maps/travel software

[stuffman]

alright... well, the GPS was working, however, my location shows up as a black square on the display. In fact, all waypoints/endpoints/other stuff always shows up as a black square. I tried changing the preferences for each, but nothing changes. Also, even though I can navigate with the GPS (i.e., it tells me what street I am approaching and rotates/centers the map), it does not leave a \"trail\" of where I have been. I\'ll keep playing with it, but any suggestions are appreciated.

[lwong]

I received my Pharos Bluetooth two days ago and had a lot of \"fun\" since then....

First of all, the Z: SL-6000 w/ Ambicom BT CF card and BlueZ installed. I added \"rfcomm1\" into /dev/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf with the right MAC and channel \"1\". Was able to get Zroadmap to work with the GPS right away.

Then comes the second day: The Z just will not pair with the GPS. Typing \"sdptool search SP\" returns somthign like \" Cannot connect to SDP xx:xx:xx:xx:xx; Permission denied\" or \".......too many symlink\". xx:xx was the MAC address of GPS and I was running as root. Got really frustrated so I gave up after a couple of hours.

Now today: I typed \"gpsd -p /dev/rfcomm1 -s 4800\" in Qconsole. Then \"roadgps\" and \"roadmap\" works fine and launch their respective programs. BUT.... if I click on the icon for \"Zroadmap\", all I got is the explosion icon and nothing else!!! How\'s that possible? I thought if I can launch the program from terminal, the icon should work just fine!

Sorry for the rant but for the group member who got a BT gps to work, what did you put in \"preference-]GPS\"? Should I leave it as \"gpsd://localhost\" or should I change it to \"gpsd -p /dev/rfcomm1 -s 4800\"(which worked for the first day but not afterwards)?

If I have to start gpsd manually everytime, is there someway I can create an icon whcih will execute \"gpsd -p /dev/rfcomm1 -s 4800\". I tried adding an icon in \"Tab Setting\" but it will not let me add the options.

Thanks

FW

[lwong]

A quick update:

cardctl suspend
cardctl resume
sdptool search SP
gpsd -p /dev/rfcomm1 -s 4800

from the console works at the beginning. But now \"sdptool search SP\" can\'t seem to find anything.

There are two other problems as well:

1) Zroadmap crashes in less than 5 minutes after the car starts moving
2) when I put the 4 commands in a shell script, sdptool doesn;t find anything.

FW

[tz]

You might not get a program starting up from an icon for several reasons.  First, check the path in the tab settings.  It may not be pointing where the command line is.  Second, you may be running as root, or in a different directory.

If you are running a script, try putting a \"sleep 1\" (or maybe longer) between the resume and search.

Which version of zroadmap?  1.05 is the latest.  Does it crash consistently only with gps, or if you move the map?  Any post-mortem info (there is a .roadmap/postmortem file or some such - check your memory)

Here is what I\'m working on - the images are just east of Brighton, Michigan, roadmap, and my program.  I still don\'t have annotations (I\'m working on an API so I can get names, icons for hospitals, schools, and such, waypoints, and anything Kismet finds overlaid).  The length of the arrow represents my speed and it points on my course.  It\'s still an early version.  (the update rate is slightly faster on mine)

[img]http://homepage.mac.com/tz1/rmscreen.gif\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /] [img]http://homepage.mac.com/tz1/tgrview.gif\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

[jmcneill]

Could you do a version for PDAXROM?  Preview looks great.

[lwong]

TZ,

Thanks for the help. The version I download is 1.02. Where can I get 1.05?

I had much better luck today. At the beginning, the program was crashing right after starting. Then I realized by accident that I have a start and destination point. I cleared the trip but still crashes. Finally I was able to start the program when I ran into stop-and-go traffic. Amazingly, the program kept running. Even after I left the congested area and was driving at highway speed, the program was able to keep pace. This is quite different than yesterday.

So I am thinking it\'s either the program cannot keep up with real-time routing requirement (during the crahses yesterday, I saw numerous error messages about \"unable to calculate route\" etc) or it doesn\'t like to start at high speed. It\'s difficult to test the latter since you are supposed to concentrate on the driving instead of reading error messages :-)

But anyway, today\'s events encourage me not to give up this program yet. In fact the irony is that while I can use the GPS successfully on Z only half of the time, I had no luck at all using it in both Street Atlas and Street And Trips on my XP laptop with the same Ambicom CF BT card!

FW

[tz]

The last version up on the old devnet was 1.05.  I have my hacked (for Kismet so I can see APs popup live) version if you can\'t find a binary.  Apparently the tool palette crashes Qt/E, so it is disabled.  It is also possible that Bluetooth and/or the stack is using too much CPU or passing damaged data to roadmap.  Roadmap uses less CPU at higher magnifications.  Also, turn navigation and speech off.

On my program I\'ve added gzipped shape files (saves 30%) and adjacent city lines and county lines and a few other tweaks.  I\'m using fairly pure Qt (or QPE), so it should work under anything that supports that toolkit - I assume PDAXROM would support it.  It runs under Qt/X on my Mac, (cyg)Win, and my Linux PC as well as my Zaurus.  In fact I use one of the PCs with autograb enabled and unzoom and pan to get zaurus (little-endian) compatible shape files.  Autograb launches a shell script that pulls the tgrSSCCC.zip file from the internet, then runs a few standard system programs and my database builder on it - you only notice a long pause while it is building the shape file, then the new county appears - something like roadmap\'s download feature, except I can start with raw files.

My only question is if I really want to make it GPL or hold it or some combination (I have some really neat techniques to speed up the drawing and increase compression and I\'m under 1000 lines of code for the display app) - The problem is that I need to do things like eat and pay rent, and apparently there are no opensource fellowships or grants I can get to do this.  Also, a good map/feature database (one with correct road types, names, etc.) is several thousand dollars, and I\'d eventually want to adapt things for that, but they too want money up-front.

[lwong]

tz,

I will be grateful if you can send me version 1.05. I have version 1.02 downloaded from the net and it\'s still crashign heavily whenever GPS is connected and moving. At frist the less detail zoom works ok but it\'s crashign more frequently now. At street level the program almost crashes right away.

The program you are working on looks really good. Does it use the same road database as the Zraodmap? Zroamap\'s database is a bit outdated. I will welcome your program either as freeware or \"payware\". One thing I want my Z to do is to be able to tell me where I am at all times. It may sound naive but have you thought about making a program to convert commercial mapping softwares? Delorme Street Atlas and Microsoft Street and Trips can be had for less than $50. If you can write a program to convert those maps and use it in your program, it may be cheaper than buying expensive commercial database. Of course the userd of your program will have to get their own copies of SA or S&T to comply with the copyright laws.

FW

[2many]

Ethereal, are you using zroadmap on the SL-6000?  I\'ve tried using different versions and they all fail to run.  They install fine and start but I get \"An error occurred when opening the\" with an OK button.  That\'s it.  I hit OK and it closes.  The GPS Console, however, does open but can\'t do much with just that.

Any help would be appreciated.

[2many]

Ethereal, are you using zroadmap on the SL-6000?  I've tried using different versions and they all fail to run.  They install fine and start but I get "An error occurred when opening the" with an OK button.  That's it.  I hit OK and it closes.  The GPS Console, however, does open but can't do much with just that.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ok, I got zroadmap to work on the sl-6000.  After carefully rereading each post, I DL'ed the usidr.rdm and moved my maps to my SD card.  Also, I modified the zroadmap.desktop file to execute zroadmap.sh which calls su -c zroadmap root.  Together that made the thing run.  

Looks nice but still having rouble getting my gps receiver working.  I've got the AmbiCom GPS CF receiver which works great under qpegps but even when loading gpsd -p /dev/ttyS3 -s 4800 from the terminal, zroadmapGPS never seems to show anything.  Anyone else seen this and gotten it to work?

tz, I'd be very greatful if you could send me v1.05.  Apparently, v1.06 is out but needs to be ported.

[cmisip]

I ve got the Ambicom cf gps.  It works fine in zroadmap.  It however needs a good fix before it will work.  Try using the antenna.

[2many]

I ve got the Ambicom cf gps.  It works fine in zroadmap.  It however needs a good fix before it will work.  Try using the antenna.

I did get it to work in the car with the external antenna once this weekend.  I can also get it to move with the map, but I can't seem to get it to tell me much about the trip.  Also, unlike qpeGPS, it doesn't keep the Z powered on so it suspends itself.  When I power up again, I can't get a fix with the GPS.

[cmisip]

It will only tell you where you are in the map.  If you have flite installed, it will actually speak your location or what the next street is going to be.  

As for the shutdown, I think you may have to adjust the power settings on your Z or keep it plugged in with a car power adapter.

[2many]

I ended up adjusting the suspend time from 10 min. to 30 min.  If I'm driving, I can't necessarily check it within 10 minutes.

Another thing I find annoying is that if the z does suspend, when I turn it back on, the GPS stops functioning correctly.  qpeGPS doesn't seem to have this problem, but zroadmap loses its brain.  Even if I unload and restart it, the GPS CF card blinks its little blue light, so I know it's active, but the GPSconsole screen never shows any info and zroadmap fails to track me.  I have to kill GPSconsole and gpsd and restart them for it to work again.  What a pain.

Also, I can't seem to find flite for the z or perhaps I just don't know how it's installed.  Any help on this would be great.

[rjohnson1969]

I've got zRoadMap running on my sl-5500, but it always brings up a blank map.  I hear you saying that I need to search and find a map location to start.  OK.

The problem is, which of the numbered map files are for the part of Texas I live in?  They would not all fit on my 128M card, so I just want the ones for the Dallas / Fort Worth and surrounding areas.  How do I know which files to install to get an address that I can find in my area?

Thanks,
  --  RJ