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

Good point - the idea that you might miss the point by actually going through its circle between position updates didn't appear to me before. :) Automatic enlarging of the circle size when current speed in m/s is greater than its diameter might be in order.

Sounds interesting. :)

Currently not, but I'd add it to the heap. :) Custom modes might be quite useful IMO - Geocaching mode, boat mode, etc.

Should be quite easy to implement, I'll look into it.

@A/GPS
According to the liblocation documentation I can try to force a specific location mode (best/cell/GPS/augmented GPS).
There indeed seems to be a cell-tower info cache but I don't see any API for flushing it. Also If I understand the API correctly, you can only set a preferred method but you can't find which method is currently used.

Yeah, i know this too. :D Basically every time I start modRana it jump somewhere for a moment and then in a few moment to the correct location. So what to do about it ?

• the location API seems to supply accuracy info - if the initial fix signals bad accuracy, modRana might just skip it and wait for a more accurate one
• or, worst case - just remember the "bad" coordinates (they are per country fixed IMHO) and skip all initial fixes with them

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

both sound ok, nr 2 would be more work I guess (to keep this list)

Have a look at what ZapLoc uses, it reports the positioning mode (cell/gps/...) in verbose mode, maybe it uses another lib to get the position info?

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

The problem with hildon is it availability - it works basically just on Maemo and nowhere else. I wan't modRana to be as multi-platform as possible so the main menu can't depend on it. Still, modRana already ususes the hildon app-menu for the most often used options and more will be added in the future (map layer selection having the highest priority).
I'm also not singling out the possibility of using hildon widgets instead of the default ones on Maemo, if I find a way how to integrate them seamlessly (touch selectors would be particularly nice IMO).
@tap-toggle buttons:
I agree, they are not particularly ideal if there are too many options - using it for selection is wrong and will be replaced by something more usable. :)

IMHO it was created before the current theme system was added. Maybe you can PM Skylooker and ask him if he wants to update it to support the new theming system ?
Also as a workaround you can create a new folder in /opt/modrana/themes and place all the IOS icons in it - a new theme entry should show up, named after the folder.

It should create a file structure like this:
/main_folder/number/number/number.png
Just take all the numbered folders in the main folder
and copy them to: /home/suer/MyDocs/.maps/OpenStreetMap I

Also check in options->Map->Tiles storage if you are using files. Sqlite is much more space-efficient for storing tiles but I don't know about any other program that can currently batch download into it.

BTW, modRana also works on normal Linux PCs. :)

Oh, looks like I forgot about this. I'll be right on it. :D

Status update
Now that Mieru is finally out of the door, modRana development should speed up yet again. :)
Main features planned for the near term:

• offline routing using Monav - it should have Python bindings in the near feature
• animated GUI using Clutter - I have already used it in Mieru
• drawing on the map - for trip planing, two-pass OSM editing or just doodling
• other features from the heap in no particular order :)

Also, modRana has been ported to the Open Pandora gaming handheld. The developer also mentioned currently working on a modRana theme. :)

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

great. so that means i can just run it on my ubuntu, download the map there and copy downloaded tiles to my n900 afterwards. nice...
thanks for your answer, and will look forward with the button tapping updates

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

OK, I'll check it out. :)

@voice string
I got it to work with this script, called out_test.sh:
placed in /opt/modrana
and voice string like this:
A new file out_test.txt should contain the last routing message.

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

Community survey :D
I'll by speaking about navigation on mobile Linux devices this weekend on Openmobillity 2011 (it is a local czech-language conference about open mobile technologies).

Since it is now about a year already since modRana was first released, I think it would be nice to also talk about how people use modRana in real life. I know from this thread, that people use modRana for long distance (1000 km+) car travel, while walking, biking, looking for pizza in Australia, navigating through Taipei and riding boats near New Zealand. But most if this information comes from fragments scattered in many comments and more feedback would be really helpful - for my coming talk & for modRana development overall! :)

So, tell me, how do you use modRana ?
What activity do you use it for ? How long are you using it already, how often? With which modes of travel (anyone used modRana on a plane yet ? :) )? On what continent/s ? Any funny stories concerning modRana ? Any interesting photos of modRana "in action" ? What feature you like/hate the most ? What features are you missing ? Anything you think might be relevant!

Where to submit ?
Just post post to this thread or use the modRana project e-mail address:
modrana at gmail dot com

Thanks in advance ! :)

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

I use modRana as navigation for car travel, long and short distance. In the beginning while it still had a few serious glitches I hesitated replacing commercial non-free (as in speech, not beer) software, but have long since deleted all non-free routing apps and use solely modRana.

Generally, I use it in the cities, with a go-to address, to navigate from here to the address. When sometimes the address wouldn't be picked up, I'd look the address up in an online map, then zoom to the address in modRana and route from here to point on the map.

Also, I use to look for alternate routes in places I know how to drive through, but when getting stuck due to traffic etc. especially in a lot-of one-way street areas - Moscow...

Recently, I've gotten accustomed to using modRana to just look around, i.e. I fly often, then when landing in a new city, I zoom in and out of the location, looking for interesting stuff, where I am, where I could go, beats any online map...

I've used it on hikes in Hawaii a lot, and in Czech Republic, when walking for many km, to see how far I've gotten and what's just around the corner, great for that as well...

In day to day, generally for driving and hiking...

Oh yeah, and also for considering distances, like I'm in a city, have to go somewhere that I know is five intersections away, look at modRana to get a feel for how far I'd really have to walk, and if it'd be worth to take the car or not...

For this I have a missing feature request that I've had lately, a visible km scale, so that you could judge exactly how far the point on the map is...

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

Hi MartinK

I was put off by modrana not being vector-based originally (and was trying to use Navit at the time because it IS). I don't have a data plan, so the ability to have everything stored locally is vital to me. This last year, my main use for maps on my N900 has been during bike tours. I generally plan the route in advance in google earth or some of the bike-centric map sites, and then download the track. Because the route is well-defined and pre-planned, i can download the tiles in advance, and the lack of routing hasn't been a major issue: modrana has served me well this last year. It's (subjectively, anyway) less CPU intensive than Navit and a bit smoother (being tile-based). The ability to switch between map sources has been useful on occasion, too. And now i'm forgetting which app had which features, but i seem to recall that modrana will show elevation profiles for tracks, which is very useful as a cyclist. There's very little attention given to grades in most GPS devices and routing services, which can be a literal pain in the butt when schlepping 14 kg gear and 10 kg of bike around.

So Modrana has been very useful to me. On the other hand, if on-device routing and driving use were important to me, modrana wouldn't have cut it.

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

Personally, I use it mainly for driving and on occasion for walking. I've used it once or twice to find local venues, though I've typically used my FourSquare client more for that.

The key things I use it for is getting from once place to another while driving. Often I use it for night driving, even when I know the route, since I tend to drive/navigate by landmark. Night driving is difficult for me, since I tend to miss turns when I can't see my cue, especially in rural areas. Nothing alerts you to having missed a turn better than "Robo" shouting "Turn left onto the street you just passed!" :D

I also have used ModRana for tracking where I've gone via the track logs. It's handy at times to know about what time I was at point X while driving to my destination. That's useful the next time I pass that point, since I can know roughly how far along I am. Often I can look back on track logs to help me figure out if a different route I took was actually slower or faster, or if it just felt like it was. An odometer can tell you how long a path is, but not how fast you traveled along it.

Probably the most "epic" trip I took with it was about 400 miles. It almost made it back in one go, but back then we were still having the redraw induced sgx bug, so it wound up locking up about 20 miles from home. :p

On thing I do miss right now is the ability to do off-line routing. I know, that's a big thing to do, but it's really the only feature I've missed on those rare occasions when cell service is not available. I'm sure there are plenty I'd love to have that I don't even know about! But then that's harder to miss before you have it. ;)

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

I use modRana for all my navigation needs: walking, biking and now also in the car (which has a dedicated tomtom installed).

The only time I get out the tomtom, is when driving further away from home, since the tomtom has all the maps (outside the country roaming is expensive and I just can't preload all those tiles), and tomtom has an up-to-date radar trap list (maybe a feature request for modRana :) )

Using the maps of ovi maps or navit would be a great future enhancement as pre-loading those tiles is cumbersome...