Greetings once again (been mostly lurking here as an anonymous user for the last couple of months)..

About the app and maps.. The GPSapp seems to be a great piece of software. My question: While I understand that the current phase of development can only handle pre-calculated routes (through such as MapOnUs.something), is there any sign of being actually able to access some live data (say, such as the map data BMW uses on their DVD navi-system) .. Since it's virtually not a great problem to get your hands on such as those (at least unofficially), it'd be great for Empeg to be able to act as a real navi-device. While my example here may feel questionnable to some, don't be offended, there are probably many other map-vendors that do indeed sell out their data on CDs individually. Is there a to-be-supported format/vendor already?

Also, I asked several months ago about the GPS devices. I myself have a fairly nice USB (doh!) based small GPS-device, which I have been using on my laptop. Unless things have changed, I still have no way of connecting it to the Empeg (due to Empeg having only the USB Slave port) .. or have I? If not, I'd like to know if anyone has found a WAAS/DGPS (etc..) capable GPS-device that would actually run with the power provided from Empeg's serial-port with or without slight modifications with a refresh rate of 5Hz or higher (<20Hz)?

Thus, we get to the last part of the questions.. The empeg does have a very small display. Though it has no graphics device/card (?), would it be possible to connect a larger display to the machine (such as a 9-inch flat screen).. Has anyone been working with this? I tried searching the web quite a bit some months ago, but did not find any good OEM solutions for this purpose.. Yet again, this feels highly impossible, but just perhaps..

I understand that the current phase of development can only handle pre-calculated routes (through such as MapOnUs.something),

Only through MapsOnUs, as a matter of fact, because they seem to be the only ones who can let you screen-scrape raw Lat/Long data. And as I have been complaining, MapsOnUs has some pretty awful and outdated road information. Yet it's the only one the app can use.

is there any sign of being actually able to access some live data (say, such as the map data BMW uses on their DVD navi-system)

That is the eventual goal, as the screen-scrape method is a dead end.

However, it has been a longstanding problem that there is no readily available "GOOD" map data that we can use for free. The only free data is worth exactly what you would pay for it, i.e., it's outdated and/or it doesn't contain proper one-way and intersection information. This has been the barrier to open-source routing on the empeg since the very first attempts, and remains the root of the problem to this day.

Kim Salo has a great mapping program for the empeg that relies on on-hard-disk-data, but we have only ever been able to find US map data that sucks. For instance, directions that tell you to go the wrong way up a freeway onramp, or that assume that you can turn right onto bridge over a freeway that doesn't even have an offramp.

I believe our only hope is being able to hack or reverse-engineer an existing proprietary map file format that contains good data. However then I don't think anyone would be able to relase it as open source or even take credit for the work. Not sure anyone is up to that task.

The empeg does have a very small display. Though it has no graphics device/card (?), would it be possible to connect a larger display to the machine (such as a 9-inch flat screen)..

This is answered in the empeg FAQ here. You would be better off, time and money wise, purchasing a self-contained navigation system with its own large screen.

What is the use of a refresh rate of 5 - 20 Hz, considering that the satellite signals only arrive once per second?

You could connect a laptop with your usb gps gadget and run gpsd. GPSapp already has the code to connect to gpsd, it just isn't enabled, but is shouldn't need more than removing an #ifndef __arm__ and changing the ip-address to that of the laptop.

It will give you the large screen as well. But with this solution you can just as well run gpsdrive or something similar on the laptop and take the empeg out of the loop.

A good question. I was under the impression (due to some manufacturer pages about the higher refresh rates) that those GPS devices could actually sample (and acquire) data as many times as 20 times per second.. Which would be rather important for me (as I have a hobby of doing speed tests on various cars I get my hands on). I may be mistaken (or misled).

I know of the laptop-part. I've been contemplating between the following:

1) Buying a very small and light laptop (such as a Fujitsu Lifebook) with the cigarette-lighter-power accessories and using that with my existing GPS + some navigation software (such as Route66). This solution might be nice, but not very comfortable, not with this DELL Inspiron 8100, which is a suitcase, at least.

2) Getting the BMW navi (DVD)-system with the large screen installed. This would quite much keep everything in-the-dash and would also seriously lessen the threat of theft. However, it seems that this system costs over 5700 euros + install at the moment. Also, I'm not sure whether it is 'good enough', at least yet.

After considering these two options, I reverted back to the possibility of installing my Empeg to my E46 BMW... But it yet again introduces more problems. It seems like none of the three options were good enough.

I'm also not very happy with the aftermarket stuff, as car-stereo (head unit) thefts have multiplied in the past year here for some reason (mainly drug addicts trying to get money for heroin or such)...besides I would very much like to have my Empeg in the dash doing EVERYTHING one can wish for, hehe..

Thanks Tony,

what I was basically looking for with the 'screen' part would have been a double-din sized flat LCD/TFT(whatever) display integrated in front of the empeg (actually replacing the current screen) and producing marvelous graphics , plus of course the navi-data. But I see this doesn't sound like a viable option and not just possible with simple soldering hardware-wise.

Kim Salo has a great mapping program for the empeg that relies on on-hard-disk-data]

I challenge the notion that it's great. I've found it to be entirely unhelpful.

Is it possible gpsapp could use bitmaps? Obviously it couldn't do routing, but simply having a moving map would be very useful for me.

I have found a good source of UK "Landranger" images for reasonable money - it is normally £5k+ for 1:50,000 TIFFS of the whole country, but http://www.memory-map.co.uk/ has them for £24.99 per CD, 12 cds for the whole country. The data is in a proprietry format (QCT) but "print screen" sorts that out - I am not sure if there is any other data in the files, I think as long as the software takes account of the projection format (OSGB 36) it would be ok.

Gareth
PS. Aside from copying the data from the CD to the empeg I can't see how using the data in another way could be less of a problem than ripping CDs - am I correct?

Garmin has a farily reasonable map package.. that's what I have for my Garmin GPS's for the street level detail.. it was worth the $100 or so I paid for it.. maybe that's a thought for people...

then again, maybe I'm just nutz!

-Ben

Clip out a section of 128x32 pixels and dither it down to the four colors that the empeg screen has under typical driving conditions, black, almost black, a bit less black, and visible. If that is really what you want to use for navigation, nobody is stopping you.

One thing you would need is to georeference the images, i.e. find the precise coordinates of the bitmap corners and build a transformation function that can map the GPS position to a map location. Oh, and this has to be done for every single image and will only be useful for the handful or people in the UK that actually buy those CD's and would sit down and do the print screen/georeferencing for every part they are interested in.

You could try to figure out what that proprietary format is, maybe it is (or contains) a standard geotiff file.

Haha that's gotta be the most amusing description of the Empeg's color pallette I've ever seen.

#define BLACK 0x00

#define ALMOST_BLACK 0x01

#define A_BIT_LESS_BLACK 0x02

#define VISIBLE 0x03

.

geotiff is way too big to be practical as a "here's a cd of your state/country" format unless you use a proprietary (wavelet compression, probably) extension.

it would be either that, some native wavelet image format, or vector data., possibly "encrypted" somehow.

Oh God, that's great.

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Garmin has a farily reasonable map package.

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Yeah, I've got one of those too. MetroGuide with routing info. At one point Kim Salo was attempting to figure out enough of the format to use it as map data for his software. I am not sure how far he got. I just did a little googling and I can't find any info on what format these CDs are in other than that the data is from TeleAtlas. Might be worth looking at as a possible data source though as they aren't that expensive ($116 off Garmin's site) and supposedly contain all the routing data we would need as well as point of interest (hotels, etc) information. http://www.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/MG.html

-Mike

I would love to see us reverse-engineer their map format, but aren't we opening ourselves up for problems if we do that? I mean, I'm all for the idea that reverse-engineering a given file format is fair play, I'm just not sure of its legality.

Although I don't have GPSapp installed, I do have a Garmin GPS V with all the maps unlocked.

You can buy them from this place cheaper.

‘‘(f) REVERSE ENGINEERING.—(1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
‘‘(2) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2) and (b), a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
‘‘(3) The information acquired through the acts permitted under paragraph (1), and the means permitted under paragraph (2), may be made available to others if the person referred to in paragraph (1) or (2), as the case may be, provides such information or means solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law other than this section.
‘‘(4) For purposes of this subsection, the term ‘interoperability’ means the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.

As I understand it, this basically says that it's okay to reverse engineer for the purposes of interoperability as long as there is no existing program that provides that interoperability. Which is ridiculous, but does allow for what we want to do here.

OTOH, IANAL.

Yeah, from my POV reverse engineering a file format should be OK as long as you own the data contained within. That is why it is OK for people to reverse engineer all of microsoft's proprietary data formats to open word docs, etc. Of course IANAL either and there may be a EULA for the Garmin data that says you can only use the data with their software which would pose a problem. I have never actually used the Garmin software so I don't really know much about it. I can't even get at the data as it is in windows CAB files. Anybody know of a unix tool to browse/extract CAB files so I can at least poke around at the actual data?

-Mike

Have shrink-wrap licenses really been tested yet?

Besides which, if this is data we are talking about, then AFAIC it would come under exactly the same 'fair use' clauses as any other digital data I may purchase, CDs, DVDs etc. If I choose to (legally) convert my CD-based .wav data to some other (.mp3) format in order to play it from my car's stereo, then I can't see how converting my CD-based .garmin_map data to some other (.empeg_map) format in order to view it on my car stereo can be any less legal

Although I see your reasoning behind the "if it's OK to rip MP3s then it must be OK to rip Garmin maps" thinking, I'm not sure that the two can be considered the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the idea of being able to use converted Garmin maps in our software. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate because I want to see the GPSapp succeed above-board. Without any... shall we say... "Imperial entanglements".

I've got to agree with genixia here.
If you own the garmin map software then presumably you can use [within reason] for your Empeg [this is like ripping mp3s of CDs you own].
If you obtain the empeg version of the data without buying the map - then thats wrong [thats like downloading the mp3s from Napster etc].
any license restrictions you sign when you use the software are probably there as a requirement of whomeever Garmin license the base data off of.

In the worst case, if you had to buy a Garmin GPS to be able to legally use the map data on your empeg then I doubt too many folks would complain - that would be the cheapest option for many people.

I do also agree with your comments about avoiding "Imperial entanglements", BUT I suspect there isn't a set of usable GPS/map data in the world that is free of such entanglements though so its kind of like wishing gravity would vanish.

I'm just saying that software license agreements are a different animal than ripping music. Trying to infer legality by comparing the two would possibly give us a false sense of security and get us into trouble.

Just as a side note, teleatlas/etak is the same company that provides the data for mapsonus. Their data formats seem to be documented, but require registration/click-through license agreement, so I didn't even bother.

I finally installed the metroguide software last night (under VirtualPC). It does have an option to export routes to a CSV format that would be trivial to convert to the format gpsapp is using if anybody is getting sick of MapsOnUs. Of course that still doesn't help with in car routing.

You know what would be really neat? The software has the ability to export a chunk of actual map data to a gps using the garmin protocol for routing when you aren't at the PC. I wonder how hard it would be to parse that exported data. I would be pretty cool to get gpsapp to emulate a garmin gps and just export map data straight to it.

-Mike

The software has the ability to export a chunk of actual map data to a gps using the garmin protocol for routing when you aren't at the PC.

Includes surrounding streets, or just the route?

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Includes surrounding streets, or just the route?

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As I understand it raw map data. Doesn't even have to include routes. You just select the section of the map you want and it sends it to the GPS. Problem is it will only do it over serial, you can't export this to a file.

-Mike

I'm not familiar with virtualPC, but I bet with vmware and a hacked kernel I can export to a file.

This is more or less why the "dummy" sparc audio driver exists: realplayer wanted to talk to an audio device, and I wanted a file. So I wrote an audio device that faked it well; if you open it for read data becomes available as it's written.

I wonder what I did with my CDs of radio shows recorded that way...

I finally installed the metroguide software last night (under VirtualPC). It does have an option to export routes to a CSV format that would be trivial to convert to the format gpsapp is using if anybody is getting sick of MapsOnUs.

Hey, guess what? I'm sick of MapsOnUs.

So tell me more about this software. How much does it cost, what map data set does it use, etc?

If it's Windows software, and if I like the data sets and the output, I might just write a little VB program to parse it and squirt the results into the player with FTP.

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I'm not familiar with virtualPC, but I bet with vmware and a hacked kernel I can export to a file.

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VPC lets you run windows on top of MacOS, same idea as vmware. I think the software expects to communicate with a garmin gps though so you would need to have a garmin gps that is capable of having map data sent to it as well unless you feel like writing a garmin emulator.

-Mike

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So tell me more about this software. How much does it cost, what map data set does it use, etc?

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We discussed it a bit earlier in this thread. It costs about $115 for maps of the entire US. Unfortunately it only runs on windows. The data is from teleatlas. If you want to see the output give me a starting and ending address and I'll make a route for you to checkout.

More info at http://www.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/MG.html

-Mike

I probably could (write a garmin emulator) but not this week. The next such project will probably be to attempt to write an empeg emulator, actually, something for JEmplode to talk to that isn't a real empeg. And I have no idea when I'll have time for that either.