With the new ‘Courier Mode’, Openmoko actively guides you through the city

A new feature has been added to the unofficial version of gvSIG Mobile for Openmoko. Simply by providing a shapefile describing the POIs (actually the polygon type is recommended) and a few JPG pictures, the application will show a dialog every 20 seconds with a description of a nearby POI and its relative position (in front of you, behind you, to your right, to your left or you are inside). The user only has to push the image to close the dialog and decide where he wants to go.

This is the tiny polygon shapefile I used in my test:

And here is the demonstration:

This feature will be available in the upcoming 0.1.4 version.

gvSIG Mobile mapping libraries on Android, test #1

The gvSIG Mobile mapping libraries used by the Openmoko/Maemo version can be added without a change to an Android project. I only had to add some 30 lines of code to implement the rendering API using Android’s classes and a few more lines on the UI side, and here is the first WMS/Spherical Mercator demo:

Updating location library

Juan Guillermo Jordán (from the LISITT R&D group, Instituto Robotica, Universitat de Valencia, who is also doing some other nice things) is responsible for the GPS capabilities of gvSIG Mobile. They have been partially included in this unofficial version. The library gvSIG Mobile formerly used to access GPS data was called libGPS (based on the Dinopolis gpstool package) and is evolving to a more flexible one called libLocation which will provide an interface to access a wider range of location data sources.

Juan Guillermo has been kind enough to set up the workspace in his Ubuntu machine and successfully tested libLocation instead of the old libGPS. In his test he is accessing the GPSd running on a remote PC.

That’s the Spanish Cadastre WMS server. He works in that rectangular building in the outskirts of Valencia. I could have asked him for a nicer example, but I like this one because it came spontaneously :)

Sorry for the unreadable font I used to print the coordinates. It looks much better on Openmoko! Needless to say, I will add the new libLocation to my workspace asap ;)

Old things brought to light: a Roman theatre & some orthophotos

Timeline:

• 5 BC. A great Roman theatre is built in Carthago Nova (today Cartagena, in Southern Spain), one of the largest in Hispania.
• 5th century. Hispania becomes a Visigothic kingdom. Many Roman theatres are eventually abandoned and forgotten. Across the Middle Ages, houses are built on top of the ruins of the Cartagena Roman theatre.
• AD 1245. A cathedral is built in Cartagena, partially overlapping the remains of the then-unknown Roman theatre.
• AD 1930. Julio Ruiz Alda produces a series of aerial orthophotos covering parts of South-eastern Spain, including Cartagena. This imagery is served today via WMS by the Confederacion Hidrografica del Segura (first screenshot).
• AD 1938. The mentioned cathedral is destroyed during the Spanish civil war.
• AD 1956. The Spanish government produces a massive aerial orthophoto covering the whole country (second screenshot, served by the Murcia regional authority).
• AD 1988. The Roman theatre is accidentally discovered. Newer buildings on it are removed. Archaeological and restoration works continue up until present day (third screenshot).

Blue shapefile: cathedral
Red shapefile: Roman theatre

1930: The theatre is covered; the cathedral is in good condition

…

1956: The theatre is covered; the cathedral’s roof is gone due to 1936-39 bombings

…

2007: The theatre is uncovered and is being restored; the cathedral was never restored (there is another cathedral elsewhere)

Unofficial gvSIG Mobile 0.1.3 for Openmoko & Nokia-Maemo is out

…

• Get installer for Freerunner-Openmoko from Joseph Reeves’ page at opkg.org. More details and screenshots can be seen in his blog.
• Get installer for Nokia-Maemo from my page at garage.maemo.org

Version 0.1.3 in action. Microsoft street map + GPS:

New features:

• Client side tiled access to ArcIMS servers.
• Support for Microsoft Live Maps layer.

The application uses the Spherical Mercator tile scheme also for WMS and ArcIMS servers, regardless of the projection, which means that if a map server (for example the Japanese ArcIMS server below) uses EPSG:4326, then the requested levels will have high indexes (for example, z = 30). Here is a screenshot showing the cached tiles after browsing the mentioned Japanese layer:

/media/card
is the writable folder (the third parameter application)

/media/card/gvSIGMobileCache
is the folder where the app stores downloaded tiles

/media/card/gvSIGMobileCache/ims
is the folder for tiles from ArcIMS servers

c8edd1d408d473f842c3682544b1303b
is the layer ID chosen by the application

22-25
are the accessed z levels. The whole map of Japan probably fits inside a single tile in level 21

Download without prejudice. Enjoy ESRI’s protocols and Microsoft’s maps while they exist :)

Downtown Berlin (Germany) on Microsoft Live Maps:

Japan elevation map (from an ArcIMS server) plus a shapefile:

These features will be available soon.

Maemo .deb installer for Nokia N8X0 devices

Maemo .deb installer now available here, tested on Nokia N810:

Moses’ fantasy: an Exodus-enabled, free phone

Special thanks to Evgeniy Ginzburg for the Russian and Hebrew translations.

…
Happy Easter/Passover!

Sqlite & Nokia join the party!

Unofficial gvSIG Mobile for Openmoko v. 0.1.2 has been released today. The main new feature consists in storing waypoints in a local Sqlite database with easily customizable form to set attribute values. Waypoints are then immediately visible on the map. Watch a video and read details here.

Red points are being stored and immediately painted:

As you can see, the app runs very well also on the Nokia N8X0 (Maemo) devices.

Other new features

• Support for WMS tile servers. Not only the app uses a tile approach for standard WMS servers. Now it also has access to tile servers. The Open Planning Project provides the huge TIGER dataset via WMS using GeoWebCache (tiled service), and here it is:



• Support for EPSG:3003 and EPSG:3004. (Monte Mario Italy zones 1 and 2 projection)
• Internationalization. GUI in English, Spanish, Romanian, Italian and German, thanks to the OA Digital staff.
• And well, lots of additional WMS fun:

A climate map of Spain & Portugal plus two shapefiles:

US topographic map:

Fires detected in the last 24 hours:

Resources

As usual, you can get the user manual, installer and free access to the source code from the application blog.

Unofficial gvSIG Mobile on Openmoko v. 0.1 is out!

• Project intro
• Installer
• User manual
• Source code