OK... so I got the whole map conversion thing.... I still can't get the gpsapp to show up in hijack... I reinstalled my developer image, reinstalled hijack.... reinstalled pre-init exactly following the www.beaglebros.com/empeg/preinit instructions... I then installed gpsapp using the instructions in the readme.... I gave M50gpsapp chmod 755, and all the other files that the instructions said needed it.... and it still doesn't work... maybe someone can make sense of this..

I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partition
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Mounting second music partition
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To Comply...
Starting player
Starting player with -s- option


hijack: removed menu entry: "Hard Disk Detection"
player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00-beta13 2002/07/24.
: command not foundpsapp:
: No such file or directoryprograms0/gpsapp
: command not foundpsapp:
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Jul 24 2002
Vcb: 0x4086d000
! mp3_decoder.cpp :1049:Failed to find valid sync after seeking to offset 1690

Looks like you might have a DOS-formatted text file for your script.

that did the trick.... thanks Bitt

now to get the tts clock back on, and the xml interface thanks for all the help everyone

Got everything working... cool stuff... I'd also like to add.... yes www.mapsonus.com sucks!

So... I'm wondering, been reading alot about different solutions to mapping on here. I used to play around with PPC maps via streets and trips 2002. You could export small maps with pins marking your turns or areas of interest (maps exported for PPC are tiny but show restaraunts, rest stops just about everything)... and it actually had some really nice street level information... it'll let you export routes to html (however no raw data) just a pretty little maps and turns, but at 20/30 bucks it's pretty much a bargain. I'm no programmer and really have no clue as to whats needed in order to work right... but does anyone know how an app like pocket streets handles maps? and would there be any way to use that data and/or files for this? Also I remember seeing a few apps for PPC that used bitmaps or gif files (can't really remember how those worked) but I think it asked for a few nav inputs and charted you that way.

just thinking outloud....

Phew, just got back from a 2 week trip to visit my family in Holland.

Looks like a lot has been going on again. Working TTS, people are cleaning up the audio overlay patches, talk about getting IrDA up and running. Wow.

In any case, as Derrick said, I had been playing around with python scripts that pull some of the information from the tiger datafiles, and was doing some experimentation with various routing algorithms and ways to organise/index the data.

But nothing useful yet, it is still slow even on my desktop, so it will probably end up as some sort of a background thread that iteratively keeps trying to make small improvements to the 'current' route.

Oh, and real life is catching up a bit as well. I have a couple of deadlines coming up in the next 2 months that will eat up a lot of my spare time.

The known bug where it disappears from the Hijack menu happened a couple of times.

Yup, seen this as well. It happens reliably when I start the car while gpsapp is running. Hijack seems to forget that there is a third party app active, but the app is still in it's main loop waiting for intercepted buttons.

The known bug where pressing the left button to zoom-out the map did not do so, instead it rewound the song with no way to stop it. This happened several times.

Same problem. It is hard to figure out where exactly it goes wrong. Maybe the easiest way is to have hijack return an error when an application calls the WAITBUTTONS or POLLBUTTONS ioctl and there are no active redirections. That way the application knows something went wrong and can go register itself in the hijack menu again.

It had a new bug where if you left it up and running for several hours, then for a moment the music from the player stuttered. After that, all front-panel input stopped working and I had to reboot the player by using the POWER button on the remote.

Interesting, I'll see if I can reproduce this.

Interesting, I'll see if I can reproduce this.

Thanks. It was really strange when it happened because at first I thought the player had overheated and the hard disks were having problems, causing the music to stutter. Later I discovered it was somehow related to GPSapp.



In any case, as Derrick said, I had been playing around with python scripts that pull some of the information from the tiger datafiles

But doesn't the Tiger data suck, too?

I mean... MapsOnUs at least has data which includes one-way street information, and they've got a powerful server-based routing algorithm... but their directions still suck because the maps are hopelessly out of date and flat-out incorrect in some spots. So if they can't get it right, how can we expect to get it right with even-less-accurate Tiger data?

To be pedantic, it's likely to be more accurate, but less precise. Of course, that doesn't really help in practice, as the precision of one-way streets is a requirement. It'd be nice if we could figure out some way to conflate Tiger and something less precise that had one-way info.

Well, there are 2 problems:
-writing the conflation software
-finding a source of data to use once we have it

I realize that. But if there were two datasets that, when combined, provided the right amount of data, figuring that we already know how to interpret the data, we should be able to solve that problem.

However, finding a dataset that has the right missing data is probably only marginally more likely than finding a full dataset.

In reply to:

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So if they can't get it right, how can we expect to get it right with even-less-accurate Tiger data?

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Call it a building process. People have been talking about gps software for the empeg for at least 3 years now, but nobody has found a good data set yet. I for one am glad that has not stopped Jan so far. Here is the steps I would do if I was writing the software...

1. Build enough of a user interface shell to get data from the gps and display on screen. Done.
2. Find a source of existing routes for use on the empeg. Done via MapsOnUs.
3. Find a source of real geographic data to finish UI, this allows for info telling you where you are, showing surrounding streets and addresses, and proper moving maps. Continue to use MapsOnUs for routing info overlaid on top of the geographic data. TIGER is a good free datasource for getting this working. If this is as far as GPSApp ever gets it would still be useful for many things as previously discussed.
4. Get basic routing working with the geographic data. Get the routing algorithms and interfaces working. Find a way to get routing working with the memory and cpu limitations of the empeg (I know it can be done as I have seen Kim's software do it). TIGER data is fine for this as well.
5. Start worrying about data accuracy. Now that we have software that can actually use the data a lot more people may be willing to spend money on commercial data. Alternatively look at conflating the TIGER data (which we are now experts with due to step 3 and 4) with other freely available data. There is a wide variety of USGS data that may be usable. Also by this time TIGER2002 should be out which may be more useful to us.

Anyway, just some thoughts on why tiger is probably the best bet for now.

-Mike

In reply to:

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Of course, that doesn't really help in practice, as the precision of one-way streets is a requirement. It'd be nice if we could figure out some way to conflate Tiger and something less precise that had one-way info.

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IIRC tiger actually will tell us which streets are one way, but it won't tell us in which direction. I am thinking this simplifies conflation because (at least as a first step) we don't need to match everything, only known oneways.

-Mike

I've had the issue where it stutters the music then needs to get reset.... on mine also sometimes it just locks up... music continues playing but no input is accepted and the screen is frozen.

BTW heres another idea for a gps, I did this a few years ago.... if you have or can find a cheap delorme tripmate you can use these instructions for hacking it.... makes for a nice gps... since then I've modded mine to accept straight 12v power, removed the cord and replaced it with a serial port directly on the unit and a shiny LED

Also, after using this for a bit... mapsonus isn't too bad... granted I would never trust the directions its giving but last night I had a friend in the car that had no idea what an empeg was, he gets in... the voice clock starts talking... then just to demo I load the route from work to my house... it starts popping up all the CORRECT info (I think this was a first), needless to say I think he's now looking for an empeg...

OMG I didn't even notice in the link I posted above... he's got instructions for modifying his ram air intake with duct tape! I don't think this is the guy that originally came up with the delorme hack but his page was the only one I could find the instructions still intact.

Someone actually makes a frob to convert Earthmate binary to NMEA that you just place inline on the serial cable; Doing so may make an Earthmate an NMEA receiver or it may need the same hack (I don't know if it self-inits)

well... the tripmate actually sends NMEA data straight out the serial port... however it's in an off state until turned on by the software... the hack only reroutes a wire to (I think) ground a connection and change it to a permanent on state without having to use the software... I think the Earthmate and tripmate are different animals.

The Earthmate and Tripmate are different animals. The point was it's possible to modify an Earthmate to be no worse, really, than a Tripmate. The Earthmate is actually still in production. The Tripmate is not, and Delorme doesn't have any more of the clearance units either.

Ah... gotcha... how much are the earthmates?

They're over $100 new, but I'd recommend not paying that for one. If you can find one on ebay, half.com or somewhere for $50 or under, go for it.

Yeah... I think I paid around 40 or 50 for mine.... but with some of the steals and deals other people have found on the message board... definately not worth 100 bucks.

Just found this link, this guy has mapping software for ipaqlinux/yopy which uses pqa files (i think) that you can download from expedia/mapblast.... just throwin it out there

Nothing in his readmes suggest it can deal with pqa files; I should grab a fresh version and look.

The only thing that led me to that was following his instructions for downloading maps and that being the format for PDA's.... I might be completely wrong about the format.... but expedia has pretty good maps so whatever he's doing to get the info on a pda....

Such maps are not vector based but simply scrolling flat images at a fixed scale. So it really is not that interesting as you can't extract turn by turn information and other useful things.

So are most of the pocket pc apps like pocket streets and the like non vector based?

From what I've seen, yeah. Most of those are bitmaps with only the upper left and lower right corner of the bitmap being tagged with lat/long (so they can put your cursor on the bitmap from the GPS data).

My personal opinion is:
- I don't care whether the maps are bitmap or vector.
- I don't care whether I'm displaying pre-computed directions downloaded from a website, or if the directions are computed realtime on the unit.
- I don't care whether there is "live" street data that I can see on the screen for when I go off-route.
- All I care about is whether it gives me ACCURATE directions from point A to point B as I'm doing the journey.

Well... thats what i was kinda leading up to, pocket streets always gave me dead on accurate turns and such with detailed data like restops, eats, stuff like that... what we have now is great... but as long as it's usable does it matter if it's vector based or not? Many times I'd load up a streets and trips map on my PPC and it always got me where I was going... with detailed street info... it didn't tell you when to turn or anything but it was really easy to track... You could enter searches for streets and a few other cool things... other apps that work similarly do give turns... like pharos... granted this is all for windows based handhelds and such but if they are using bitmaps couldn't the same be done for empeg?

making a bitmap map useful with the limited color palette is unreaslistic.

making a bitmap map useful with the limited color palette is unreaslistic.

making a bitmap map useful with the limited color palette is unreaslistic.

Not to mention the limited vertical resolution.