Being new to the whole GPS revolution, I don't really have a clue about what's needed to get up and running with GPS on my N800.

However, after reading through several threads, I've come up with the following....

For ~$40-50, I can get a Holux (sp?) 1000 GPS unit from Ebay

For FREE, I can install Maemo Mapper

For FREE, I can install flite (text to speech software)

So for a total outlay of about $50, I can have a working GPS on my N800, correct?

I was just futzing around on the Maemo Mapper site and typed in a couple of places of interested and it gave me back the GPX file of GPS coordinates and directions.

How do I get the GPX file into Maemo Mapper to use? Do I download it from my N800 browser and save it locally into some directory, or do I have to download it on my desktop PC and upload it to my N800 or one of the memory cards?

Thanks in advance.

Daddyo

Maybe this is what you are looking for?

Yep, that is correct.

That's the setup I've got; I use Gnuite's "Driving Directions" web page to give me a route to follow, I load the directions into Maemo Mapper (I copy the text into leafpad and then save it on my N800), tell it to download maps all along the route, and then I pack up and head off.

The Holux is a satisfactory unit, too. It is tiny and seems to get a good fix under most circumstances.

My only complaint is that flite sounds like the speech synthesis they had on the Commodore 64. It isn't the lovely voice you get on many of these pro systems.

I assume you're referring to POI. Yes, you can use the GPX POI Search Web Service on your N800 and save the files to your tablet. In Maemo Mapper, use the "Import..." menu item from the "POI" menu to import the POI in that file into Maemo Mapper's database.

Alternatively, you can skip the browser step and just use Maemo Mapper's "Download..." menu item from the "POI" menu, which basically does the same thing.

The same work flows exist for generating and using routes (driving directions). You can use the GPX Driving Directions Web Service and open the resulting file with the "Open..." menu item from the "Route" menu, or you can use the "Download..." menu item from the "Route" menu.

The lovely voices you refer to don't speak the street names, at least on the systems I've seen. They're just .wav recordings, and have to be recorded by someone. It's very, very difficult, if even possible, to record every street name in any country. The way to get them is to use speech synthesis. I have Mapopolis on my Palm, and have several recorded voices, both sexes, various nationalities, and they sound good, but can't speak street names. The speech synthesis program does. It depends on what you prefer.

Good point, sgosnell. I was just thinking it should be easy to change MM to use voice snippets like e.g. my TomTom (where it's also easy to switch, or even make new) voices. But I hadn't thought of street names of course.. you don't get them with TomTom.

(TomTom used .wav recordings in the past btw, but now they use ogg-vorbis.)

"The lovely voices you refer to don't speak the street names, at least on the systems I've seen. They're just .wav recordings, and have to be recorded by someone. It's very, very difficult, if even possible, to record every street name in any country. The way to get them is to use speech synthesis. I have Mapopolis on my Palm, and have several recorded voices, both sexes, various nationalities, and they sound good, but can't speak street names. The speech synthesis program does. It depends on what you prefer.The lovely voices you refer to don't speak the street names, at least on the systems I've seen. They're just .wav recordings, and have to be recorded by someone. It's very, very difficult, if even possible, to record every street name in any country. The way to get them is to use speech synthesis. I have Mapopolis on my Palm, and have several recorded voices, both sexes, various nationalities, and they sound good, but can't speak street names. The speech synthesis program does. It depends on what you prefer."

The Windows-based synthesized voices I use for text to speech have no big problem with street names, though they might get some wrong, as might a human. Listen to the voice on www.iht.com, for example, or the samples on www.nextup.com. The good voices sound good. Linux just doesn't have good voices. A decent tts program such as textaloud also lets you modify pronunciations if you want.

"Windows-based" voice synthesis typically relies on proprietary algorithms and is much more demanding on the CPU. flite itself is less advanced than the larger open source project on which it is based (festival). flite is tailored for low-CPU and low-memory machines (like internet tablets).

I think you're misunderstanding here. The contrast is between recorded phrases (can't say street names, sounds good) and speech synthesis (gets street names, doesn't sound as good).
While it's true that the voices for speech synthesis vary hugely, even the best aren't as good as recorded phrases.