Maemo Mapper: GPS for the Nokia 770
 

Maemo Mapper 0.1 is now released and available from the Maemo Mapper Website.

Maemo Mapper is a mapping application like GPSDrive but built from the ground up for the Hildon UI and optimized for the Nokia 770. It works with any NMEA-compliant GPS Receiver that emits the RMC sentence of the NMEA protocol.

Major features include:
* Designed and optimized for the Nokia 770.
* Various methods of automatic map downloading.
* Support for the GPS Exchange (GPX) file format.
* Driving Directions generation, including on-the-fly re-generation if you stray from the route.
* Announcement of upcoming waypoints (including voice synthesis via flite).
* Freely released under the GPL.

If you use Maemo Mapper and would like to show your appreciation for it, or if you have a feature that you would like added to Maemo Mapper, please consider donating money via PayPal (link is on the website).

I have tested this release mostly under my own use cases, so please report any bugs that you may encounter to me (gnuite) on the Internet Tablet Talk forums.

There is no formal documentation yet, but most of the interface is intuitive. Read the Maemo Mapper website for details about the functionality.

Don't hesitate to make suggestions or comments. Enjoy!

Map Download URI Format examples
 

The Maemo Mapper website mentions that, in order for map downloading to work, you must provide a suitable "Map Download URI Format" that Maemo Mapper can use. Because Maemo Mapper does not have its own map repository (or affiliation with existing map repositories), I cannot include a default URI format in the program itself.

Instead, I can provide a few examples here of URI formats that currently work with Maemo Mapper. You must enter these examples in the "URI Format" text field of the "Maps" tab of the Settings dialog box. (It remembers your setting, so you should only need to do this once.)

For that original Google Maps look:
For an alternate Google Maps look, with added road and building detail, more road names, and wider-looking roads:
Please note that using either of these examples (or any other private commercial map repositories) may consitute a violation of copyright law. Use of Maemo Mapper and/or these examples requires and implies that you agree that you understand that using Maemo Mapper to download maps from a commercial map repository may be considered a violation of copyright law and that I (John Costigan) cannot be held responsible for any of your actions related thereto.

I haven't even downloaded it yet and I'm impressed.
 

I haven't even downloaded it yet and I'm impressed with the explanation you've provided on your web site. You're going to get a reputation if you keep this up!

WOW! Thank you so much! I have 2 questions however:

1. I have fluite installed, yet it doesn't give me any voice commands (just textual commands)

2. I downloaded a 5-detailed type map. But the program is still showing me the satellite topo map, not the detailed one. How do I show the detailed map?


Thanks again!

Hi, I installed maemo-mapper and flite.
(but I don't have a bluetooth gps device (yet...))
After starting it, I inserted the "Map Download URI Format" on the initial dialog box, and, when I press "ok", it just crashes...

Is it posible to test this without a bluetooth gps?
Can I insert a manual GPS coordinate? (so that I can download the maps for this location).
(would it be possible to create a "virtual" gps device, that can get it's coordinates from a text file, or even from a url?)

thanks.
;)

Make sure that flite is in your classpath. If you have XTerm installed, you can test this by just typing the following:
If that works, it should work in Maemo Mapper. If not, then set up your classpath so that the above _does_ work.

The program will automatically display the most detailed map applicable for an area, but it only scales UP (from lesser-detailed maps); it doesn't scale down. That means that if you are zoomed out to the maximum level, you won't see any higher-detailed maps. Just zoom in in order to see the more-detailed maps.

Yeah. It's not a crash; the program actually closes if you do not specify a Receiver MAC address. I should probably change that behavior, now that it does make a little bit of sense to use the program without a GPS receiver. Until then, just specify "00:00:00:00:00:00" as your MAC address. Afterward, you can disable the "Enable GPS" checkbox in the menu to stop the "Searching for GPS Receiver" messages.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for the feedback!

1. It says flite was not found? How do I set my classpath?

2. Cool, it worked when I zoomed in this time. Strangely, it didn't before. I placed the directory for the maps on the memory card. The maps should be saved there so I can access them every time I open Maemo Mapper, correct? Or do they always have to be re-downloaded?

Thank you for your help.

I have a quick suggestion with map downloading. Is it possible in the next update to have a feature where you can download the maps by Zip/City/County/State/Country? It would be cool if for example I can download the enter maps for the USA with one click. It's kind of confusing on how to do this with the Latitude/Longitude coordinates?

Thanks again for the excellent application!

here is what I did, and works perfect.
1. set the map to auto download
2. zoom in to max on the left upper corner of the region you want to download
3. go in download area and "view center" will show you the coordinates for that point.
4. do the same for the right lower corner.
5. select again "download region" and put the 2 sets of coordinates.
6. select the zoom levels.... and download.

I downloaded a BIG part of Oregon for the zoom levels from 4 to 16 (you can see all the streets and the names for the highways) in about 200 MB.
I have to study the code and maybe with help from gnuite I will make a windows app to download the maps... and then copy them on the card when you need them...

This is a great application, thanks gnuite!!

Thank you very much! I couldn't believe how stupid I was haha. I honestly didn't know what that top-left/bottom-right thing meant until know lol.

Wonderfull work !
Thanks a lot !
I have a little problem downloading routes : Error parsing GPX file
It might be due to accentuated letters (France sorry ;) )
It would be nice to keep in memory the last addresses entered ...
It would be also very nice to interface that with the GPE Contact database ...
Would you like me to help you on this matter, I've already played with this database (phonelink) and I'm sure it would be a nice improvement ...

Thanks again for your great work

Fred

update : I have the same parsing problem using those :
Dublin, Ireland to Tralee, Ireland
so it might not be linked to accentuated letters ...

Fred

Great application! Really nice job gnuite.

I'm also getting the "Error parsing GPX file" when I try to download a route. For example "helsinki,fi" -> "espoo,fi" gives this error.

Is there a list of compatible GPS receivers somewhere or could you post what receivers you're using with the N770?

I am seriously impressed! What an excellent application. You could put the 00:00:00:00 as default gps and disable gps until gps value has been set. Also, the map download might be nice to be on by default.

Also, if you have a look at google maps terms and conditions, it would seem that you are indeed allowed to use those maps (for non commercial purposes). But, as you have done, I don't think it's legal to provide app that does that automatically. Are NASA maps for free? You could put an option for those. Or a default setting.

Anyway. Jut an idea. Kepp up the splendid work. That app totally rocks!

I use the i-blue High Sensitivity Bluetooth GPS (I think gunite mentioned he uses the same one as well?)

that's simply great ! Thanks for your work.

Worked great - once
 

I downloaded the program, since I don't have a GPS I set it to 00:00:00:00:00:00, set the URI as in the sample, and Voila! a map of the world appeared. I zoomed into San Antonio, Texas and right down to street level in my neighborhood. I was amazed! But once I ended the app, and later ran it again, it does not work. All that I get is a progress bar saying "downloading maps" but it is just a black screen. I can zoom up or down but still only see a black screen. I tried removing, and reinstalling the app, with no success. Any suggestions, Ireally want this to work. I am OS X savy, but limited Linux knowledge. Thanks.

(My Java roots showing themselves - I meant PATH, not classpath.) Modify /etc/profile to add the following text to the end of the definition of PATH: /var/lib/install/usr/bin

Maps are downloaded into whatever directory you specify in the "Maps" tab of the Settings dialog. This defaults to "/home/user/apps/maemo-mapper", but you can change it to whatever you want. To use a subdirectory of the MMC called "maemo-mapper", change the path to "/media/mmc1/maemo-mapper". Maemo Mapper will automatically create the directory if it doesn't exist. You do not have to download each map more than once.

This would be a little difficult, because Maemo Mapper doesn't inherently have the ability to convert Zip/City/etc. to latitude/longitude. Instead, you can use Google Maps or Google Earth to get the Latitude and Longitude. The easiest way (that I know of) in Google Maps is to do the following:

1. Enter the location (e.g. "Seattle, WA") into Google Maps and let it map your requested location.
2. Pan the map [em]just slightly[/em].
3. Right-click the "Link to this page" link and copy the URL. It should look something like this:
Buried in that string is the substring "&ll=", and after that is the latitude and longitude.

My concern with this was just the copyright issues with creating an application with the specific goal of downloading mass amounts of maps from private commercial sources. We get around that in Maemo Mapper by not providing a URL, and since it's not solely a map download program (but a map display program).

I think the "Download by Area", "Download by Route", and "Auto-Download" options should be enough for all but the most extreme of needs, and since I can't officially support those extreme needs, I don't think I'll be attempting to build an application to fulfill those needs.

Plus, I hate programming in Windows. :)

Accented characters shouldn't pose a problem. Anything that works in Google Maps (or, more accurately, in the GPS Driving Directions web service, should work in Maemo Mapper. If it doesn't, it's a bug (and that sounds like what this is). I'll look into it.

Valid addresses [em]are[/em] saved in memory using auto-complete. As you tap in an address, it should display a list of all matching addresses as you tap. I tried to make it a combo box, but I had serious issues with the GtkComboEntry widget on Maemo, and besides, as the list gets large the combo box becomes nearly useless - autocompletion is more effective in this case.

The idea of including GPE Contact information (perhaps as part of the autocomplete feature mentioned above) is not a bad one. I'll add it to my TODO list... If you want to add it yourself, I'll accept (and possibly modify) any patch that you submit toward this end.

Thanks for the feedback.

The application starts you out at your last GPS position, or 0 degrees latitude, 0 degree longitude if you don't have a GPS receiver. Try zooming out all the way to see if you can get back to the world view.

If it still doesn't work, run this command in XTerm (which will clear your settings in GConf) and re-start Maemo Mapper:

I also have the same issue. I wrote a couple of direction in the GPX site and get the routing file. When loading it in the nokia it gives to me a parsing problem.

If I tried also to write the direction in the nokia with the same result.

Maybe it is related with maps out side of US... I'm triying a route in Spain

Great app!!!

Awesome!!!!!!!
 

Gnuite....

thank you... this is simply awesome....
IMHO this is the best app I've seen for the nokia 770...

thank you once more!
I hope the guys at gmaps don't shut the doors on this!
:)

If you do not have a GPS
 

And, if you want to make it start out somewhere else... and you don't have a GPS receiver you can do something like this:

Just make sure the app isn't running when you do this.

(It took me a bit of time to figure out how to enter a negative value for longitude... so I included it in the example above.)

Great app

can the maemo mapper show hybrid maps of google?

Thanks

I played around with the maemo-mapper yesterday and today... and is great!
I tried once to download map along the route, and it did download, but the wrong maps (this is the only problem I saw). Here is the screenshot:

http://www.poze.org/screenshot01.jpg

What I think will be useful in future versions is to be able to mark a point, for example "My House", or "My Office".. etc. Anyway less features means stable application and I prefer stable!

Thanks again gnuite.

gnuite,
GPX route importing doesn't work for me either.
I also get "Error parsing GPX file"

Can it be because my "actual" position in Maemo Mapper, and the starting position in the gpx file differ?

Just a few notes:
without a gps, when I restart the program, it always defaults to 0:0 a the previous zoom level... and not the previous manual LAT/LONG selection.

It would be nice, in the Maps/download Area, if we could copy the actual view center LAT and LONG with "copy" button.. without having to type the actual numbers...
It would be nice, if the previous inserted values could stay in memory, for example, to set the top-left, and the going to the map, defining the bottom-right, and comming back to the Maps/download Area, and set this final value (without loosing the previous top-left entry).

Also, GPX Driving Directions Webpage, uses port 8080.
this makes it impossible to use this feature from certain firewalls/mobile services that only allow port 80...


thanks

"home lat/lon"-preference?
 

A high quality application, thanks a lot gnuite. There aren't too many of those for Maemo yet.

This is not fun -- A "home lat/lon"-preference would be great.

That's the problem. How exactly do I modify /etc/profile? When I try typing that in, it says permission denied (I'm in root).

Just figured out the "Error parsing GPX file" !!!
When I used GPX Driving Directions page, I simple chose "save"... and then placed that xml file on the rsmmc card...
The problem is that the file is a html file... and not the gpx file...
so.. the solution is to copy the output on the browser... and then paste that on a new file...

Unfortunately, Google's hybrid maps are not available as downloadable bitmaps, so, short of licensing NavTek's street data, this would be near impossible.

Even the topo maps would be pretty hard to integrate into Maemo Mapper now, as they are based on a completely different map identifier scheme (not X/Y; instead more quadtree-esque). Doable, but since I prefer the street data, I don't think I'll be tackling that problem at the moment.

Oh, yeah, sorry, I should have mentioned that I optimized that GPX Driving Directions page to work on the Nokia 770's web browser. And for some reason, I had to set the MIME type to text/xml, otherwise it would not save the file correctly, or it would append a ".html" to the filename.

If you use the GPX Driving Directions page on the Nokia 770 and save the result to your device, it should work fine.

I thought everyone was having problems with the integrated Route Downloading in Maemo Mapper itself - is that not the case?

Yes, this is an acceptable workaround if you don't have a GPS receiver. What I really should have done (and what will be in version 0.2) is to save the last center location as well. Since this project was born around my GPS receiver, though, I didn't think of that.

Fortunately, publicizing the software has opened my eyes to these use cases - I never really thought that so many people would use Maemo Mapper without a GPS receiver! Google Maps does the same thing Maemo Mapper does with a GPS receiver (and much more).

Of course, having said that, I've recently found myself using Maemo Mapper more and more in "GPS Disabled" mode, to download a route, or to demo it to people in my office, or to get a quick map. It [em]is[/em] a lot faster (and arguably more usable on the Nokia 770 screen) than Google Maps.

Version 0.2 will be much more friendly to those without GPS receivers.

Did that problem persist after you restarted Maemo Mapper? What is the location (lat/lon would be nice, or just city/state/country) in the screenshot?

Landmarks (similar to Google's "Restaurants near Houston, TX" functionality) are something I want to get into Maemo Mapper, hopefully even incorporating Google Maps' functionality. When that goes in, the ability to add landmarks on the fly should be easy.

The hardest part of allowing the user to add landmarks is going to be organizing them. You can create a landmark GPX file for your home, and one for your workplace (you can actually do this now with single-point Routes), and you can load one with all of the gas stations near you, but if you "Add" a waypoint, which landmark set should it go in? Do you keep track of all loaded landmark files and give the user a right-click menu to choose from? Does it automatically save?

It'll take some thought, and the priority here is UI cleanliness. The menus are already getting pretty full... It was nice back in the day (pre-release) when there were so few menu items that there were no submenus. Now it's requiring more clicks to be useful; I don't really want that trend to continue.

Anyway, a click-and-hold would be appropriate for adding a mark. It's just a matter of data organization and not confusing the user...

Yeah, I'm going to provide better support in version 0.2 for using Maemo Mapper without a GPS Receiver. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hm. I actually meant for those numbers to be selectable, so that you could use copy/paste, although I never tested it because I mostly envisioned them as only being used for general reference (around which you would choose bracketing values). I'll make them copy/pastable at least, though.

I can do this, and since you mentioned it, I probably will, although I have to admit I don't see much utility in it. Why download the same area twice?

I'll tell you how _I_ would use the "Download Area" functionality. Use Google Earth to get the lat/lons of an area around you that you want at highest detail (zoom=0). Aim for maybe 10% of your total allocated map space (yeah, I know, it's hard to estimate now, but I'll try to add some better feedback in version 0.2). Download that area.

Then use Google Earth to get the lat/lons of a larger area around you and download that at a higher zoom level (I would skip every other zoom level, to save space, but you don't have to). Repeat the process until you're downloading the whole world (90, -180 to -90, 180) at a relatively-high zoom level, like 10 or 11, and include all the higher zoom levels if you want to show off that "I can zoom out to see the whole world!" effect to your friends.

Doing this gives you the area around you at high detail, for when you're going to parties or gatherings or whatnot, and whenever you travel outside your home area, you still have at least enough level of detail that you could use highways to get around to major cities. Depending on how much space you allocate for your maps, the detail you have outside of your home area will vary.

Of course, everyone should tune their repositories to suit their own needs. Unless, of course, you're one of [em]those[/em] people, who have a cell-phone with data service, and you can just use "Auto-Download" all the time (I'm jealous, can you tell? :)).

Another alternative is to slowly build your map repository by downloading maps "by Route" whenever you need to get somewhere. Going to a party? Download the route, download maps along the route at various zoom levels, and you're good to go for the party. Eventually, you'll map the whole world! (Consider it an incentive to travel. :))

Unfortunately, my ISP blocks port 80 outgoing, so I can't help that without getting a relatively-expensive port redirector service. Sorry. :(

But soon there will be hope! For version 0.2 I hope to bypass the GPX Driving Directions page entirely, cutting out the middle man, after which point you would only need to use port-80-touting servers to access driving directions. I could have done it for version 0.1, but the demand for a release meant I had to stop writing new features eventually. :)

is downtown portland, oregon. I did it again and had almost same problem.
here is the screenshot:
http://www.poze.org/screenshot00.jpg
and here is the route if you need it for debuging:
http://www.poze.org/office-home.xml

if I just zoom in and out from the keys and scroll around, the map for the same region is downloaded right.

-i

If you don't have vim to edit the /etc/profile file, copy/paste this sed command into your XTerm:

Use cat to make sure that the new profile (in /tmp/profile.new) looks okay, and if it does, move it to /etc/profile (you should probably back up the original file, just in case!).

Once you move it, test it by typing "source /etc/profile" into XTerm. If an error occurs, restore your backup and then retrying the flite command. Otherwise, retry the flite command to see if it works now. If not, PM me and I'll work you through it, or you can mail your Nokia 770 with a SASE to:

Gimmy Ur. Tabblit
1250 NokiaStealer St.
Bermuda Triangle, NW 12345

(Just kidding, please do not mail your Nokia 770.)

If what I've said confuses you, you might not want to try it, and even if you do try it, do not hold me responsible for any strange gooey substance that may ooze from your Nokia 770's USB port.

I'll look into possibly modifying the PATH environment variable (in Maemo Mapper, not in the installer) to automatically include this path, or I'll just bite the bullet and hardcode the entire path (gulp), or maybe I can provide it as yet another config option in the Settings dialog (grumble... it grows beyond my desires...). Or, my favorite option might be to just change the system() call to just try both flite and /var/lib/install/usr/bin/flite.

Sweet! It worked perfectly! Thanks again!