Mapviewer status

**deniska** · July 14th, 2006, 06:29

It has been awhile since the last blog update. A few people inquired on the status of this development, so here is the info:

The project is still very much active.
I desided to re-write it from scratch since the previous version was too buggy and limited in functionality. I went away from SDL graphics libs - they exibited very unpredictable behavior and switched to custom graphics lib, mostly borrowed from lua player.
Furthermore, I desided to dump yahoo as the map donnor (with it's US & Canada only coverage) and start milking Google maps.
Google has worldwide map coverage, better map graphics and more of less open API for map manipulation.

I am pretty much done with scaling, xy <==>lat/lon conversion, basic attractions display, NMEA sentences parser, scripts to acquire maps
The new version has support for regular, satelite and hybrid maps...
I was able to load and display a farely large map:
40000sq km at street level resolution with 8 zoom levels. The size of it got pretty big: ~550MB.. but memory sticks are getting cheap nowdays :-)
The map interface and behavior are very similar to Google maps...

I am still waiting for my GPS order (Holux GPSlim236) to arrive, so I could start working on GPS connectivity...
If everything goes well I should be able to release a more or less stable version in a week or two, so keep checking the site :-)

**Gizmo356** · July 14th, 2006, 06:35

awesome

**futaris** · July 14th, 2006, 12:05

You should take a look at the following Projects:

Maemo Mapper - Google Maps on Nokia 770

Mobile GMaps - Google Maps through J2ME

GTKDrive - GPS Navigation for GTK+ / Linux

These are all GPL, I think, so ripping and reusing code in a GPL project shouldn't be a problem as long as you use the GPL too.

NB, I have a GPSlim 236 too, and I've connected to it through the mini USB-B (at 3.3V serial levels) cable... There's nothing really special about it. Connecting it to the PSP Headphone connector (2.5V serial levels) is simple. Just look on ps2dev.org forums for more info.

Oh, and you might want to play with SiRFDemo too. It will let you reconfigure the serial port to run at different speeds or use the SiRF protocol rather than NMEA.

PM if you need someone to test code, work on Sourceforge project, etc... I'd like to have Google Maps on my PSP, but I don't really have the time to write this from scratch. NB, I'd be more inclined to use SDL so that the code is more portable, and can be used on several systems...

**deniska** · July 14th, 2006, 15:45

Thanks for the info.

Originally Posted by futaris

You should take a look at the following Projects:

Maemo Mapper - Google Maps on Nokia 770

Mobile GMaps - Google Maps through J2ME

GTKDrive - GPS Navigation for GTK+ / Linux

These are all GPL, I think, so ripping and reusing code in a GPL project shouldn't be a problem as long as you use the GPL too.

NB, I have a GPSlim 236 too, and I've connected to it through the mini USB-B (at 3.3V serial levels) cable... There's nothing really special about it. Connecting it to the PSP Headphone connector (2.5V serial levels) is simple. Just look on ps2dev.org forums for more info.

Oh, and you might want to play with SiRFDemo too. It will let you reconfigure the serial port to run at different speeds or use the SiRF protocol rather than NMEA.

PM if you need someone to test code, work on Sourceforge project, etc... I'd like to have Google Maps on my PSP, but I don't really have the time to write this from scratch. NB, I'd be more inclined to use SDL so that the code is more portable, and can be used on several systems...

**DrNicket** · July 25th, 2006, 08:18

What would the map availability limitations be?
What would the source of the map information be?

I live in Canada and wonder if this program will be useful to me as well.

Although I saw a news item about this program at QJ.net, I came here as a result of your recent DCEmu interview. Keep up the hard work and don't give up unless there is no other reasonable option.

Edit: I currently use Mapopolis for Palm (on my Sony Clie SJ33). I love it, but certain maps aren't available without PalmOS 5 (I'm stuck at 4.1 due to hardware differences/lack of ARM processor).

**deniska** · July 29th, 2006, 06:08

Originally Posted by DrNicket

What would the map availability limitations be?
What would the source of the map information be?

I live in Canada and wonder if this program will be useful to me as well.
.

It's going to use imagery from google maps, which have pretty wide coverage..
login to http://www.google.com/maphp?hl=en&tab=wl&q= and see if you can get the maps for the area that interests you...

The application will be able to preload the maps via WIFI. It will also be supplied with a linux/sygwin scrips to download maps from google (for people w/o WIFI connection...

I am currently looking for sources for POI (points of interest: restaurants, hotels, etc..) I found a few sources for US restaurants, movies, gas stations...
not sure if they work for Canada...

Perhaps, someone can rip off this data from somethere in following multiline format:
latitude,longitude, descr_1, descr_2

**sbridge** · June 15th, 2007, 20:58

Deniska, nice work.
However, the map (tonorto) I downloaded by using GMDL 0417 doesn't work, the PSP's MS light turns on but the map can not display after I select it. I am running 3.40OE-A.

**meier3283** · June 15th, 2007, 21:32

I have the same problem as sbridge, I've posted it in another thread somewhere as well. If you find a fix, let me know.

For now, I'm rather content to wait for the new version though.