How Would Gps Work?

[Vince2501]

Explain in detail. Not trying to be snobbish, but I'm curous and heaven't much in the way of documentation on the feature.

 

[Tom`]

Explain in detail. Not trying to be snobbish, but I'm curous and heaven't much in the way of documentation on the feature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_positioning_system

It's not built-in; however, many USB GPS units should work, and perhaps BT ones as well, if they have Linux drivers.

 

[bigtruck]

Not quite sure what you're asking here. There's no internal GPS, but you can attach one via USB or Bluetooth or maybe SDIO if any of those exist. Assuming there's linux drivers for it, a quick google search shows that the most common interface is probably GPSd. That, along with navigational software, would have to be ported to the Pandora.

 

[Rayek]

I'm actually interested in using GPS on the Pandora as well, it would make life a bit easier to travel.

 

[juanvvc]

It's not built-in; however, many USB GPS units should work, and perhaps BT ones as well, if they have Linux drivers.

It's usually the other way USB GPS will work if they have Linux drivers. BT ones should work with no problems at all (they do not need drivers)

Vince2501, just plug any GPS unit to the Pandora and you'll see your position on screen. It is not very useful since it's a set of many numbers and that's not user-friendly. Then, you'll have to buy the maps (they are the expensive part of the system) and develop/download/buy a nice navigator for them, maybe one that talks.

 

[Tashi]

Are free Maps available? I only know this free Street Map: http://www.openstreetmap.org/ but topographic(or Satelite) Maps would be great too (specially for hiking).

 

[Tobriand]

I must say, I'm interested in this too... I'm sure GPS would work, but GPS requires, as mentioned, maps in order to be actually much use for anything except emergency rescue.

How hard would it be to write a program that caches the requisite data from Google Earth/Maps (in particular, the bit of the planet that you're likely to be traverseing - say, you plug in the unit and it'll grab the images for a 20 mile radius unless otherwise specified)? Anyone up for the task?

 

[quindo]

How about porting Maemo Mapper ?
It can use maps form Yahoo, Google, Openstreetmap and VE.
It can also use flite for spoken directions.

 

[JakeK]

So the software would be on the Pandora but the GPS reciever would be external? I love this idea.

 

[Trip]

I'd probably just use this for mapping out WiFi networks in my area and maybe to guide me to places when I have a job interview, but I'd say it was easily worth paying out £20 on an adaptor for

I wasn't too impressed with Meomo Mapper when I tried it last though. Maybe because it's a little slow on the N800?

 

[WizardStan]

Are free Maps available? I only know this free Street Map: http://www.openstreetmap.org/ but topographic(or Satelite) Maps would be great too (specially for hiking).


As far as I know, most civilized countries provide maps for free. Canada's can be found here in several different formats.
I have Co-workers in the UK that claim they downloaded free maps, though I can't figure out from where. Not entirely certain about the US.

 

[Trip]

I'd say definitely get open street map working on it.
You can then just walk/drive around with the Pandora in your pocket, map out your local area and upload the data to open street maps to help out a bit.

Here's my area as it stands..

Needs a lot of work

 

[Svartalf]

It's not built-in; however, many USB GPS units should work, and perhaps BT ones as well, if they have Linux drivers.

All the BT ones should work- they're working off of the BT serial connection profile; pretty much all of them work with the N800 and they all spew the standard NMEA data stream; I'm pretty sure we can get Ambicom's or Delorme's to work just fine in BT mode (which is the one I'd suggest if you can get it- one less risk for breaking your USB jack while mobile... )

As far as I know, most civilized countries provide maps for free. Canada's can be found here in several different formats.
I have Co-workers in the UK that claim they downloaded free maps, though I can't figure out from where. Not entirely certain about the US.



The US provides rough-cut map data for free- in the form of the TIGER line database and USGS topo map data. Unfortunately, the data in question, while the basis for the data used by commercial GPS units, is not of sufficient quality to be directly used- it needs "cleanup" by way of driving the routes described by the data and then correcting as needed via GPS position plots. OpenStreetMap has imported the data and is in the process of doing this for the US, so if you're using OpenStreetMap as a source for things, it'll be decent for rough direction advice at this time.