Notices

I don't know what I've done wrong. I installed Maemo Mapper on my new Nokia 770 using Application Manager. I start it up, and I have menus, which act the way menus should act. I added some settings. I have no GPS, by the way, but I've read that this program is supposed to be useful without GPS, so I don't imagine that's the cause of my problem.

Under Manage Repositories, I have inserted a URI Format entry that I got from this forum, which begins with mt.google.com. Under Manage Maps, Area tab, I have specified the lat/long values for the New York metro area, that someone else specified on this forum. And I have turned on Auto Download.

At times, a message comes up in the top right corner, that says "Downloading Maps", for just a couple of seconds. When I leave the Manage Maps dialog, it asks me for permission to download some maps, with tiny sizes such as .01mb and .04mb. At no time does it tell me that it had any difficulty obtaining maps, so I can only assume that I specified my URI Format correctly. ???

When I bring up the Context Menu of a spot on the blank black screen and select Location/Show Lat/Lon, it shows different values every time I do it. When I select "Show Distance to", it tells me the distance to "Location" (wherever that is!) is 4019 miles.

In other words the program really acts like it thinks it's showing me a map. But all I see is black. Turning the 770 off and back on didn't help.

Anybody know what causes such a symptom? Thanks!

With Auto-Download enabled, and with a valid connection to the internet, zoom out all the way by pressing and holding the Zoom Out rocker button for 10 seconds, then let go of the Zoom Out button. You should see a map of the whole world. If you do, then use the Zoom In button to zoom in, and tap the screen to center on that point on the map, to get down to New York City.

If you don't see anything, then your URL Format may be invalid. What is your exact URL Format string? Try this URL and see if it works (the "v=" part may be different from yours):

http://mt.google.com/mt?n=404&v=w2.99&x=%d&y=%d&zoom=%d

Thank you so much, gnuite. Works fine now.

Now my Google Street maps are working fine, as I said, but now I have the exact same symptom again when trying the Google Satellite URL provided in gnuite's 11-18-2006, 01:56 AM message. I doublechecked my typing, and it is correct. For the Cache Dir, I had first specified a directory on my memory card. When that didn't work, I tried /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/SatelliteMaps instead, and no change: In either case, a bunch of subdirectories and sub-subdirectories get created under the directory I specified; however there are no files in any of those sub-/subdirectories. The program claims it's downloading files, and does not report that it has any difficulty doing so, but it doesn't create any files, so I'm guessing that's the reason for the black screen.

Now here's a possible clue, perhaps: The other day, when I originally had this symptom with the Google Street maps....I posted my query here, and by the time I received an answer, I had installed a Nokia 770 software upgrade and reinstalled all my maemo applications, opened mapper's Manage Repositories dialog, saw that its settings had been retained by the backup/restore, closed the dialog without changing anything, and it said "Downloading maps" as always, and then it said "Failed to open file for writing". It had never said that before the upgrade! And yet, if it was having a problem opening files for writing, that would certainly explain my black screen symptom, I thought...so maybe that was the problem even though the error message had never popped up before.

However, I never reported that problem when it happened, because the very next time the program claimed "Downloading maps", it worked and my map was finally displayed! Everything in this program has been perfect since that moment, until tonight when I tried the Google Satellite URL and new Cache Dir setting (I assume that I should specify a different cache directory, right? Not just leave the same directory for both of the two map repositories, right?). My Google Street maps still work fine but the Google Satellite maps just show as a black screen.

When did you copy/paste the 11-18-2006 URL? Because I just updated it two days ago with a "future-proof" version that works (v=99):

http://kh.google.com/kh?n=404&v=99&t=%s

Just this evening. My v=99.

Just tried the new URI and it works! N800 with Mapper (and maps) - nice!

Are you using v1.3.5? If not, upgrade and try again. If the problem persists, try running Maemo Mapper in an xterm and see if it outputs any errors.

Hey, I'm an idiot, I took a while to realize the helpful gentleman on the forum is actually the developer of the program! Good work, man, it's a wonderfully useful program, and great fun at the same time!

Happy ending! Everything's fine again, now! But some of the things that happened during the process might interest you perhaps??? So I will relate them, chronologically....

The symptom COMPLETELY changed for no apparent reason. Here are the ONLY two things that changed in any way on my Nokia 770 since last night (when Street maps still worked fine but Satellite maps produced solid black screen):

(a) I recharged the battery overnight, and

(b) I got your reply, but couldn't try the 1.3.5 upgrade while I was at work, since I don't have a WPA key for the company's network. But I did try running maemo-mapper from the command line, foolishly..... because all that did was try to establish a connection so it could download a map, but it could not establish a connection while I was at work, so I cancelled out of the connection-attempt dialog and closed maemo-mapper.

Nothing else changed.

When I got home, I tried again, from the command line. No error messages appeared in the xterm window, whatsoever.

But guess what. Now what happens is there's no more black screen on Satellite maps, but also no more maps on Street maps! Now all I get with EITHER repository is a solid pale blue screen!!!!

I downloaded the 1.3.5 upgrade next. After that, when trying to see EITHER Street OR Satellite maps, the little message box pops up as always to say "Downloading maps", and then....this is new to 1.3.5: An error message tells me "Error in download. Check internet connection and/or map repository URL format."

However, that message only appears for an instant. I had to force it to happen a whole bunch of times, in order to be able to read all of the words in the message. Wouldn't you want to require user intervention before the message goes away? Or at least make it stay up longer so the user can read it? On the other hand, one time I did see it stay up for about five seconds. Maybe you have code which attempts to make it stay up that long? If so, that's only working rarely, here on my device.

This same error message appears in BOTH Street and Satellite maps now. And as I said, solid pale blue screen.

Well my network connection is fine. So according to the new error message, the only problem could be the URL format. But the URL format of the Street Maps repository has not changed since last night when it worked fine. And the URL format of the Satellite Maps repository, I have doublechecked and quadruple checked, it is the same as you've typed.

Tonight, out of all the folders that have been created beneath my Satellite maps "Cache Dir" directory, there are exactly three of those folders which are not empty. Those three have two files each. Last night, none of the folders had any files in them. But even though there are six files downloaded, I haven't seen a single map displayed in this repository.

The Street maps folders, of course, have tons of files because the maps have been working fine in that repository for the past couple days, and downloading everything with no problem.

Next: I was able to fix the Street maps problem after that, by simply zooming all the way out and zooming back in again, as you told me the first day I reported my first symptom. Now Street maps works fine again.

After that, Satellite maps screen is no longer pale blue! Now it's back to being black again, just like last night.

Next, here's how I fixed the Satellite maps problem: After having doublechecked my URL a zillion times....and there's no reason for you to believe me, but I swear, it was correct....but of course I could be just as wrong about that as anyone else when they all think they've doublechecked it correctly....so I visited this forum on the Nokia so that I could copy/paste the URL directly from your message. Suddenly it worked. Can it be possible that pasting it could have a different result from typing it??? I don't know how I could have doublechecked it as many times as I did, and been wrong every single time.

An interesting tale, karijackson, and I'll look into some of the issues that you mentioned, but I wanted to note that the "pale blue background" that you were seeing was probably just water, perhaps the ocean. I'm not sure how your position changed to that of an ocean, it could have been from zooming out and inadvertently tapping on the middle of an ocean to cause the view to center on that ocean), but that is almost definitely why you saw pale blue from both repositories.

I'm glad it worked out eventually!