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skykooler	2011-02-08 , 16:48
Posts: 482 \| Thanked: 550 times \| Joined on Oct 2010	#511

Originally Posted by woody14619

See, I would not want this. There are many times I lock the display to save battery. I still want verbal commands when in that mode, which are only possible if the GPS is left on. Same with taking calls. Just because I answer a call with a hands-free set doesn't mean I'm not driving any more. I'd hate to miss an exit because I was taking a call and the GPS was off...

I agree with this view; I often have the N900 with the screen locked, listening to music, but expecting verbal instructions from Modrana. However, I think it would be a fine feature to implement as long as it was a customizable option.

GPS can also take a while to connect (I have had it take over 3 minutes), so maybe if this is implemented there should be a timeout (for example, only turn off after the screen has been locked for 5 minutes or something).

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jj0	2011-02-10 , 18:59
Posts: 73 \| Thanked: 33 times \| Joined on Nov 2010	#512

Originally Posted by MartinK

I'll look into it, might be the background tile loading thread being starved for CPU time or indeed some db issues.

It seems to me there is some problem with memory management when using the sqlite db. I'm running it with the load applet and after starting modrana the CPU utilization is at its max, though my N900 is overclocked to 1000... It seems maybe the background tile loading is getting queued or something and it gets stuck, very annoying, sometimes it just never loads the tiles and I have to exit and restart it and then it runs. But when moving fast and zoomed in, it seems it would have to load the tiles faster than capable and it just is super slow.

I noticed this behavior after switching to sqlite, i.e. when using the pure tiles method, it was OK and fast, so there must be something that's either slowing it down, or is CPU intensive, but like this it's very bad...

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	woody14619	2011-02-10 , 21:57
	Posts: 1,455 \| Thanked: 3,309 times \| Joined on Dec 2009 @ Rochester, NY	#513

Originally Posted by jj0

It seems to me there is some problem with memory management when using the sqlite db. I'm running it with the load applet and after starting modrana the CPU utilization is at its max

Be careful with that.. the load applet shows the actual cpu load, not the cpu speed. I've seen mine looks like it's maxed, only to run conky or another tracking app to show that I'm only running at 250Mhz at a constant 80%, which doesn't trigger the scaler to jump to the next tier.

I've been using the sqlite db since it was introduced, and don't have an issue with it speed wise. (I'm also overclocked, but only to 900Mhz.)

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cheve	2011-02-11 , 04:13
Posts: 362 \| Thanked: 143 times \| Joined on Mar 2008	#514

all,

According to this post http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=175, one can setup espeak to use mbrola voice file instead of the 'standard' voice.

does someone has a step-by-step how-to guide for noob to set this up; so that we can use it with modRana?

Cheers,

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jj0	2011-02-11 , 09:55
Posts: 73 \| Thanked: 33 times \| Joined on Nov 2010	#515

Originally Posted by woody14619

I've been using the sqlite db since it was introduced, and don't have an issue with it speed wise. (I'm also overclocked, but only to 900Mhz.)

Hmmm, very interesting... It has to be something though. Could it be that the db gets messed up somehow, just guessing, and then it has problems accessing the tiles...

I've had many restarts, so am thinking the db might not have been saved and synced or something...

But there's no way around it, I think, like today at night I left modrana running, downloading tiles for a 20km radius or something. In the morning woke up and the phone wouldn't turn on, i.e. it seemed to be on, but the screen wouldn't come on, as if the CPU was overloaded, left it for a couple of minutes then had to rip the battery out and reboot. Had a couple of these, so am thinking maybe the db is bogus... But how around it, if I discard it, I've lost all the tiles I've downloaded...

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MartinK	2011-02-13 , 11:17
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#516

Originally Posted by wumpwoast

ModRana is a wonderful tool, the closest approximation to a non-network-aware GPS device I could ask for. I'm currently on travel, using the device without network access to roughly plot around an unfamiliar city.

There are a handful of things that would really help this tool work better for my use-case, either as features or options.

1) The GPS device is a battery muncher. When the screen is locked, or the proximity sensor is on for either pocket or phone-call or media playing, the GPS should turn off.

Originally Posted by woody14619

See, I would not want this. There are many times I lock the display to save battery. I still want verbal commands when in that mode, which are only possible if the GPS is left on. Same with taking calls. Just because I answer a call with a hands-free set doesn't mean I'm not driving any more. I'd hate to miss an exit because I was taking a call and the GPS was off...

Originally Posted by skykooler

I agree with this view; I often have the N900 with the screen locked, listening to music, but expecting verbal instructions from Modrana. However, I think it would be a fine feature to implement as long as it was a customizable option.

GPS can also take a while to connect (I have had it take over 3 minutes), so maybe if this is implemented there should be a timeout (for example, only turn off after the screen has been locked for 5 minutes or something).

I would see this as an optional, default off feature. + ticket 113
It could use a timeout/screen-off timeout or some other rules.
BTW, what about a key combination for toggling the GPS ON/OFF ?

Originally Posted by wumpwoast

2) For trip planning, and for dealing with coarse-accuracy GPS, it is helpful to set your position manually on the map. While this feature exists, it should be on the top-level menu, not deep-nested behind the POI menus.

+ ticket 114

I think I'll stick this to the menu, that comes up after a long press on the map surface...well, when there is one

Also, I'am planing to add something like an easily accessible Place/Point menu/feature that would report various kind of information about a given point, which could be the current position, a point from the map, a POI, tracklog start/end, etc. I think i could add a "use this point as current position" there too.

Originally Posted by wumpwoast

3) It would be nice to have a "display all" or "display group" functionality for POI records. Right now you can only see one at a time on the map.

4) Saved POI searches / overlays would be similarly useful.

5) Being able to add POIs right on the map itself would be useful. Long-touch w/context menu or swirly-touch seems to be a way to do this.

Originally Posted by woody14619

These two I like, but lean more toward 4. Making all POI's visible if their location is on screen (at a reasonable zoom level) would be nice. Maybe having the ability to set if a POI should always be visible as a setting would be nice, for those that don't want that?

Yeah, the current POI support is quite basic

But I like the suggestions, all of it should be doable:

group or individual POI visibility trigger
POI search - search by typing in the list + plaintext search
show all POI that are on the currently visible map
custom POI overlay layers that combine multiple rules to show a subset of the available POI
tags ? + tag cloud
POI/group colors & icons ?

+ ticket 115

Originally Posted by slender

MartinK

I just noticed that Icons in icons.svg file are 110x110 but in full screen Modrana they are ~200x160. So why aspect ratio changes? Should SVG icons be ~138x110.

The icons with blue background were originally used in Rana, which was targeted on the Neo FreeRunner, that runs 480x640 in portrait, which with 3 columns and 4 rows gives 12 square 160x160 icons

I'am slowly replacing the blue-background icons with no-background ones, (that can be batch-rendered by the generate-icons.sh script in modrana/data/gui_source). These new icons are never stretched, just scaled to fit and their background is drawn by cairo - like this, the background can be easily themed without having a complete set of icons with different background for each theme.

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MartinK	2011-02-13 , 12:29
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#517

ad slow/erratic sqlite:
There are a few issues with sqlite in Python(2.5):

sharing connections between threads is not supported
concurrent access to the database from multiple connections probably causes the "database locked" errors - there were IMHO no reports about this error since I made the db access sequential (using a mutex)
sqlite was added in python2.5, so it might be more buggy than in newer Python versions

Because I need to access the database from multiple threads (automatic tile download threads,batch download threads + the background tile loading thread), I have created a tile-consumer thread, that manages all writing to the database through a synchronized queue. To make it more efficient it also writes the tiles in single transaction once it has about 50 tiles in its buffer.

Loading tiles from the db works in a same way - there is a tile loading tread, that consumes loading requests and outputs tile images.

And when just testing if tile exists, which is mostly done from separate (download) threads - I need to get a per-query connection

So, its a bit complicated

But, thanks to bringing my attention to this, because I might have found some possible optimizations:

grouping tile loading and existence testing to large transactions, should be faster (less overhead + would help to mitigate possible slowdowns caused by the forced sequential access)
do a combined load/store thread to reduce the number of active database connections

Any ideas how to further improve this ?

Originally Posted by cheve

all,

According to this post http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=175, one can setup espeak to use mbrola voice file instead of the 'standard' voice.

does someone has a step-by-step how-to guide for noob to set this up; so that we can use it with modRana?

Cheers,

I have found some debian packages for mbrola. Anyone willing to help with optifing them ?

Last edited by MartinK; 2011-02-14 at 16:15.

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MartinK	2011-02-14 , 16:46
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#518

V0.22-3 is out

shifted centering
- if both map rotation and map centering are ON, the current position indicator is shifted to the bottom of the screen, showing a larger part of the map in the direction of travel
- this can be configured in Options->Map->Centering, it is possible to set the amount of shift and direction
  (down - the default, up - when you are flying from something, left/right - for driving a harvester
the Options submenu has been reorganized - it is now hopefully more usable when all the various settings aren't on a single large heap anymore
tracklogs now should have correct timestamps for all trackpoints

Provided no significant bugs show up, I'll push this version to Extras-testing.

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jj0	2011-02-15 , 11:22
Posts: 73 \| Thanked: 33 times \| Joined on Nov 2010	#519

Originally Posted by MartinK

V0.22-3 is out
shifted centering

Thanks for this, it's great now, much better. Now you can clearly see what's ahead and driving is MUCH more comfortable...

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	woody14619	2011-02-15 , 18:35
	Posts: 1,455 \| Thanked: 3,309 times \| Joined on Dec 2009 @ Rochester, NY	#520

Originally Posted by jj0

But there's no way around it, I think, like today at night I left modrana running, downloading tiles for a 20km radius or something. In the morning woke up and the phone wouldn't turn on,

It sounds like you're getting hit with the sgx driver bug issue. Check out the linked topic and try the script. I always make sure it's running when downloading tiles, since high CPU, wifi, and GPS use seem to trigger it more often.