OpenStreetMap meta data collector

I’m playing with osmdroid code and it seems to suffer the same problem embedded in my app that andnav2 does, not all tiles load, and/or it doesn’t force the tiles to re-load, not sure what’s up with it and/or how to go about fixing it.

Also by default it dumps cache png files on the onboard memory rather than a directory on the sdcard, no idea how good/bad/indiff the cache management code is but filling up the onboard memory is a bad idea no matter how you look at it, people run out of space just installing apps without a bunch of png files taking up space too.

I’ve just uploaded a new version (v0.5.0) that adds a cuisines drop down if the amenity selected is restaurant, cafe or fast_food. I currently default the cuisine to burger but I probably need to set it to different things based on which amenity, looking for suggestions.

I included most if not all the options from this page:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:cuisine

It also includes the OSM code but I haven’t added menus to switch to it yet, still trying to debug the tile issue as I’m not really happy with how tiles are currently handled by the code and tiles just not loading etc.

v0.6.0 is now up, I’ve added the backend code to support settings described in previous posts but I haven’t coded the settings page yet, what this release is mainly for is I managed to get the OSM map API code working almost identical to the gmap API code and you can switch between them.

I still need to get the osmdroid code dumping the png files to the andnav2 tiles directory so both apps can share map tiles etc, but this is more a proof of concept release than anything else.

This version also adds elevation and hdop (hdop = estimated accuracy in metres / 6) values to the gpx files, to the nearest 10th of a hdop.

I uploaded another update (0.6.2), this version dumps the osmtiles.db and the png files to the sdcard instead of using internal FS space, you may need to uninstall/install this app if you used the OSM map to get rid of old map tiles if you don’t want to manually remove tham from the /data/data/com.bigtincan.android.droidcollector/files directory.

Also I think I’ve worked out the tile issue, the tiles being saved to the file system are 0 bytes, so if the system tries to load these files and they’re 0 bytes long then obviously they need reloading from the OSM server or some such.

I’ve hacked a working solution for the tiles that fail to download, and it seems to work, so far so good.

All I need to do now is dump the cached files into the same directory structure as andnav2 so both apps can benefit/share each other’s cache rather than duplicating downloads etc.

v0.6.4 is now up, I think it is sucessfully sharing the tile db and png files with andnav2.

Looks really great so far in a short test !

Thanks for this great application !

Matthias

0.6.5 stores the last GPS location and moves the map, both gmap/osm to that point when you switch maps or open the app next time

0.6.6 adds support for settings, still working on converting the dot colour from hex to int, but the other 3 options do work.

Don’t you want to start a project on code.google.com? I’ve seen that there are still a couple of bugs, so it would be easier for you to track them and others could help out with the code.

I’d have to apply to open the code, long story but I get some company time to produce free apps as long as they get to brand them.

As for google, one of the reasons I’m spending so much time, on both mapping and coding, is for a replacement map source for google. As far as I’m concerned the less “power” google has over people the better.

Also what bugs? or is it just usability issues?

Then this app is no option for me. I want to implement some features myself, so I will start my own as open source project.

Bugs:

  • GPS stays on after application quits
  • Tracking seems not to be implemented as service (I want to quit the app while tracking to read mail for example)

Pressing the home key isn’t a way to quit an app, it still runs in the background, most take it “gracefully” and pause what ever they’re doing, however I didn’t want it to stop recording GPS data because I want to switch to another app, so this isn’t a bug but intentional.

Hit the home key and you can switch to anything, hit the back key to quit.

You are free to do that, but there is very little demand for such an app, less than 500 installs of my OSM app, other apps I’ve written have 10,000+ installs. I actually thought more people would be interested in helping out with OSM but those that do, don’t seem to have android devices, I guess that things could change once more android devices hit the market but that’s the facts for the time being.

Have you used “my Tracks” ?
You can start recording the track and if the application records it shows an icon in the status notification Area and the user knows that the software still runs in the background.

And for the downlaods : You can’t expect to have 10000 downloads, that would mean that 10% of all OSm users are using a G1.

btw: I get an XML error if i try to import a gpx track with josm.

Matthias

Any app can add an icon to the status area, even if they aren’t running in the background, by clicking on the status bar notification can even start apps. I can add an icon to the status bar, but the point I’m trying to make is, just because an icon is showing doesn’t mean it’s running. BuddyRunner does something similar.

If thymythos was planning to make an app for virtually any reason other than coding for his own use, and secondary so others can benefit from it too, he might be very disappointed in the number of installs.

What error do you get?

If it’s something about unclosed tags the file wasn’t closed properly before it was killed or exited.

I’m having trouble with the status notifications with the way I launch activities from the main activity, basically a second activity is being launched if you click on the notification and I’m having issues trying to stop this from happening, I’ve used the status bar notifications in another app but have had similar issues.

I just checked the process list running on the phone, only one copy of the app is running, but if you launch the process, then click on the notification process it does start a new copy but the old copy isn’t running, but if you hit the back button a new copy is relaunched, slightly annoying but not sure what can be done about it, and I haven’t found anything on google either about this issue.

I guess I need to dig into the code used when you hold the home key down to switch between running and previously run apps so a new process isn’t triggered but it switches to the existing process.

Actually I think I worked out a work around, it launches a dummy activity which exits and that seems to bring the orinial app to the front, but it may trigger new log file names but I’m working on that issue in case it is an issue.

Also I think all the current todo items have been ticked off except for the following:

  • Photo logging
  • Video logging
  • sats used to get fix

Although the last item seems pointless, as the number of sats isn’t as important as the angle between them, hdop gives you more meaningful info than this.

Hi delta_foxtrot2,

could you contact me via mail plusminus /at/ andnav /dot/ org ?
As if I recall correctly you changed some code of osmdroid and maybe you could reintegrate it into osmdroid (by getting google-code-project-access)

Regards,
Nicolas

I replied to your email going to our android support queue, and I posted a fix to the osmdroid bug tracker, but as I replied in both I don’t think my fixes are possibly the best, I suspect but don’t understand the entire code well enough to inject a proper fix where a thread download times out, if the thread hasn’t recieved data it shouldn’t inject a value into the database and make an empty file on the file system.