Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
La Maison du Sel en Wissembourg
Finally the rainy days are over. The warm and sunny weather conditions allowed for the first mapping trip to Wissembourg by bike – the biking season finally has started.
I mapped a lot of details along the way. Some short breaks every now and then and finally a nice supper at the destination took time. Luckily »Deutsche Bahn« (a german railway company) provided public transport back home.
The location services of the N900 are pretty good, but there are also some weak points:
- The N900 uses assisted GPS (AGPS) to get its position really quickly. If however no callular net is available, it needs ages (up to twenty minutes) to get a GPS fix. I’ve also seen such a behaviour on one of Garmin’s premium GPSrs, but only every now and then. The N900 does it each time it is outside the network of my provider. I guess the behaviour could by improved by saving an almanac to the device, but appearently the N900 doesn’t do it.
- The first fixes the GPS subsystem delivers to the requesting application are sometimes really far (and I mean far) away from the actual position. This makes it difficult to check the trip’s length at home. I’ve never seen such a behaviour on the Garmins I used, and I consider this being a software bug.
- Modern vehicles use screens with a vapour deposited metal layer. This hinders the GPS signals flowing into the vehicle. If the Garmin’s have a fix outside the vehicle, they are usually (but not always) capable to keep the fix after entering the car or train. The N900 today had difficulties, but as the WBT I also used today did not really do much better, I guess there were really bad GPS conditions in the train.
- The big bug requires a second device which is more reliable for collecting tracklogs. Both Maep as well as Mapper loose their tracks in case you must hard reset the device.
Here’s how the tracklog recorded in the train looks like. Note that it should follow the rails precisely:
The device is an almost perfect gadget anyway. All I want to say is: If you reliably want to collect the tracklogs of your trips, just get an additional logger. The N900 is an exccellent general purpose device. It is not a specialized GPS receiver and logger.
Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap, Pictures, Software | Comments Closed
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
Jester (openclipart.org, by Johnny Automatic, public domain)
It’s not the first time it happened, but I was surprised anyway. I was hiking along the french-german border. I only ran Mæp and Waypointcatcher. I didn’t use osm2go to save some battery power. Even without Waypointcatcher not running, Mæp caused the device to crash four times. This usually happens when the device’s interface is locked, so you just notice that the device does not respond as soon as you try to unlock it. The only thing that helps is to remove the battery and boot anew. As data roaming is about 7¢ per 10KB of data (sic), I could not use AGPS. Thus the device needs up to twenty minutes to get a GPS fix after a reboot.
Unfortunately Mæp drops the recorded track after such a forced reboot. But hey, no prob, I have the WBT-201 running as a backup.
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Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap, Outdoor | Comments Closed
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Fern near Blumenstein Castle
The N810 is a great device and the perfect mapper’s companion, but the N900 is even better and a joy to use. Here are some applications I use on a regular basis:
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Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap | Comments Closed
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Anguis fragilis
This weekend was an excellent one, providing very good weather conditions to do some mapping by bike. The Bienwald, a huge area of wood where I still seem to be the (almost) only mapper who collects data, still serves me well to combine three hobbies of mine – nature, riding my bike and mapping for openstreetmap.org.
I really love the smell of the pines during warm days in spring. You can see all kinds of animals – including crane flies, though. The Bienwaldmühle, including a traditional german restaurant, serves great food. The rest in their biergarten took too long, so the way back home included twilight – which was a good thing, because you can see even more animals (like foxes, roe deers etc.) which usually are not seen during daylight.
I collected a lot of missing ways, names of ways and names of the wooden parcels. Though it is the third year I’m mapping there, still a lot of details are missing.
I used the WBT-201 as an autonomous logger to track the whole trip. The N900 did a good job, but I left it alone until I crossed the rhine to save some battery power. This is necessary as one of my two batteries only lasts for about three hours – though I switched the device to offline mode. The two batteries have been sufficient for the whole trip, but I now know I will need a third one for whole-day-trips.
Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap, Outdoor | Comments Closed
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
Lizard on the Loewenstein
When I took the above picture, I missed the zoom lens of a dedicated camera. It was not possible to get closer to the lizard, as it otherwise would have escaped. Of course noone would ever request a cell phone to provide an objective slot :) .
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Posted in Gadgets, Pictures | 2 Comments »
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
Photo with Geotags
I’m still impressed by the features, the versatility and the usability of the N900. I’m also still impressed by the quality of the built-in camera. It does not beat my Canon A650, but it gets close enough to leave the Canon at home when riding the bike. Plus the 5MP images are more handy than the quite huge 12MP images of the Canon.
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Posted in Gadgets, Pictures | Comments Closed
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
During my last trip, I avoided to use an audio player and osm2go on the N900. The only application running was Mapper (formerly known as Maemo Mapper). Again the big bug occured, requiring two reboots.
Nevertheless the battery only lasted for two and a half hours. This really is very poor. Maybe Mapper needs more CPU than on the N810. I’m curious whether I’ll get better results during the next trips or if the uptime will remain the same. In either case, I’m desperately wating for the second battery I purchased to arrive.
I logged the track both using the N900 and the WBT-201 (aka G-Rays 2 ). Surprisingly, the track of the N900′s built-in GPS receiver was more accurate as the one of the WBT.
Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
The Heilbach meanders the Bienwald
I grabbed the occasion of today’s excellent weather conditions for my first mapping tour with the N900. I used it for my continued effort to map the Heilbach for openstreetmap:
I left all the other gadgets I used until now (mp3 player, Canon camera, external bluetooth GPSr, N810) at home and only grabbed the N900 to check if it really can replace the previously used armada. To anticipate the result: yes it can. I’m quite impressed and really content with the device. It’s a great digital companion. You should read on, though, to learn more about some pitfalls and shortcomings to avoid frustration.
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Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap, Outdoor, Pictures | 3 Comments »
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
n900 microB Browser
I’m not using the N900 as a telephone or (business) PDA. I bought it as a personal gadget. It was rather expensive, but frankly, it’s well worth the bucks.
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Posted in Gadgets | 2 Comments »
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
Nokia N900, Smartphone with Maemo 5 operating system
I did it. SCNR.
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Posted in Gadgets, Lifestyle | Comments Closed
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
I’m just back from a concert at the ZKM Kubus. The first perfomer was Dieter Torkewitz who played a concert for piano, tape recorder and lights:
ZKM 20091024 - Dieter Torkewitz
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Posted in Gadgets, Music, Musical Instruments | Comments Closed
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
I just stumbled across this video about the perfect Qt4 support on the N900 via mapomatic. It’s a short video, but pay attention to the magnifier on top of Openstreetmaps at the end of the video. Cool stuff. Want to hack my own map app right now!
Tags:ui-design
Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap | 1 Comment »
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
This year’s Maemo Summit is over, and Nokia gave away some N900 to the community. Unfortunately, Michelle Gallen was not pleased with the unboxing experience at all and complains a lot. Frankly, if you’re getting a Porsche, would you really complain that the ignition lock is on the left hand side :) ?
I hope the Summit results in existing software being improved or ported and new software to appear. If you are missing software, you can still hack it on your own, thanks to the open Maemo platform.
For details shared by attendees, refer to the #maesum hash tag on Twitter. You will find several videos about the device, even some shared by Nokia. I for myself prefered to get my hands on it instead of watching pr0n, but due to the enormous price tag of 600€ it will last a little while before I decide to get one. Truly, it’s no problem to resist preordering it. Really. Promised.
Posted in Gadgets, Software | Comments Closed
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Satellite (by user ivak of openclipart.org, public domain)
Since today, EGNOS is officially up and running. I’m pretty curious whether this will improve the accuracy of positioning data received by my GPS toys.
Posted in Gadgets, Neogeography | Comments Closed
Friday, September 25th, 2009
Waypoint-Catcher
I’ve just released Waypoint-Catcher into the world wild web. It’s a very basic application for the NOkia N810. It just allows to set a waypoint and to tag it with a name and comment. It helped me a lot with occasional mapping, so I hope it is useful for others, too.
Posted in diy, Gadgets, Openstreetmap, Products | 1 Comment »
