Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

I'm going to be abroad for a couple of weeks, and it would be nice to use Ovi Maps but it's not really practical because, well because the Maemo version can't search offline even with all the maps on board and furthermore has a habit of downloading chunks of data without warning and I don't want to come home and find I've got a bill for a zillion pounds of data charges.

I've had a look at Sygic maps and it's ok but seems to be mainly aimed at car drivers. And of course it's not free.

So my question is: is it worth trying to load some maps onto the phone for using Mappero offline or is this just going to be a painful experience? Is there a decent search function?

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

I used mappero in offline mode successfully while rafting this summer (for 10 days, using external battery pack called AcmePower UC-5 and custom-soldered USB cable with middle wires shortened to recharge). It was in Karelian taiga and GSM coverage was, well, not very dense :) I used python scripts written by vadp to upload maps that were created for Ozi Explorer. I think it must be possible to pre-cache some data from say Google maps, but I didn't try it myself.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Hmm, I don't really understand what anything on that thread is on about so it would come under the "painful experience" category for me. Thanks anyway though.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Mappero (formerly Maemo Mapper)... incredibly painful to use. I agree. x.x

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

It's just so frustrating that Ovi Maps is 99% perfectly good but Nokia just don't care enough to do the 1% that would actually make it usable.

I just want to be able to search the *%^*^** maps offline - just like I could on my N95 several years ago... is that really too much to ask?

Aarrghh!

The Sygic maps aren't anywhere near as good as the ones Ovi Maps uses in terms of detail. Not too useful as a pedestrian. Otherwise I'd just pay for Sygic.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

You might consider buying a prepaid sim overseas and using Mappero online.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

yeah, i'll be in several different countries though so I don't think that would work.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Well, it wasn't too painful given that I've managed to convert map data intended for Ozi Explorer to Mappero-compatible format (I didn't think this is possible at all). Pre-downloaded google or yandex maps for that places didn't suit me. What disappointed me about mappero is that it was destroying recorded GPX tracks from time to time (seems like this bug is already fixed) and it seems to be leaking memory so if you leave it running for a long time everything tends to become very sluggish. Other than that, it was tolerable. As of custom-soldered cable, it's the only way to charge devices that support modern USB charge standard from older chargers that don't support it.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

I'm rather careful about possible memory leaks when coding, and at least in my experience this does not happen with Mappero (at least, not in an easily measurable amount), even after 6-7 hours of GPS tracking.
But indeed I've also noticed some slugginess, and it seems to me it's happening more often when you have been using the N900 for some days (especially if browsing). It could be due to the kernel being busy swapping processes in and out; and since Mappero is a memory hungry application, it's easier to encounter this behaviour when using it.
I recommend rebooting the N900 once every 3-4 days -- but it depends on how and how much you use it.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Suggestions on how to improve it are always welcome! :)

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

I hope my reply doesn't arrive too late. :D

It is indeed possible to load the maps in Mappero beforehand: while internet connectivity is available, start Mappero and scroll the map to the area you want to download the maps of. Try to zoom in/out so that only the area you are actually interested in is on the screen. Then, tap on the title bar, choose "Maps" -> "Manage Maps...", go to the "Zoom" tab and click the zoom levels you are interested in. If the number of maps is on the order of tens of thousands or more, you'd better deselect some zoom levels, or the operation might never end.

I usually download low resolution maps for the bigger areas, and the detailed maps (zoom levels 5 or 6) only for those areas where I know I'll actually be walking around.

If you already know your routes, you can also download the maps along the route (on the first tab of this dialog, on the bottom, you have a "Along route" option).


About search: unfortunately Mappero works with the map image tiles only, it has no notion of street names and places, so this only works when online.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

C++, lag of real garbage collector and fragmentation of heap memory. Map-programs and web-browsers are typical applications which suffer from those things. A well written Java VM would handle those. Don't know about Python's garbage collector.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Is there any conversion I can use, at least to make an estimate of the disk space needed by a number of maps?

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Well, I have a company SIM inside my N900, with fairly strict orders of no data roaming (which as we all know, is almost always insanely expensive).

Just last weekend, I visited Tallinn (across the bay from Helsinki) for a bit of a city tour, with geocaching. I had pre-loaded Google maps for the city center (though this took a long time of "Processing maps") and everything worked fairly well.

Except every few minutes Mappero wanted to do data roaming. I can see how this happens once, with enabling the GPS also trying to use a "supl" location server (either the default Nokia or Google), but why does it keep doing this every few minutes? Is this just how "supl" works?

And there always were three popups about this: "Do you want to enable data roaming?" "No", "Do you want to enable data roaming?" "No", "Select internet connection", "None". After ten repetitions this got to be a bit of a pain :(

So, two suggestions:
* make sure that once user has said "no data roaming" there aren't repeated popups about this, let's say until the next run of Mappero, if this is Mappero's doing
* add some kind of a progress indicator for the map preloading

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

i don't think that's mappero's fault. supl.nokia.com is the AGPS server that the built-in GPS software uses on the n900.

you can configure this from the control panel.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

A gps means the device goes onlline dl some information about which sat. are close to you get a gps lock quickly to turn it off tap the gps setting in the status area and disable network based positioning

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

The same ephemeris and almanac information is available (albeit of course slower) on the data stream coming down from the satellites.

I'll see about switching the network-based locator off, I had forgotten about that setting.

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Is there a limit to the number of tiles mappero is able to process? I downloaded the whole of Turkey in resolution 9 (about 17 000 tiles) with no problem and it took only about 100MB. I have about 10GB free space on my device so I tried to download the same are in resolution 7 (around 350 000 tiles), but mappero repeatedly stopped responding. Is that supposed to be happening?

Re: Using Mappero offline - is it worth even trying?
 

Well, it seems to have stopped responding but it was just very busy downloading maps. You can check it over SSH. I also wrote a lengthy (but easy to follow I hope) guide how to use mappero offline with large maps.