaged and available from Extras-devel. :) This was a pre-requisite for using the GPU accelerated Clutter GUI library in modRana.

I have not started on on the clutter-accelerated map view yet, but this package means that when I have something releasable, users will have all the needed dependencies.

Technical note - What is Clutter ?
Clutter is GPU accelerated GUI library that enables fast animated manipulation with graphical elements.
Hildon uses a an old version of Clutter (0.8) for all its animations and transitions and Mappero uses clutter for its map view.

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by MartinK (Post 990768)

BTW, it would be possible to add support for overlaying more than two map layers. But I just can't come with any use-case for this. :)

If the Google Traffic tiles were available, you might want them over a map overlay over a sat image.

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by skykooler (Post 991139)

If the Google Traffic tiles were available, you might want them over a map overlay over a sat image.

With this I have a question, that I hadn't had time to investigate further... How does modrana handle updating of already downloaded cached tiles?

I.e. some of the maps don't change so often, but for instance in OSM in some regions you will have development and changes to the map over time.

Does modrana check if newer tile versions are available on the net and redownload them?

This would of course be necessary for traffic also...

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by jj0 (Post 961987)

Though they sound better, I'd advise against mbrola, as it's not free, it's closed source, not worth it in my mind...

.

please checkout the license/terms, it does not look too bad http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/. It is deemed NOT Free with respect to Debian; but to me(ok I am NOT a lawyer) for all intend and purposes it is 'free' enough. It would be great if someone with enough tech knowledge to make it work with N900 -- I can't code to save my life:o

beside, are we not stretching the term of usage a bit by bulk downloading the Google maps?:p

cheers,

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

So, how would Modrana pefrom compared with CloudGPS once it starts using Clutter?

Thanks for the great work so far :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by MartinK (Post 990768)

And on a related note - after fighting with dpkg for two days, PyClutter 1.0 is now packaged and available from Extras-devel. :) This was a pre-requisite for using the GPU accelerated Clutter GUI library in modRana.

I have not started on on the clutter-accelerated map view yet, but this package means that when I have something releasable, users will have all the needed dependencies.

Technical note - What is Clutter ?
Clutter is GPU accelerated GUI library that enables fast animated manipulation with graphical elements.
Hildon uses a an old version of Clutter (0.8) for all its animations and transitions and Mappero uses clutter for its map view.

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

Could the EV charging stations be added under POI? (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...348#post994348)

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by skykooler (Post 991139)

If the Google Traffic tiles were available, you might want them over a map overlay over a sat image.

Good point ! :) I wonder if some weather/weather radar layer or similar exist...

Quote:

Originally Posted by jj0 (Post 991777)

With this I have a question, that I hadn't had time to investigate further... How does modrana handle updating of already downloaded cached tiles?

Currently it doesn't :) This will be added in two forms - interactive update and batch update.

Interactive update means that modRana checks when loading a tile if there is newer one on the tileserver (all tileservers I have checked so far use the "last changed" HTTP header) and replaces the old one if there is.
This should be quite easy to add and would work both when viewing the map and batch-downloading tiles.

Batch update means that modRana checks all stored tiles for updates - this is a bit more tricky becuse it has to correctly generate the URL for all stored tiles, but doable. This should work with both files and sqlite storage (I have already considered the update functionality while designing the sqlite table layout, so there is a saved-timestamp column :) ).

Also, some per layer variables might be needed - the possible traffic layer probably shouldn't be saved to disk at all or have a limited validity - so that users are not confused outdated info.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cheve (Post 993488)

Well if it could be packaged for Debian I don't see why it can't be also packaged for Maemo. But I don't really feel like packaging it myself - I have no idea how to properly do a binary package. :) Also, did anybody try the mbrola voices ? If so, how do they compare to the default ones in espeak ? BTW, if the mbrola voices do improve espeak output quality, packaging them might be of interest for all the other projects using it (Espeak caller, Espeak clock, Espeak GUI, etc.).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daneel (Post 993498)

So, how would Modrana pefrom compared with CloudGPS once it starts using Clutter?

Thanks for the great work so far :D

There are basically two things modRana should gain by using clutter - performance and smooth/seamless transitions. Layer blending, rotation and scaling, which are quite "expensive" with software rendering should be almost "free" with GPU acceleration. It will be also possible to properly animate certain operations that currently just switch from one state to another and might be confusing (zooming, rotation).

It should be also possible to do a fake3D view and kinetic scrolling, like in CloudGPS.

The actual performance remains to be seen, but initial testing looks promising.

BTW, I'm going to submit the Clutter interface & offline routing as existing application improvements to the Coding competition. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by skykooler (Post 994349)

Could the EV charging stations be added under POI? (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...348#post994348)

I have already looked into this - the method using Google maps is very easy to add - just a new POI search preset.
The POI database that can downloaded from the afdc website should also be eventually usable, once the planed support for off-line POI catalogs is added.

Another progress update...
I've got the text wrapping in the navigation info box working. Now I just have to solve some remaining minor issues and do some testing. Next release should be hopefully :) ) coming shortly.

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by MartinK (Post 995308)

That is great news!
Thanks for the quick and clear reply, keep up the good work :)

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by MartinK (Post 995308)

Also, did anybody try the mbrola voices ? If so, how do they compare to the default ones in espeak ?

I use mbrola on my desktop. The quality is much better than the espeak (esqueak :)?) ones.

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by MartinK (Post 995308)

...

Well if it could be packaged for Debian I don't see why it can't be also packaged for Maemo. But I don't really feel like packaging it myself - I have no idea how to properly do a binary package. :) Also, did anybody try the mbrola voices ? If so, how do they compare to the default ones in espeak ? BTW, if the mbrola voices do improve espeak output quality, packaging them might be of interest for all the other projects using it (Espeak caller, Espeak clock, Espeak GUI, etc.).

...

As I mentioned before, I can't code to save my life; but I went ahead to try install it. I found a post on espeakcaller+mbrola http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=175 and some instruction on espeak+mbrola at http://espeak.sourceforge.net/mbrola.html

I did the following to get espeak to use mbrola on the terminal.

1. follow the instruction on sourcforge page to download the mbrola and voice file.

2 extract and copy the mbrola file into /sbin; and make it executable for everyone. I don't know where to put the path info, so I put it at /sbin.:o I use WinSCP to transfer the files over to n900.

3. extract and copy the voice file en1 into /home/opt/espeak/data/mbrola

4. issue command at the x-term to say hello world:
espeak -v mb-en1 "Hello World"

To me the voice sounds better than the standard espeak voice. I have also downloaded and played with the us2 voice as well and I like its voice better still. In #4 step, I had to become root - I would get 'not home user' message; otherwise I got some more serious sounding error about mbrola wrapper error. In both case, espeak use the mbrola voice:)

It appears that if you would add the option of embedding the language voice string(eg. mb-en1, mb-us2); then user can setup espeak+mbrola himself and he would have a better sounding voice for navigation.

Cheers,