[Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system - Page 22 - maemo.org

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ThePooBurner	2010-09-20 , 20:47
Posts: 85 \| Thanked: 15 times \| Joined on Sep 2010	#211

Originally Posted by grog

This thread has a clearer explanation of the cause of this issue. HTH

You are right. I ran the command he has in there to show the file size usage vs actual disk space. Actual files is only 81mb. the Slcak waste is what balooned it up to 1.8 gigs. Now to search the forums to see if i can change something to get rid of all the slack waste.

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	grog	2010-09-20 , 21:00
	Posts: 546 \| Thanked: 85 times \| Joined on Feb 2008 @ Winnipeg, Canada	#212

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

You are right. I ran the command he has in there to show the file size usage vs actual disk space. Actual files is only 81mb. the Slcak waste is what balooned it up to 1.8 gigs. Now to search the forums to see if i can change something to get rid of all the slack waste.

I haven't tried it, but I agree with one commenter in that thread that a loopback filesystem might be the best way to go. Try these instructions as a start & let us know how it goes

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MartinK	2010-09-20 , 22:20
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#213

Originally Posted by Pigro

however the route I was following got a bit confused - it didn't seem to be rotated by the correct amount to keep it aligned with the actual road I was on. I only tried briefly, so I'm not sure whether the route (a) rotated, but by an incorrect amount or (b) didn't rotate at all. Once I switched back to fixed map orientation, the route immediately realignd.

Thanks for reporting this ! I managed to reproduce this, and a fix will be in the next release.

Originally Posted by cirodv

As a bicycle user, I'd like to use modrana when riding, in order
either to keep the route and to check the speed. The latter is
an issue, because:

1. The speed value isn't correct. The ratio between the value
detected by the speed meter of my car and the one displayed by
modrana is about 1.8.

I opened a ticket for this and will investigate.

Originally Posted by cirodv

2. The speed is displayed only in the "bicycle" mode. Even if it
is OK when I'm running my bicycle, it should be useful to be able
to read the speed in the other modes, too.

3. The map would be more readable if I could switch off the blue
boxes "activate a track to show route profile" and "activate a
track to show rem. length", as in all the other modes (which,
on the other hand, don't show the speed).

All these blue boxes (the "activate" boxes, speed, time, coordinates) are basically configurable widgets. The can be currently configured using the /opt/modrana/user_config.conf (which is quite heavily commented), per mode. The "widget" support is in an early state, they should interactively configurable (which ones, position, size, colour, etc.) and optionally clickable when finished - a lot like the Fremantle desktop widgets.
I think I'll disable the "activate" widgets in the meantime.

__________________
modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
Mieru: a flexible manga and comic book reader
Universal Components - a solution for native looking yet component set independent QML appliactions (QtQuick Controls 2 & Silica supported as backends)

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MartinK	2010-09-20 , 23:32
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#214

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

Oh, and some quick feed back:

1) I love the app. however i would really like it if when i pressed the menu and gui buttons it didn't take me off of centered map mode and make the map stop moving with me. Kind of annoying to hit "Reroute" and then have to hit the center button again.

Well, that's a bug and will be fixed. Only dragging the map should disable centring, not clicking/pressing buttons.

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

2) When i hit reroute when i am on the highway, it puts the start point as where i was when i hit the button, but it doesn't count me as having arrived there, and thus starts counting UP in miles till i reach my point (because i am driving away from the point it wants me to be at). So i have to wait till i am closer to what the next step would be and then i have to restart the navigation "at the closest step" in order for it to start giving me proper directions again. I even tried setting it to 500m "reach distance" to see if it would count me as having reached, but because i am moving away from it to start it never considers me having arrived.

This is probably caused by the slight routing delay (modRana uses the Google Directions online service for routing), so you are already too far away from the start when it gets the route.
Frankly, I cant find an easy fix to this right now,that would not broke some other use case. I could trigger skipping the start when the distance counts up, but that could also trigger on some larger intersection loops, etc.
What about:

skip tu next point if distance from current increases for N secconds
big "go to next step" button/area

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

3) It would be great if i could turn of those "activate a track" dialogs. It would also be great if they were themselves buttons that could be pressed that would do what they say on them, and would then make them disappear and leave just a small button in a corner somewhere that said "stop" to stop the track.

I already commented on this, they will be clickable and configurable from the menu in the future, but I will remove them in the meantime.
BTW, they already work:

select a tracklog
go to tools
select "make active"

Of course, the tracklog should represent a route you will be travelling, or the results are pretty meaningless

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

4) Actually, it would be really handy to have a "start/stop a track" button on the main screen. It would be a great replacement for the full screen button (and the full screen button could be moved to the "title bar" menu (as in i click on "modRana" at the top and a menu drops down from the top giving the full screen option. Then perhaps just have a shortcut key that restores it).

You mean the the tracklog logging controls ? Yeah, that could be possible, basically a logging control widget.
BTW, I like the drop down menu idea. It could be done like this:

you can dock buttons/widgets you don't need at the moment
just move them to the dropdown dock
you can use them from the dock or move them back

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

5) A list of the current short cut keys accessable from the menu would be geat. Like a "Help/About" button right next to "log a track" in the main menu would be a great addition.

If you mean keyboard shortcuts, there are currently none

But they are, of course, planed

Some sort of built-in help/documentation should be added, some features are getting quite complex.

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

6) I would love to be able to change the time display to 12H time instead of 24 hour time.

OK, this can be added.

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

7) I would love to be able to change the color of the text on the navigation read out. With the current color scheme i have to get about 4" from the screen to read the mile count to the next point.

OK, this should be quite easy to add.

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

8) It would be awesome if the map was on top of the route and tracking lines. That way if i want to look ahead on the map for the names of the upcoming roads/highways i can tell what they actually are. As it is the dark blue route line covers all the names of the roads.

What about a transparent route (with configurable transparency) ?

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

9) Is there a way to get a text read out of the turn by turn? This would help alleviate some of the annoyance of #8.

You mean like having a browsable list of all the direction steps somewhere ? Or something else ?

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

10) If there is any way to boost the frame rate that would be awesome.

Well, I spent two days (well, not FULL two days

) analysing and profiling the main drawing code. Dragging the map in my current not-yet-released version is IMO noticeably less laggy, also the GUI reacts faster as the modRana now checks for redraw request 10 times more often (10ms vs 100ms)

I also got a few ideas for further improvements.

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

Thanks for all the hard work your doing on this. I love the app and the espeak integration for the turn by turn. The loads of features is awesome. Great job

Thanks !

Originally Posted by ThePooBurner

I was looking through the folders and it looked like they were mostly .png and .jpg. But still, it gave one estimate and the result was much different.

The space estimation currently just asks the server about the size of the individual tiles and and them counts a sum of all the individual sizes. That's would be quite precise in an ideal world, but as already mentioned, there are unfortunately filesystem clusters in the real world

So, what can be done:

I can add the cluster size to the size estimation feature, so it is closer to the actual result
pack the tiles in some transparent single-file filesystem
store the tiles in a sqlite database ?

BTW, every non-standard method will break the current tile sharing between the various tiles based map aps that use .maps

IMO, a transparent single-file-fs proxy linked to the .maps folder would be probably the best.

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zombiepig	2010-09-22 , 22:45
Posts: 69 \| Thanked: 23 times \| Joined on Nov 2009	#215

MartinK - I tracked down the bug which was preventing search results from working in australia, and attached a patch for it to
http://modrana.org/trac/ticket/21#comment:2

I'd love to see this included in the next release

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MartinK	2010-09-22 , 22:56
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#216

V0.15-2 is out. What's new ?

dragging the map should be a bit faster
the GUI should react faster on clicks and other events
the "activate" widgets don't show up by default
you can now choose between 12 and 24 hour time display
the route now rotates with the rest of the map (thanks Pigro)

Known issue:

when you select a start/or destination while the map is rotated, it is not placed on the spot where you click

I have been using modRana over an unstable GPRS connection for the past few days and the blocking while waiting online service results is really annoying. So, in the next version, there should finally be the asynchronous online services usage - modRana will show some sort of an overlay with a cancel button while waiting for the result of an online query.

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extendedping	2010-09-23 , 00:33
Posts: 838 \| Thanked: 292 times \| Joined on Apr 2010	#217

thank you for making this app

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Pigro	2010-09-23 , 14:44
Posts: 433 \| Thanked: 274 times \| Joined on Jan 2010	#218

Originally Posted by Pigro

hi, a (low priority) feature request: any chance you could look at the espeak spoken directions & try to have them coexist with media player? at present, I don't get the TTS audio at all if I'm also listening to music - I just get my music increased in volume whilst espeak is trying to talk.

either pause/restart media player (preferred) or "overlay" espeak on top of music would be nice addittions to modrana :-)

FYI, I followed dead_orc's advice here ... and I have now got eSpeak talking over music in modRana. The only issue is that the overall volume jumps quite high (both music + synthesised speech) for the duration of the eSpeak output, but there's probably a simple fix for it somewhere & I can live with it "as is" no problem.

__________________
n900: "with power comes responsibility".

If you buy a niche, highly modifiable smartphone and proceed to mess it up by blindly screwing around, don't just blame the phone, also blame yourelf.

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ThePooBurner	2010-09-24 , 03:05
Posts: 85 \| Thanked: 15 times \| Joined on Sep 2010	#219

Originally Posted by MartinK

Well, that's a bug and will be fixed. Only dragging the map should disable centring, not clicking/pressing buttons.

Yeah, i hadn't read the whole thread yet when i posted. Glad to hear that will be fixed

Originally Posted by MartinK

This is probably caused by the slight routing delay (modRana uses the Google Directions online service for routing), so you are already too far away from the start when it gets the route.
Frankly, I cant find an easy fix to this right now,that would not broke some other use case. I could trigger skipping the start when the distance counts up, but that could also trigger on some larger intersection loops, etc.
What about:
skip tu next point if distance from current increases for N secconds

big "go to next step" button/area

A "skip to next step" button/area would work for me. It would probably be a bit complex to check the direction of travel against the step one should be on to see if you are actually on the route between step 1 and 2 on a reroute and thus have it switch to step 2 automatically.

Originally Posted by MartinK

I already commented on this, they will be clickable and configurable from the menu in the future, but I will remove them in the meantime.
BTW, they already work:
select a tracklog

go to tools

select "make active"

Of course, the tracklog should represent a route you will be travelling, or the results are pretty meaningless

I actually discovered that after my last road trip when i was poking around looking for stuff. It's what inspired me to ask for a help guide

Originally Posted by MartinK

You mean the the tracklog logging controls ? Yeah, that could be possible, basically a logging control widget.

Yes. For instance, when i first fired it up i thought the blue boxes were buttons that should be clickable and do what they say on them. I thought they were just buttons that hadn't yet been implemented since they didn't do anything when i clicked them, and didn't seem to change when i hit "save a track log". Knowing the difference between saving and activating a track would be helpful in this regard to new users.

Originally Posted by MartinK

BTW, I like the drop down menu idea. It could be done like this:
you can dock buttons/widgets you don't need at the moment

just move them to the dropdown dock

you can use them from the dock or move them back

Not a bad idea. Moving stuff off the screen when it's not implicitly needed or wanted would be good. I'm always a fan of more "customizability."

Originally Posted by MartinK

If you mean keyboard shortcuts, there are currently none But they are, of course, planed
Some sort of built-in help/documentation should be added, some features are getting quite complex.

Yes i meant keyboard shortcuts.

Originally Posted by MartinK

OK, this can be added.
OK, this should be quite easy to add.

Sweet.

Originally Posted by MartinK

What about a transparent route (with configurable transparency) ?

That would be a better way of implementing it, yes. i wasn't firing on all cylinders when i suggested the other way.

Originally Posted by MartinK

You mean like having a browsable list of all the direction steps somewhere?

Yes. Like a press a button and bring up the directions themselves in text form, turn by turn. Like when searching on google it's got them on the left side of the page. This would make it easier to share directions with others who might not have a GPS unit.

Originally Posted by MartinK

Well, I spent two days (well, not FULL two days ) analysing and profiling the main drawing code. Dragging the map in my current not-yet-released version is IMO noticeably less laggy, also the GUI reacts faster as the modRana now checks for redraw request 10 times more often (10ms vs 100ms) I also got a few ideas for further improvements.

Cool. I just thought of another one: Is there a way to easily pull up the reverse directions? Now, my memory is pretty good, and i am not bad at retracing where i have been, but a "reverse route" button somewhere would be handy.

Originally Posted by MartinK

The space estimation currently just asks the server about the size of the individual tiles and and them counts a sum of all the individual sizes. That's would be quite precise in an ideal world, but as already mentioned, there are unfortunately filesystem clusters in the real world

So, what can be done:
I can add the cluster size to the size estimation feature, so it is closer to the actual result

pack the tiles in some transparent single-file filesystem

store the tiles in a sqlite database ?

BTW, every non-standard method will break the current tile sharing between the various tiles based map aps that use .maps

IMO, a transparent single-file-fs proxy linked to the .maps folder would be probably the best.

Yeah after looking into it i see there isn't much that can be done on your end just because of the way the cluster sizes are set up. Kind of a shame really. I really wanted to grab all 1.4 million tiles. I'm thinking about repartitioning with a fake loopback MyDocs to help save space and make it doable. As for the best way for you to handle it i'm afraid database management and single-file fs's are over my head (as is the loop back at the moment. more studying to be done. this is my first go with linux.).

Looking forward to trying out the new build!

Side note: I hit the "activate all tracks" button (as button mashing is my primary means of learning how things work), and then when i exited to the map all of the buttons were gone and i had to kill the program from the power switch as it was non-interactable. And since then the screen is only black when i load the program. Any suggestions on how to get the screen back and the program usable again without having to purge-reinstall?

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	woody14619	2010-09-24 , 04:16
	Posts: 1,455 \| Thanked: 3,309 times \| Joined on Dec 2009 @ Rochester, NY	#220

Have to say, I'm loving modRana, and will probably be using it from now on. Two things that are big on my list though:

1> Is there any way to save the current location (or enter a searched for location) as a POI? I know if I search for a place, like a bar or a restaurant, I can save that as a POI. But if I search for an address, or want to record my current location as a POI, there seems to not be a way to do it.

2> Is there a way to specify a filter for eSpeak? I could put one in myself I suppose by making eSpeak a script that filters it's input and feeds it to the real eSpeak executable... but that's kind of hackish.

I'm just a little distracted by "Turn right on Main Saint" and "Turn left on to Hickory Doctor" (for Main St. and Hickory Dr. accordingly.

Having a way to pre-filter the speech just for modRana would be best, since sometimes I'll want Dr. to mean Doctor (like when announcing a caller).

Overall though, this is a great program. It's a little complex at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's really quite simple to navigate and get it to do basic things you want it to. And it's super speedy/non-CPU-intensive compared to most of the other nav systems for the N900.

Thanks for the app!