Bluetooth Gps And Tangogps

[doublebeta]

Hey congrats on getting that to work! That would truly be EPIC on the Pandora, even tho I have no need for a GPS myself, it's still awesome! And the idea of a GPS receiver over bluetooth, props to the company who first did that, that was smart. And also, props to the OP team for then integrated bluetooth!
It fits on the screen beautifully, I really don't know why I find it so beautiful, mebe because it's teh first Pandora screenshot i've seen not made by a member of the Pandora team
Now what you gotta do is install a speech synth (festival is the name of one i think, lawl) ad hook that up and have it read street names for you! I don't know how that would go in German tho, ugh, can only imagine it being terrible(Speech synths are crap in english too lol, only just thought about the language being different).
Good to see a post I can say good job on .

 

[Grench]

I got forwarded to here from a thread I started in General asking about this. (Thank you Gruso!)

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54847-gps-software-hardware/

At some point this really deserves to be set up as a set of PND files. I.e. one for the software, one for the map files (in case someone wants to have software on one SD card and maps swapping in and out on the other).

I have been using a Garmin iQue 3600 for many years now. It has worked very well, but the maps are getting very dated - new overpasses simply aren't there, etc... Garmin has stopped updating the maps series that it uses. Since the iQue 3600 was a Palm OS GPS with integrated PIM and GPS functions - it has a lot more capabilities than any over the counter GPS I could buy today. So, it is time to start considering alternatives.

Well, with the Pandora - I see that as alternative possible #1. It needs to be able to save way points, look up locations based on address or lat/long, have a database of points of interest including businesses, give turn by turn directions and be simple enough for my wife to use. So... of the GPS software that can be made to work on the Pandora - do any of them come close to that criteria set? Add in topographic maps and it would be about perfect. Connect it to a PIM system so that it can automatically route to any address in your contacts list - then it gets into that perfect zone. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying for a high quality 'perfect' solution.

So, how far off is the current state of Linux based GPS software? Are we anywhere near what my 4-5 year old Garmin can do?

Thanks!

 

[lastaid]

I can upload a BT GPS Reader i wrote a few month ago if anyone is interested .
It's written in Java could gpl it too.

 

[DrCJBoduma]

I can upload a BT GPS Reader i wrote a few month ago if anyone is interested .
It's written in Java could gpl it too.

I'm interested. :rolleyes:

 

[Grench]

Viking GPS anyone? It is supposed to be in the Ubuntu repository - is there any chance there is an ARM version that can be made into a PND?

 

[Spirit]

Viking is in the normal repository. I did not really try it earlier but will do so right now (editing my post afterwards).

Could some smart coder try to compile http://www.luckygps.com/ ? That looks like a sweet routing tool.


edit: I successfully got Viking to get my location from gpsd, just using the normal menu and settings. Unfortunately it uses some really weird directory naming scheme for map tiles so I cannot use my downloaded tiles (and got no Wifi). Loaded some old gpx track though.

 

[Grench]

Viking is in the normal repository. I did not really try it earlier but will do so right now (editing my post afterwards).

Could some smart coder try to compile http://www.luckygps.com/ ? That looks like a sweet routing tool.


edit: I successfully got Viking to get my location from gpsd, just using the normal menu and settings. Unfortunately it uses some really weird directory naming scheme for map tiles so I cannot use my downloaded tiles (and got no Wifi). Loaded some old gpx track though.

I don't have a Pandora or a bluetooth GPS at this point - so I'm running off of articles, etc...

According to this article, Viking was the hands down favorite for general GPS functionality. Apparently it downloads map and routing data from Google?
http://www.fsckin.com/2008/04/06/review-four-linux-gps-packages/

It will probably need a network connection to get the initial set of maps going? I don't know...?

 

[Grench]

I was looking for a Bluetooth GPS that I could hard wire into a vehicle with minimal pain and then use with the Pandora - that I will hopefully get some day (~1250).

I ran across this:
http://www.amazon.com/BT-Q1300S-Keychain-Bluetooth-waypoints-Software/dp/B001EV2IY0/ref=sr_1_25?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1279122750&sr=8-25

My thought is to rip apart a 12VDC cigarette lighter to USB charging port and embed it in the overhead console. Then bend a real short USB to mini-USB cable to feed this - letting it get juice when the vehicle is on. I'd then velcro/silicone or hot glue this thing to the back of the rear view mirror. I may paint it to match the interior so it doesn't stand out so bad - though as is it looks more like a toy than any serious kit.

So, is there any reason that you can think of why that Keychain bluetooth GPS -won't- work in that kind of scenario?

 

[Cheese]

I just made a wiki page with a lot of the information from this topic. (http://www.pandorawiki.org/GPS)

The instructions for setting up a bluetooth GPS are a little different then those in this topic, but they're what I used and they work for me. Haven't had a chance to set up gpsd or tangoGPS yet so I left those sections fairly empty for now since I wouldn't know if the steps actually worked or not.

 

[j.pickens]

OK,
So I successfully loaded the gpsd older version, and then tangoGPS.
Now I realize, its probably loaded and running on system RAM.
I'm worried that the maps it's automagically downloading will quickly fill my available RAM.
Any way to send all this to the SD card?

I tried adding the SD media to the opkg.config file, and it didn't work as shown.

Any help would be appreciated.

My bluetooth GPS is charging up right now, haven't used it in over a year.
We'll see how she works.

The tangoGPS seems awesome, though.
Found my house and surrounding area, really sweet.

 

[zapman]

OK,
So I successfully loaded the gpsd older version, and then tangoGPS.
Now I realize, its probably loaded and running on system RAM.
I'm worried that the maps it's automagically downloading will quickly fill my available RAM.
Any way to send all this to the SD card?

I tried adding the SD media to the opkg.config file, and it didn't work as shown.

Any help would be appreciated.

My bluetooth GPS is charging up right now, haven't used it in over a year.
We'll see how she works.

The tangoGPS seems awesome, though.
Found my house and surrounding area, really sweet.

I have installed tangoGPS to the NAND as well. It has only a few kb. But the downloadfolder for the map tiles is defaulted to your home dir. So all you have to do is change it in the programs' settings. There is a filebrowser to tell where to store the files, so just set it to some folder on your SD card. Voila!

Only downer: the png tile files are really really small, about 1kb each. The standard partition size on my SD is much bigger, so for the area of Munich with 6 zoom levels I get about 25.000 tiles, which are about 120mb in size but need about 800mb on the SD card... As I got a 32GB card that's rather I empty I don't care so much but reducing the bloch size may be a good thing.. or even better: switch to Navit and use vector data!!!

 

[DrCJBoduma]

Yay, finally got mine working. (drove to the shops to try it out) Cheers Spirit and others for your help.

CJ

 

[j.pickens]

Zapman,
Thanks for the tip about changing the default map directories from the program.
The field for editing this was in the "i" gadget, after you scroll right or left from the speed display.
I was looking for a more normal right click or "file, edit preferences" menu.
But since you told me it was in there, I went looking, and there it was!

Now off to get the bluetooth dialed in.

 

[gruso]

I just made a wiki page with a lot of the information from this topic. (http://www.pandorawiki.org/GPS)

The instructions for setting up a bluetooth GPS are a little different then those in this topic, but they're what I used and they work for me. Haven't had a chance to set up gpsd or tangoGPS yet so I left those sections fairly empty for now since I wouldn't know if the steps actually worked or not.

Great work, will note it in the blog post.

 

[kerplunk]

Found a cheap bluetooth GPS receiver here key ring gps It is on a deal a day site, so today only.

Thought someone would find some use with it. I just bought one.

 

[Creature XL]

Alrite. As some have had success with their bluetooth, I am sure someone can help me.

Doing it the wiki way I get this:

sdptool browse 00:18:96<some more of the MAC>
Failed to connect to SDP server on 00:18:96:<...>: Host is down

doing it the way explained in the first post, I get this:
cat /dev/rfcomm0
cat: /dev/rfcomm0: Host is down

The discovery of the GPS-710 works flawlessly, so I think bluetooth is working.


EDIT (fixed?):
There was no sdp-daemon runnin gon the pandora. I started one with "sudo sdptool add NAP".
Now i get at lest GPS-data from teh rfcomm0 device at least.

EDIT2 (notfixed):
I still can't GPSD
To my las edit, SDPd (and HCId) aren't needed any more. As the BT stack Bluez4 is used. And in that version all daemons are inside the bluetoothd. i can sometimes (very rarely) read data from /dev/rfcomm0. I can a bi tmor eoften do a successful "l2ping". Further it seems that GPSd always spits out the error message "Can't connect to socket" regardless if that really is the case.
This is all very frustrating. I wonder what the problem is, as we are all using the same Software (at least I think so) and have the same platform.

I am open for any help.

 

[Creature XL]

I spend two days with GPS and the Pandora
I had partly success. At least I was able under certain circumstances to read the NMAE data with teh cat-command from teh rfcomm-device. However, everytime I started teh gpsd I get "can't bind to port gpsd". And yes, i verified that this port is not used and I removed all lock files from /var/run. I am using gpsd 2.38 as proposed in this thread.

I can use the same bluetooth GPS receiver with my Linux PC (using GPSd 2.39) without problems and I can read the rfcomm-device every time, not just under certain circumstances. So I can safely assume that it is not the GPS receiver which is at fault here. Well, as I am writing this I have the idea I can use the bluetooth dongle with my Pandora I report bak when I had time to checkt

 

[Spirit]

That is weird.

I can get NMEA after a cold boot with just the rfcomm0 bind and then "catting" it. No idea what could be wrong there, sorry.