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I was checking out my Knoppix distro, and whadya you know, an app call "gpsdrive" is packaged with it and can be run on a pda. I'm thinking that I should give a used Zaurus a chance before pluncking down $500 for a Garmin IQUE 3600 and the car kit.
GPSdrive has a project page on freshmeat, and I also came across this earlier /. article discussing GPS with PDAs and this post mentioning gpsdrive.

I was checking out my Knoppix distro, and whadya you know, an app call "gpsdrive" is packaged with it and can be run on a pda. I'm thinking that I should give a used Zaurus a chance before pluncking down $500 for a Garmin IQUE 3600 and the car kit.
GPSdrive has a project page on freshmeat, and I also came across this earlier /. article discussing GPS with PDAs and this post mentioning gpsdrive.

I use gpsdrive without any driver issues. The real problem is the availability of maps.

In fairness to MySQL AB, I think they still feel that, for example, foreign keys are unnecessary. I just think they've put them in because they kept hearing "your program sucks 'cuz it doesn't support foreign keys" and (more importantly) "Gee, we'd like to use your product, but we insist that we must have foreign keys so we can't", so they gave in and added them.

I wonder, though. Any chance PostgreSQL might add a "MySQL-compatible" client library? There seem to be quite a few programs that currently only support MySQL as a database server - often programs that don't NEED more than basic database support (e.g. GPSDrive's use of MySQL to store its list of waypoints and Kismet-detected WAP's...) If there were a compatibility layer for PostgreSQL such that it could "fill in" for a MySQL server without re-writing the client side program that would be handy. If MySQL continues to expand to the point where it is no longer "leaner" than more heavily-featured database servers then backwards-compatibility will be the main reason left to stick with MySQL...

That's silly, everyone knows that REAL open-source geeks read road maps directly from the source code, not some wussy precompiled map! (That is, if census.gov gets its act together - for some reason I can't get to this page at the moment. Probably running some proprietary OS or something...)

Seriously though - there are two open-source "road map"-type programs that I know of...

GPSDrive is a 'general purpose' map display program. It doesn't render roads, etc. "on the fly" (though it WILL render NASA satellite images on-the-fly if you have the gigantic raw data file for it) but does have built-in downloading of maps from online sources or importing your own. (It also interfaces with Kismet for wardriving if you are set up for it).

There IS a project for generating roadmaps on-the-fly called Roadmap, though I've not yet tried it out. (I did, of course, just download the sourcecode so that I could...)

• Position (needs GNUstep)
• linuxNav
• roadMap
• gpsdrive
• Xastir

I found most of these projects at TuxMobil.org. I havn't actually used any of these programs, but I'm working on it!

I find it's especially useful for any application that involves "talking to a service over the network" or dealing with text-like (including html/xml) files and/or relatively simple GD-compatible graphics file manipulation (generating graphs, maps, etc.), whether it's a database server, a webserver, an ftp server, a socket, etc. etc.

My own current personal project involves figuring out the "TIGER/Line" geographic data from the US Census bureau so that I can render the features at will over other existing map graphics and turn them into maps for GPSDrive. I've already got PHP scripts generating "USGS Topographic maps or TIGER/Line [1998 data rendered from the census bureau site] features rendered atop USGS Terraserver aerial photos" for GPSDrive...

I've also considered doing a Kismet client class for PHP. Not real useful for old-fashioned web use, but could be handy for CLI (or PHP-GTK or whatever).

And why not? It's fun.

Kismet comes with a program called gpsmap, which can plot your route. There are various sources you can pull from, Mapquest-style included. GpsDrive is handy too.

I'll also add a plug for GPSDrive, which can run alongside Kismet and display your position "live" on a variety of different maps...

It also displays the position of the AP's as estimated by the running copy of Kismet.

My laptop could be used for any of the purposes listed in 1-4, especially as a big GPS / map display using GPSDrive. It does not, however, have a lockout switch to limit its display capabilities to these functions while driving. (And since it would make a good car audio source, I wouldn't want it to, but that's another matter.) Do you know any laptops or handheld GPS-capable computers that do have such a lockout?

That's what the law calls for, if such a device is to be used legally in the front seat or with the display in view of the driver.

timothy

The ideal way to gather this kind of data is to integrate your map generator into a package like GPSDrive which is already in use by many people, all of whom necessarily have some kind of PC or PDA in their car, with an attached GPS. Since maps are downloaded by gpsdrive's scripts from internet mapping sites, nearly all of these systems are connected to the internet at least occasionally.

I don't think radio comms are that intresting for the vast mayority of users, except for possibly the cellid information. However, This thing is pretty useless if it can't run standard qt/embedded ( c++ ) apps. The apis and performance J2ME gives are simply too limited.

kstars opera, nethack, gpsdrive ssh, vnc, qt-rdesktop, irc etc are stuff that would be very hard to implement in MIDP, while they are ALREADY available for qt/embedded, probably needing just small display size tweaks.

While we are at it, could it be possible get some screenshots of this device? so far I've only seen the marketing pics of it.

$fink install gpsdrive

Not trying to be flippant, but it looks like gpsdrive does the things you're looking for. I admit I am a gps n00b (eyeing one for christmas), but from my initial research, gpsdrive does route finding.

psxndc

$fink install gpsdrive

Not trying to be flippant, but it looks like gpsdrive does the things you're looking for. I admit I am a gps n00b (eyeing one for christmas), but from my initial research, gpsdrive does route finding.

psxndc

Too late:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl= ht tp%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcI SAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSor t&query=cuecat

I'm going to hold on to mine, just for the usability factor. I'm sure I'll find _something_ to do with it. Hell, now that Fritz Ganter has released: Batchelor, I'll probably just end up using it to replace my non-existent girlfriend.

Now if only it could cook... :)

take a look at http://gpsdrive.kraftvoll.at/ for a fairly good program. You can download maps from mapblast and expedia (I don't know if they have all the east-european countries, but take a look. If you can't download the maps, you can scan in some paper maps, enter a few co-ordinates and scale and use that instead.

Keep an eye out for gpsdrive (http://gpsdrive.kraftvoll.at/).

There is some integration with point-to-point directions, along with some patches to work with directions given by mapquest and the like.

Not sure if it works on Zaurus, but it works great on Linux and ipaq

Dude, check out GPSdrive for linux GPS navigation software (shameless plug: like that used in the dash pc.

GPSDrive HOMEPAGE