DIY: Simple PSP-GPS hookup

[Video_freak]

Lots of motorcyclists purchase car gps units and mount them on their motorcycles because they are considerably cheaper then the "motorcycle" units. I'd love to mount my PSP to my motorcycle and have it do GPS navigation.

make sure it doesnt fall off lol

this is great! i lov how much the homebrew community is developing software hacks but also hardware hacks. i probably dont have the skills needed to make one of these, but if i did, i would make it anyday

[Arellano]

theres going to be a new update on psp firmware 3.0 on november 13

[Psyberjock]

You should be able to fit good portion of Japan on 1Gb stick (with street level detail).
I'll provide linux/cygwin scripts to generate the maps together with installation instructions...
You'll need to enter the gps (lat/lon) location and the size of the map.. and the rest will be taken care of...
Just out of curiocity i generated a small map for some location in Japan (not sure what it is since I don't speak japanese). The map took ~4 minutes to generate.. Here is some screenshots of it inside the PSP mapviewer (this is a dev version so never mind the zeros in the debug line):



same location zoomed out:

Sweet! I'll definitely build one next pay day. One more question though: Can I use a different GPS unit? It might be hard to find that same one here in Japan, and ordering overseas in a major pain in the a$$.

FYI: I'm not sure where the first map is, but there are lots of hospitals and clinics and stuff (plus a family mart! It'll be great to have convienence store locations on there!) And the second map is of Shinjuku, which is part of Tokyo.

This is a great step for PSP homebrew! Thanks Deniska! You're even bridging the gap between homebrew and hardware mods. Excellent!

Once I build this, I'll be happy to help you test. I live in a big city and I do lots of walking.

Oh, thought of one more thing. I recognize those maps, will this program be able to preserve address information as well? Typing in an address would be a nice way to find things on the move sometimes. Or perhaps include some way to flag certain locations. That way I can flag them at home and be able to locate them on the map and reach them when I'm traveling.

Thanks again!

[F9zDark]

I too have thought about building this. I found alot of the GPSlims on ebay, for anyone that is interested in finding them. They sell for around 65 USD and ship to US for 20 USD.

Don't know about overseas though...

Will this program show the route highlighted or will it function like most other GPS programs with actual directions (ie Left turn in 2 miles)?

[deniska]

Sweet! I'll definitely build one next pay day. One more question though: Can I use a different GPS unit? It might be hard to find that same one here in Japan, and ordering overseas in a major pain in the a$$.

In theory you should be able to use any GPS device with serial port. Just make sure that the specs are comparable to GPSlimg 236, check the output voltage, check the baud - you may need to recompile my test program with a different baud value (currently it is set to 38400).. and.. make sure your receiver is self powered. PSP can only provide 2.5 volts to external devices, which is not enough for most GPS units outthere...and you don't want to carry a box with batteries and extra wires in your pocket ;-)

FYI: I'm not sure where the first map is, but there are lots of hospitals and clinics and stuff (plus a family mart! It'll be great to have convienence store locations on there!) And the second map is of Shinjuku, which is part of Tokyo.

Both maps should point to the same location at different scales, unless I screwed something up during the screen capture...

Once I build this, I'll be happy to help you test. I live in a big city and I do lots of walking.

Let me know if you succeed - I may need a few people to test the map viewer before I release it...

Oh, thought of one more thing. I recognize those maps, will this program be able to preserve address information as well? Typing in an address would be a nice way to find things on the move sometimes. Or perhaps include some way to flag certain locations. That way I can flag them at home and be able to locate them on the map and reach them when I'm traveling.

Perhaps I can implement this in the future. At the moment my goal is just to release a basic GPS capable mapviewer.
I did code, so called "attractions" feature, where the application can compare the coordinates of the cursor with a list of coordinates from a file and plot a small icon if there is a match...
So technically you can have your customized file with your favorite locations...

Well it is a pretty big project.. and since I am the only coder - don't expect all the features right away... ;-)

[deniska]

Will this program show the route highlighted or will it function like most other GPS programs with actual directions (ie Left turn in 2 miles)?

Defenitelly not in the inital release...

I don't think it will ever do route calculation on a fly - I simply don't have the data for it...

What can be implemented is the ability to import a premade route over WIFI or as a file. The program then will be able to compare the set of waypoints to your current location and display a message "TURN LEFT" once you get close to a nearest way point...

[Krazzy Roy]

i cant wait for the map to be released man thank you

[F9zDark]

Perhaps there is an open-source GPS project that may contain this data? Being a Window's controlled world, I doubt any of the GPS makers would have a version available for Linux, but there might be something to look around for to maybe get any information for later releases.

[F9zDark]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxcar

This may be of some use, but like your program is still in development.

I am wondering how the other GPS devices handle route detection. Is everything preprogrammed or does it actually do calculations itself?

If its preprogrammed, well, that would certainly be a daunting task...

[deniska]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxcar

This may be of some use, but like your program is still in development.

I am wondering how the other GPS devices handle route detection. Is everything preprogrammed or does it actually do calculations itself?

If its preprogrammed, well, that would certainly be a daunting task...

I took a quick look at the docs and the code - I don't think they touched the route calculation part yet...and they don't seem to explain which data they planning on using for it....