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A Better Breed of GPS Software?
willo asks: "I recently built an on board computer for my Grand Cherokee.
The initial uses for it include music, gps navigation, on board diagnostics and a baby cam so I can see how my kid is in that rear facing seat. After lots of research and testing, I'm really disappointed with the
mapping software out there for Linux. Gpsdrive provides the basic functionality I need, but the street names are built into the image and
are difficult to read at a glance while driving. Not to mention that it has to download the maps it needs ahead of time. Xastir can handle almost any map out there, but it reads through every map for each redraw! It also seems to lack the ability to zoom intelligently based on location. Note that it's not really designed to be a navigation aid, but rather a ham radio APRS tool. (I am a ham). Delorme Street Atlas USA does what I really want, but it's been a pain to make run properly under wine. Is anyone else out there working on a decent navigation application?"
Map Sources do exist for this! Bruce Perens made TIGER/line data availible. NAVTECH is the map source for pretty much all the vehicle navigation systems out there, and high resolution maps are availible from the Geographical Information Survey."
"To be really usable navigation software should do the following:
- handle maps efficiently and draw them quickly
- have intelligently organized map sets for countries/states. (You can't download a friggin map in the middle of Montana!)
- include serial gps/gpsd support. (just about everyone has this)
Map Sources do exist for this! Bruce Perens made TIGER/line data availible. NAVTECH is the map source for pretty much all the vehicle navigation systems out there, and high resolution maps are availible from the Geographical Information Survey."
...if you can code in Java, my open source GPS library will make this a much easier process. Demo applications are included (for PC's and Palm's).
.pdf format). I built some mapping/tracking display software (based on the GPS Library) that is used as part of this project.
All at Chaeron GPS Software
Also check out the Mobile GPS Demonstration Platform (MGDP) project info (in
Enjoy!
Chaeron Corporation
I write GPS mapping software for Windows, aimed at the outdoor recreation market. You can check it out at http://www.expertgps.com/
ExpertGPS is unique in that it pulls down topo maps and aerial photos over your Internet connection, so you can scroll the map across the country and the program automatically downloads and displays the correct maps. For the geocachers out there, ExpertGPS reads geocache data downloaded from http://www.geocaching.com/, and even links back to the geocaching website to report your finds.
The next release will support scanned paper maps and additional file formats, and a PocketPC version is in the works.
About a year ago, a bunch of GPS developers got together to work on a standard XML file format for exchanging GPS data. A number of programs now support GPX (the GPS Exchange format), including programs for Mac, Windows, and Linux. For details, see http://www.topografix.com/gpx_resources.asp
More intelligent map handling is in the works for Xastir. For things like Tiger maps it already doesn't read thru every map for each redraw and the maps are nicely detailed. And organizing the tigermap sets is high on the list of todo's.
If you see features that are needed, come on by the sourceforge project page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xastir/ and leave a feature request. Or join us on the mailing lists at: http://krypton.hscs.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/ xastir-dev
and http://krypton.hscs.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/ xastir
The developers are active and very responsive to reasonable feature requests. (heck we even accept some of the unreasonable ones :-)
If you wan't to try something fancy, you can have overlapping maps of various scales and use PostGIS to select the correct map
PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL
object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS "spatially enables" the
PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database
for geographic information systems (GIS), much like ESRI's SDE or
Oracle's Spatial extension. PostGIS follows the OpenGIS "Simple Features
Specification for SQL" and will be submitted for compliance testing at
version 1.0.
PostGIS has been developed by Refractions Research Inc as a research
project in spatial database technology. PostGIS is released under the
GNU General Public License. We intend to continue development as time
and resources permit. Our list of future projects includes enhanced
technology for data loading and dumping, user interface tools for direct
data access and manipulation, and support for advanced topologies at the
server side, such as coverages, networks, and surfaces.
http://postgis.refractions.net/
http://qgis.sourceforge.net/
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This isn't trolling, so I hope I don't get flamed, but here goes...
Have you tried getting Microsoft MapPoint 2002 to run under Wine? I've been playing with the MSDN version from work and it seems to work real well. It's just, obviously, Win32-based. It might be worth investigating... Huge install, but that's all the maps.
Although GRASS (GPL) is just now running on PC's via Cygwin, it was designed as a Unix GIS. What it provides:
* A framework for organizing, storing and retrieving maps.
* Map information that can be presented multiple layers at a time.
* A means of generating an image file based on various map layers.
* A map feature attribute mechanism. This is what allows you to control street names and how they appear as you zoom in and out.
* A C api with over 800 GIS functions. (Also a Java interface)
With GRASS, you could write a C program that monitors the GPS fix queries the map database and repeatadly presents the info as a image on your screen.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
There isn't one. Sorry, but them's the facts.
Right now, the best solution available is from Alpine. By combining these products you can have everything that you want with the exception of the web cam. But, you can hack that yourself.
No, none of these are free. In fact, they are really quite expensive but, it sounds like you want the best so, here it is.
The other alternative is to get another vehicle that already has this equipment installed and beautifully integrated into the vehicle. You will think that you have died and gone to heaven if you trade your Grand Cherokee for an Acura MDX. The vehicle is one of the finest SUVs available and the gadgets are sweet! The navigation system does all that you want, has voice prompts integrated into the mind blowing Bose audio system and your rear passengers will truely appreciate the DVD changer.
TIGER/Line data for the entire country (U.S.) is always available for free from the Census Bureau in TIGER format. If you find free datasets online you can pretty much bet they are based on TIGER. If you need data in a more standard industry format, ESRI makes TIGER available in their Shape format here although it may not always be the latest available. TIGER is not the best data for routing and/or GPS applications, but being complete and free it will generally do the job in a pinch. There are lots of other companies that resell this data in more useful formats, sometimes with many enhancements.
Regarding software:
Communication with a GPS via NMEA sentences is relatively simple. NMEA is a standard text format that most (all?) GPSs are able to use. I have written several simple objects that parse NMEA into usable information and I'm sure there is lots of existing code available to do just this if you dig.
GIS was originally a UNIX market and some vendors (ESRI atleast) still sell GIS software for these platforms. The problem is, GIS has been traditionally expensive and tools like ArcInfo are way beyond your needs. I have yet to find a simple GIS with routing for Xwindows.
There is a small company in Poland called TatukGIS that sells an excellent GIS toolkit called the TatukGIS Developer Kernel. It includes a very capable GIS viewer object and a GPS object for NMEA. These tools are written with and originally designed for Borland Delphi although they now make an ActiveX version available. Last year they made a release that was compatible with one of the earlier versions of Kylix. I'm not sure if the current version is still focused on cross-platform compatibility, but this would be an excellent tool to use and would do the job with no problems.
I have both Kylix and the DK here as well as plenty of data and have worked with the DK quite a bit on the Windows platform. I'll have to see if I can get a little tool built on one of the XWindows machines. From previous posts it seems that there may be an interest if such a tool were created.
except for GPS drive, there is nothing that is worth even messing with...
Obviously I've done a bad job promoting pygps. Or is it one of the ones you think is too young to use? Actually, it's older than gpsdrive. I just haven't worked on it (nor had as many contributors) as Fritz.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I checked the pygps site. It seems to be a program that moves your location curser over a bitmap photo and little else. (I didn't find a description regarding map or curser movement) Compared to the National Geographic program (originaly Wildflower Productions) the pygps program is very simplistic. The National Geographic TOPO program takes hundreds of maps at 5 zoom levels (diffrent scale maps including the 7.5 minute series) and seamlessly stitches them together (moving map display, not a moving curser on a stationary map). It also has full waypoint management including editing, downloading and uploading to GPS or File. The maps also include elevation which the pygps program does not do. I can do a freehand or GPS downloaded route or track and see the elevation profile and distance of the route on the map. I can drive the entire state and the display will move the map anywhere in the state at any zoom level autoloading the next map as needed. I can download all my GPS waypoints and routes and display them on the map (Great for geocaching). I can search for most any feature such as ridge, stream, lake, mountain peak, etc and the map will show me where it is. (and make a waypoint for my GPS if desired) That feature was great for tracking the advancing Biscuit fire in Oregon. The mention of a ridge or stream could let me know right where the fire was.m #state Not all states are released yet. Your milage may vary.
The pygps map has a long way to go to become a replacement for the Windows version of the National Geographic TOPO 7.5 minute series of state maps. Hopefully National Geographic will port this to Linux soon, but in the meantime, I'm stuck with Windows to use it.
Since I plugged the program, the state series maps can be found here; http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/cdroms.cf
The truth shall set you free!