[OSM-talk] OSM on Mobile Phones (and beyond!)

[tim]

Spotted vgps (Vietnamese GPS)
http://vllp.sourceforge.net/vgps/html/index.php

which can apparently load up .osm files from a phone filesystem.

Has anyone used it?

tim

On 7/3/07, Steve Bromwich <osm at fop.ns.ca> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, tim wrote:
>
> > In preparation for my talk at SOTM on "OSM on Your Phone", I'd like to
> > know if you've come across, used, or have thoughts on Openstreetmap
> > with mobile phones.
>
> Treo 650 with both Lowrance iFinder (NMEA through serial cable) and a
> BGT-11 (NMEA over Bluetooth). CetusGPS and CotoGPS are reasonably good but
> with their flaws (Cetus is a pain to delete previous points, for example).
> For mapping, I've been experimenting with Pathaway GPS
> (http://www.pathaway.com/) and managed to figure out a rather tedious way
> to get maps into it that aren't so large they won't fit on my Treo:
>
> 1. Use the osm2ozi_tah.pl app (see
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Oziexplorer) to generate the map
> and calibration files, like so:
>
> ./osm2ozi_tah.pl  -tilename="11,661,739" -tilesource="http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~ojw/Tiles/tile.php"
>
> 2. Next, reduce the image to monochrome. Load the image into Gimp, and
> click Image, Mode, Indexed and check "Use black and white (1-bit) palette"
> and set "Color dithering" to "Floyd-Steinberg (reduced color bleeding)".
> Save the image as the same filename (otherwise the calibration file will
> be wrong).
>
> 3. Load the resulting image into the Pathaway Map Manager (runs fine under
> Wine):
>
> File, Import New Map, select the file you just saved, set Color Depth to
> 1-bit (BW), check Compressed, click OK.
>
> It will now grind through the image while it converts it from 1 bit to 1
> bit again. Unfortunately the algorithm used in Pathaway is somewhat
> lacking, so if full colour images are used the dithering goes wonky - or
> it creates a huge map file. Once it's done, the image needs to be
> calibrated:
>
> Click Calibration, Calibration type Lat/Long (rectangular), Coordinate
> type top left and bottom right (ignore any popup messages about losing
> current calibration), the lat/lon fields should magically autopopulate.
>
> Click File, Save Pathaway Map, save the map (as a prc for Palm - not sure
> about Wince).
>
> I tried Trekbuddy but it didn't seem to want to work with the IBM JVM for
> Palm. I vaguely recall hearing of a freeware app that did calibration of
> raster images, but I can't recall enough detail to turn up anything useful
> in Google - if this rings a bell with anyone else I'd be interested as I'm
> sure the general principle of osm2ozi_tah can be extended to other
> formats...
>
> > For example, in addition to collecting gpx traces and displaying
> > rendered maps, I could have osm data editing on-the-fly as I walk down
> > the road. Also, I'm thinking it would be great to be able to tell if,
> > when I'm on a street/area, if that street/area has already been mapped
> > via text.....
>
> This method lets me see what's been mapped up to the point the map was
> created, I can see how updating on the fly would be nice. The only problem
> is graphics - I stuck Google Maps on my Treo and thought it was quite
> nifty to wander around mapping on the Treo, until I saw the megs and megs
> of data that were downloaded - on a 10 meg data plan, that was most of the
> month gone in 20 minutes!
>
> Cheers, Steve
>