Notices

Ok, while I was traveling down the highway today with maemo mapper running, an idea struck me. (no, it didn't hurt. I managed to duck in time. ) Since Maemo Mapper has a tracking feature that marks a line down all the roads you've traveled, why not have the ability to build logs as well? Now I don't know if this is already in maemo mapper, and I haven't seen anywhere that it is, so let me explain the idea further.

Maemo Mapper tracks 4 basic things while you're moving: Direction, speed, altitude and location. The line it creates with the track feature just builds off these three. So how about having a log that outputs results ever xx number of seconds (I would do menu selectable set increments of 5sec, 15, 30, 1min, 3, 5, and 10 minutes) and writes that to a file. Results would need to be in plain text for reading later. A typical line could have something like this for the output:

28.5mph, 137 degrees, 40.0225 -85.2145, 1204ft

That would mean the unit was moving at 28.5 mph, it was traveling southeast, it was located somewhere in Indiana just east of Indianapolis, and the altitude from sea level was about 1204ft. It would be useful in many ways really.

Then as a counter you could feed the data back into maemo mapper and reveal either the path you took (if there were enough checkpoints close enough together), or it would simply list a series of snapshots showing where you've been over a given period of time.

The logging feature isn't necessarily something that the world will come to an end if we don't have it, but it'd be nice to have none the less. As an aside, the ability to save tracks would also be an awesome bonus.

EDIT: Ok, I found something that allows me to save/load the track, so I guess that little part is solved, but I'd still love to be able to record checkpoints along with that. That information would be hugely useful for some applications I have planned in the near future.

Thought I'd bump this with an update. I decided for grins and giggles to dissect the save file for the tracks in Maemo Mapper and it already gives me everything I need, except speed. Now I'm sure that something like that could be figured out by taking the time between snapshots and the coordinates and figuring out distance, but why not just just have it already in the track file? Also, which of the numbers is the compass bearing? I think it's the first one listed, but I wasn't sure. It looks right, but I figured to ask.