[Promoted to Extras] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Have you ever been to a city and forgot where you parked your car?
Have you ever parked somewhere, only to find a parking ticket on your windscreen because you forgot the time?

If so, EasyPark is the application you need!

http://easypark.garage.maemo.org/images/easypark.png

Easypark is a web-based application that uses the N900 location service to keep track of the location you parked your car.

Last week, EasyPark was added to the extras-devel repository, and that alone was enough for a lot of people to check it out.

After a week of testing, tweaking and optimizing it was time to promote the EasyPark to extras-testing and officially announce it.

To find out more about EasyPark check out the EasyPark website. The site contains more information and links to the project's Forum and Tracker.

Feel free to comment, suggest and VOTE (see link on website).

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

UPDATE:

The EasyPark website didn't look good on a N900 : fixed (see http://easypark.garage.maemo.org/)

The status page in EasyPark displayed a wrong 'current parking time' for some I18N settings : fixed.

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

To bad it doesn't work for underground garages :-D

Nice work :-)

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

I have been thinking about this.

I am planning to implement something like:

When you park in an underground garage you won't have a good GPS fix.
The 'waiting for an accurate position' page will get a button <I am in an underground garage>
When the button is pushed, A dialog opens where you can enter the name of the garage, the level, the row and the lot-number.
The name of the garage is stored on the server, along with the inacuurate network-position that will be availabe.
The next time someone parks in the same garage, the name can be chosen from a drop-down list.

Alternative ways to get the location of the underground garage are:
Use the last known accurate location prior to entering the garage
and/or
Use the first accurate location after leaving the garage.
and/or
Find a database containing locations of underground garages and integrate that with EasyPark :D

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

The EasyPark manual is available at the EasyPark website

EasyPark has been promoted to Extras!
 

EasyPark has been promoted to the Extras repository!

A big Thanx! to all people who took the time to test EasyPark and vote for it.

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Hallo Japie,

great stuff mate!

Mazzel

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Nice app! Is it possible to scroll the map?

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

I will add a scroll widget to the map...

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

If it would be possible to also add zoom buttons,then I would happily use this as my primary map application on my N900 :)

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

I've just added zoom buttons! If you reload EasyPark they will appear on the bottom of the map.

Adding a scroll control turned out to be more difficult than I expected. But there is a way to scroll the map: swipe from left to right to turn on the cursor mode of the browser. Then you can use your finger to scroll the map. But remember that EasyPark always wants to show your current position, if you scroll it off the map EasyPark will scroll the map back. By zooming out you can see locations further away from your current position.

I will update the manual on the EasyPark website to describe the new functionality.

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Works perfectly! :) now the app can be also used to quickly look around when one arrives at an unknown destination and needs to find a way to a certain street from the parking spot. thank you for the quick update. your app is already better than the maemo ovi maps in some important aspects: loads quicker and has more up-to-date maps (for my location).

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

downloaded tried it, hit the status and you are stuck at status screen cant get back to map screen. tried all the buttons. and back button on the browser too didnt work.

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Two remarks to scrolling and zoom:
1. the default zoom level could be decreased. I like the zoom level when I click the zoom out button once from the current default level - it still has all the street names, but one can see a bigger portion of the map
2. the scrolling could be smoother - when I use google mobile maps themselves, the scrolling works much better

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

You can use the small <close> button in the top-right of the screen to go back to the map screen.

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Tried EasyPark yesterday and got a bit disappointed. Storing position works fine, even after closing browser and later reopening shows parked status. but parking time always starts with 23:00:00 and later when testing it, it got reset. Don't know why but it lost about one hour.

Another very annoying thing is the display of the map when routing. I walked straight to the edge of the map and then the map began to move, but my position was near the edge of the map until I got back to my car. I'd rather see my position on the opposite edge of the map so I can see the way to go and not the way already gone (I hope this was clearly explained).

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

You are right! I decreased the default zoom level.

Thanx for finding this bug. It was caused by not taking the recent daylight saving time change into account. Fixed!

The scenario you describe is not very userfriendly indeed. Therefore EasyPark will zoom the map in such a way that the whole route is visible.

I already deployed the changes, and they will become available after the page is reloaded (or afther one day, which is the default cache time).

Thanx for helping me make EasyPark better!

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

It is not necessary to have the complete route visible. The zoom should be set to a useful level where one still can see relevant details, but the actual position and walking direction should point into the map, not out of the map.

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Seems like need to go see a doctor again, just picked up my prescription but does not seem like its working.:)

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

JapieB,

Could you look at my post below:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...936#post615936

Is it possible to add this functionality to your app and make it a wider use?

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Lake,

I am planning to add a parking history page to EasyPark. On that page you can see all locations where you have parked.

I would like to keep EasyPark an application that is focused on parking your car, so adding arbitrary locations is beyond the scope of EasyPark. Maybe a good idea for another application???

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

On-line Parking history is available!

Start Easypark, Click Status and follow the Parking History link.

If you like this new functionality, please Vote!

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

I voted, but I'm a bit curious ever since this application was created.

Is there any difference between installing this app and just bookmarking the link in the web browser and using that? It seems like the functionality is the same..

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Thanx for your vote!

At the moment you are right, installing EasyPark creates a bookmark in the app section. It has a much nicer icon than a normal bookmark though... But it does slightly more: it also makes sure that the maemo-geolocation plugin is installed. For most users that have the extras-devel or extras-testing repositories configured installing the geolocation plugin is not a difficult task, but the less experienced users that only have the default repositories configured have quite some troubles with that. The fact that you have to close all your browser screens before the geolocation plugin becomes active causes problems for a lot of users: in the logging I can see that some new users just give up.

I am desperately waiting for PR 1.2 because it will have the geolocation service enabled in the browser by default. This will solve the biggest problems that users have at the moment.

Another thing that I am waiting for is the WRT (Web Runtime Toolkit). When that arrives the functionality of EasyPark can run locally, and the installing of EasyPark will become more than just installing a link.

Jaap.

EasyPark manual updated!
 

The EasyPark manual is updated.

* It now contains the new zooming and parking history functionality.
* All screenshots are updated

Have a look at the new manual.

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Easypark 1.0.0-3 has been promoted to the extras repository!

EasyPark works great on PR1.2
 

After installing PR1.2 I can confirm that EasyPark works great after the update.

Installing EasyPark will be less troublesome: the geolocation extension is installed automatically with PR1.2.

Jaap

Version 1.1-1 available in extras-devel
 

A new and improved version of EasyPark is available in the extras-devel repository!

* Better looking user interface
* More robust user navigation

Please check it out!

Version 1.1-2 available in extras-devel
 

Version 1.1-2 is just released to extras-devel:
* Fixed sound-alert when returning to your car
* Display distance to car on status page
* Improved GPS error handeling

Please comment!

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

I'll try it out tomorrow since I'll be parking in a huge parking lot.

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

EasyPark v1.1-2 is ready for testing! It has been promoted to the extras test repository.

Please test... Comment and votes can be made on easypark/1.1-2/.

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Works pretty well, though is there a way to check the parking status with another computer (say if your device did not have an Internet signal in a work building). The buttons could be slightly bigger for when a user is in a hurry. Since it takes time to load the page and the maps.

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Thanx for the feedback!

I already built some rudimentary support to view your parking history from another computer. You need a special link that contains your EasyPark id to view that information. The route that I am planning to take is that an EasyPark user can send that special link to an email address. I think that the parking history page is the ideal place to also show the current parking state...

About the loading time: I am desparately waiting for the Nokia web runtime to be released. All libraries will be stored locally, and when Nokia releases the API to use the local maps and navigation the maps will load locally too... Another advantage of using the WRT will be the ability to create an active homepage widget to show the current status.

I am already experimenting with the experimental WRT release, and it looks promising!

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

I just installed PR1.3 and EasyPark keeps working fine... (you have to reinstall it tough). Your parking history is still there, even after reinstalling...

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Is there some offline alternative to Easypark?
A program only based on GPS position and/or any other map application.

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Very nice appy. Any updates for the time filling?

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

Thanx!

Can you explain what you mean by this? If you are asking for more functionality: please describe your wishes here, and I will see what I can do...

Jaap

Re: [Announce] EasyPark - Park your car and find it again.
 

I mean, say I leave my car in a parking space and paid the meter for 2 hour limit. I read that this feature wasn't supported to let me know when I'm close to the 2 hour mark. My apologies if I overlooked this.