Archive for the ‘Openstreetmap’ Category
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011
MoNav performing bicycle routing
Christian Vetter, the inventor and maintainer of MoNav, just announced the release of MoNav 0.3. Finally the improvements and new features developed during the last weeks and months are available as precompiled installers. Here’s a copy of the original posting:
—
Hello everyone,
I am pleased to announce the release of the 0.3 version of MoNav
[1][2][3] just in time for your favorite Easter holiday trip.
The highlights of this release are:
- UI Overhaul, take a look at the screenshots[4]
- Offline vector renderer: QTileRenderer[5]
- Better handling of map data and map modules: It is now very easy to switch between routing ( motorcar, bicycle, pedestrian ) and rendering modes ( online, offline vector… ).
- Full Maemo support
- Track logging
- PBF[6] support: 10 times faster OpenStreetMap data parsing!
- Console version of the preprocessor
- Improved import of OpenStreetMap data: surface, smoothness, barriers, …
- And many more
Of course MoNav still delivers blazingly fast routing, even for huge
graphs on mobile devices.
Downloads available[3]:
- Client binaries for Windows32, Ubuntu 32/64 and Maemo
- Map packages for most countries: pedestrian, motorcar and bicycle routing; online and offline vector rendering.
We are still looking for contributors in the following areas:
- GUI design
- Address Lookup ( Karlsruhe Schema, novel approaches … )
- Binary package maintenance for various systems / distributions
- Usability tests and improvements
- New features
- Of course other contributions are always welcome If you believe you can contribute and are interested in joining the development team please let us know.
Feel free to contact us on our mailing lists[7][8] or to post bugs to our bug tracker[9]
Disclaimer:
Please note that this project is under active development and while
considered stable may still contain serious bugs.
Comments, bug reports and suggestions are welcome and can be filed under [9]
Happy routing!
Christian Vetter
[1] MoNav Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/monav/
[2] MoNav at OpenStreetMap Wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MoNav
[3] MoNav Downloads: http://monav.openstreetmap.de/
[4] MoNav Screenshots: http://code.google.com/p/monav/#Screenshots
[5] QTile Renderer: http://code.google.com/p/monav/wiki/QTileRenderer
[6] PBF at OpenStreetMap wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PBF_Format
[7] MoNav mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/monav-discuss
[8] MoNav developer mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/monav-dev
[9] MoNav bug tracker: http://code.google.com/p/monav/issues/list
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Products, Software, Travel | Comments Closed
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
I tend to visit some medieval castles in spring. I usually approach them by car and use the rest of the distance for some hiking. This year, I wanted to know whether I can reach Wasigenstein by bike, and once again, I wanted to test the bike routing capabilities of MoNav.
Here are some observations:
- I always thought that printed maps are still more useful when it comes to hiking, as they provide a far better overview of the area. But today I met two couples with printed maps who asked me for the right way. In one case, the printed map was simply wrong. In the other case, they followed some signs and passed the destination without noticing it. I guess that two male hikers will buy some kind of personal navigation device soon, and I also guess that the woman acceptance factor will not be a problem ;) . If you are searching for a great business idea, invent printed maps which are capable of displaying the current location on top of the map.
- The LCR is not made for hiking trails covered with roots and stones. But it’s a great bike on paved ways. I guess we will soon need more than one routing set for bikes…
- I took the train to Wissembourg and used MoNav to create the route to Wasigenstein. It really created a nice trip – though I wished it avoided some of the inclines :) . We have been discussing the integration of SRTM data into the preprocessor more than once. Technically it’s not an issue, but it would require some coding work, and the SRTM data set is rather huge.
- I recently hacked track logging for MoNav. What I need to do next is a trip computer, which provides information about the time and distance already traveled, and the remaining distance and duration. What would be excellent was the calculation of a height profile for both the track and the route. Did I already mention the size of the SRTM data set? Maybe I should search for online services to accomplish that.
- We have a lot of trails of that area in our openstreetmap data already. But there are still a lot of bits missing. Partly we have the smaller hiking trails available, but some forestal tracks are missing.
- The N900 and MoNav are a great combo. I switched the N900′s display off when not needed – the battery powered the device for about eight hours. Not that bad, especially when you take into account that MoNav recomputes the route every second.
- Being a bit tired, I took the road back to Wissembourg, where I entered the train after some supper. The section between Lembach and the Col du Pigeonnier (see the marker) broke my neck due to the incline. As a reward, the rest of the route down to Wissembourg was completely declining. A great joy :) .
Here’s the trip (height profile would be marvellous :) :
Posted in Openstreetmap, Outdoor, Pictures, Travel | Comments Closed
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
Graphic stolen from openclipart.org, public domain
Due to a nasty bug in the preprocessor, all mapsets for MoNav have been updated. If you tried maps which are west of 0° longitude, the updated maps are for you.
Posted in Openstreetmap, Products, Software | Comments Closed
Monday, April 18th, 2011
The minster of Strasbourg, with its unfinished right tower
What a great april, at least concerning the weather! I decided to visit Strasbourg, the great medieval city where I haven’t been for over a year or so.
(more…)
Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap, Outdoor, Pictures, Software | Comments Closed
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
MoNav bike routing 1 (map data by openstreetmap and its contributors, CC-by-SA)
My last black forest trip by bike led me through Baden-Baden, and MoNav created an interesting route, avoiding the best one. At home, I figured out that bollards caused the weird behaviour. Actually MoNav didn’t route across nodes with any barrier tag applied.
I checked the code of the preprocessor, and allowing bikes to cross bollards was just simple. However, the preprocessed bicycle maps available for download all were of less use.
Some script currently recomputes all maps. For each region provided, you’ll only find one zip package instead of three. The zip file contains the following data:
- Address search.
- Online tiles (Mapnik style, internet connection required).
- Fast offline vector rendering (due to early code, no streetnames rendered still).
- Car routing.
- Bicycle routing.
- Pedestrian routing.
In case you do not need all of the routing data, just remove the folder you do not need after extraction. I hope these data sets will serve cyclists and pedestrians better than the previous ones.
MoNav bike routing 2 (map data by openstreetmap and its contributors, CC-by-SA)
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Software | Comments Closed
Sunday, April 10th, 2011
Just as yesterday, I grabbed the occasion for a black forest trip. Again I wanted to test the via points for routes I recently hacked for MoNav. I was creating the route while using the public transport to Baiersbronn, giving MoNav a couple of points I wanted to pass. With this new feature, MoNav more and more becomes the perfect companion for osm-addicted cyclists.
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Posted in Lifestyle, Openstreetmap, Outdoor | Comments Closed
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
Christian was able to fix a nasty bug which caused MoNav to crash during startup on Windows. I used the occasion to create an early NSIS Windows installer.
The installer contains experiental software, as I applied some quick and dirty hacks to get it compiled. It is thus not intended to be used by end users. As I’m rarely booting into Redmond OS, some developer who is savvy enough to maintain the NSIS installer is required to update the package every now and then. Contributors are always welcome!
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Software | 1 Comment »
Sunday, April 3rd, 2011
The biking season finally started. April 2nd and 3rd 2011 were warm and sunny days, providing temperatures far above 20°C. Thus I used the bike to get to a birthday party 30km away. I used MoNav for bike routing, which served my very well thanks to our collaboratively collected openstreetmap data.
The party itself was held outdoors, thanks to the excellent weather conditions.
BTW: If you ever get a chance to play with GeoMag, then grab it. Even if you’re not a chemist:
GeoMag
Today I visited my favourite weekend destination, Wissembourg, France, using the great cross-border map I just created a couple of days before. A great day to enjoy alsacien food as a reward:
Posted in Lifestyle, Openstreetmap, Outdoor | Comments Closed
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011
Due to a nasty bug concerning the generation of tracklogs, I’ve updated all MoNav packages (Ubuntu i386, Ubuntu amd64, Maemo). The code is tested during two trips and behaves »as advertised«. Hint: On the N900, you’ll need to scroll down a bit in the preferences dialog to access the button to clear the tracklog (see the above hardcopy).
Desktop users do not need to update, as the desktop versions do not support GPS subsystems. N900 users should update the package as soon as possible.
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Products | Comments Closed
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011
Map data by openstreetmap and its contributors, CC-by-SA
Living in Karlsruhe, Germany, I often found it annoying that my map data was cut along the german-french border, so I could only load either france or germany into MoNav. Of course, routing crossing the border was not possible this way.
Thus I created a map package using a bounding box which includes germany and adjacent areas. The exact coordinates used are top=55.0 bottom=46.0 left=5.7 right=15.1.
Additionally I’ve run the routing preprocessor three times, so the package contains routing for car drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. This map is a must have for any german openstreetmap addict. Get germany-big-car-bike-foot.zip from the download page.
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Products | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 27th, 2011
I’m just back from a family meeting in Heiligenstadt (Upper Franconia), the region where parts of my family originate from. It’s a nice town with some restaurants providing very good traditional food at a reasonable price. It’s sited in a valley which provides nice surroundings, and the interior of the medieval protestant church was rather surprising.
Of course I used MoNav for navigating there. The route it calculated was “just the right one”, and the track logging I recently hacked clearly raises its value.
What I’m missing most is speech output. Actually I already know how to do audio output on the N900, which is quite simple thanks to Qt. But a lot of backend work is required to create usable output. As CEST started today and I can smell the spring, it is unlikely that I will add this feature during the next weeks. Except we get some cold and rainy days, of course :) .
Posted in Gadgets, Openstreetmap, Software, Travel | Comments Closed
Monday, March 21st, 2011
openclipart.org, public domain
I’ve modified the script for MoNav map generation and ran it anew. monav.openstreetmap.de now hosts packages for car, bike, and pedestrian routing. The files are compatible with MoNav 0.3 as built from SVN. The files are not compatible with MoNav 0.2. The page also contains some basic installation instructions.
I’ve also uploaded a couple of installers. A deb for the Nokia N900 is provided as well as debs for Ubuntu i386 and amd64. A binary only tar.gz is also available.
I’ve also created a first rudimentary Win-Installer using the Nullsoft installer and Nsisqssg. Unfortunately the binary crashes during startup, so this installer is not available. I’m rarely using Redmond-OS, so in case someone else with some C++/Qt4 knowledge wants to debug the issue I wouldn’t object :) .
Please note that the binaries provided have been built from SVN trunk.
The main purpose of providing the files is to show what is possible with the collaboratively collected data of openstreetmap.org. The software possibly will harm your machines and thus is not intended to be used by end users, but by brave mappers keen on testing bleeding edge software.
Posted in Openstreetmap, Products, Software | Comments Closed
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
Displaying a tracklog using openstreetmap.org data (CC-by-SA)
Since the last post, I spent a couple of hours writing code for MoNav. The follwing list provides an overview over the lastest additions of mine:
- There are three map widgets in MoNav, the main map, the place chooser map, and the street choser map. As there was no central instance to control the zoom level, some nasty effects occured in case the user used the various zoom controls (F-keys, mouse wheel, zoom bar, zoom buttons). The zoom levels now are stored persistently for each individual map, and managed by one central method, setZoom(int). The code now provides reasonable default zoom values instead of using the maximum possible zoom at each startup.
- On the N900, the backlight now remains switched on as long as there is GPS data. Of course the user can still switch off the backlight using the hardware switch.
- MoNav centered the map only in routing mode. In the map view mode, the GPS position left the viewport without the map following its position. As a cyclist, it may well be that you don’t want to use routing, but want the map to follow the GPS position anyway. There is no preference option for this new feature. The map link to the GPS position gets lost as soon as the user pans the map. It gets set during application startup, when loading another map data set, the user selects “Goto Departure”, or the user selects “Goto Gps-Location”.
- In routing mode, the auto rotation now is optional. In case you are used to maps which always show north up, this option is for you.
- MoNav got GPS updates by the GPS subsystem every 5 seconds or so. Though the documentation of
QGeoPositionInfoSource states that a default object gets updates each time there are any, calling setUpdateInterval(1000) clearly boosts the GPS performance of MoNav.
- The user can now switch track logging on and off via the preferences.
- The tracklog files created by MoNav now are proper UTF-8 encoded files, which JOSM no longer denies to consume.
- MoNav now is capable of rendering the tracklog in red colour (see screenshot), which is a much sought-after feature for pedestrians, hikers and cyclists.
Posted in Coding, diy, Openstreetmap, Products, Software | Comments Closed
Friday, March 11th, 2011
MoNav Tracklog Rendering (map material openstreetmap.org, CC-by-SA)
As the openstreetmap addict I am, I want to log any trip I do. Recently I told MoNav how to do it, but the tracks did not appear on-screen.
Meanwhile the tracklog gets written in GPX format natively (support for track segments is provided), and MoNav reads the current GPX tracklog during startup. The tracklog files are named according to the current date (e.g. MoNav Track 2011-03-10.gpx). In case one quits MoNav right before 12PM and fires it up again right after 12AM, the track will appear empty due to the new log file created. Each time the tracklog gets flushed (current default value is every 60 seconds), MoNav creates a backup file (e.g. MoNav Track 2011-03-10-bck.gpx), just in case the battery drained while the file is open for writing.
A couple of minutes ago, I did a short test trip around the station in Karlsruhe, which is witnessed by the above screenshot. Obviously the GPS receiver of the N900 was not that accurate, which is due to the fact that I had it in my pocket, not mounted to the handlebar.
I’ve already seen a couple of bugs, e.g. the track painting is lagging behind the actual GPS position by a couple of seconds. I hope I can iron out such issues during the next couple of days, as the biking season will hopefully start »real soon now«™.
The code is not in SVN yet, as some other patches still are pending for being approved. I’ll keep you posted as soon it is in SVN.
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Software | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
European Map (openclipart.org, public domain)
The most exiting routing application is pretty useless without any map material. So is MoNav. Well, wait, you can convert some data from openstreetmap.org at your own, can’t you?
No, many people can’t. In case you are used to a Linux box, you may have good luck, as you have all the tools required at your diposal. But many potential users of MoNav might not be capable of compiling the application and map material by themselves.
So I spent some evening hours to set up a simple script which can automate the preprocessing. As STRATO generously is sponsoring three servers to be used by the OSM community, a few CPU cycles are available to do the hard processing work. Though I have no confirmation yet whether the machines can be used to convert MoNav maps regularly, I already converted some minor mapsets. Do not expect huge sets (like the whole of europe) soon, as this would hit the machine quite heavily.
The download page looks quite ugly (CSS experts wanted), as it gets automatically created by the abovementioned script. But anyway, it provides the possibility to download preprocessed maps for MoNav (currently only car routing maps are offered). Hope you enjoy.
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Products, Software | 4 Comments »
Sunday, February 27th, 2011
Rastatt in Monav (data by osm and contributors, CC-by-SA)
I could not resist the temptation to tweak the vector rendering code of MoNav.
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Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Software | Comments Closed
Friday, February 25th, 2011
Karlsruhe Vector Rendering in MoNav (Data by openstreetmap.org and its contributors, CC_by-SA)
Today I adjusted the MoNav vector renderer a little bit, just to get more ways relevant for cyclists into the map. The renderer does not support rendering of street names as of yet, and there’s still a lot of work to do to get all the details solved that make a nice looking map. But anyway, the map already does its job.
The map data for germany converted from OSM pbf to the MoNav format requires more than 4GB of free mass storage. Of course I couldn’t resist the temptation to try it on the N900. Panning works almost as smooth as panning a raster image map. It’s really a joy, and a dream I had back in 2006 when I began to contribute to openstreetmap.org comes true:
Karlsruhe Vector Rendering N900 (Data by openstreetmap.org and its contributors, CC_by-SA)
Thanks to all who contributed to MoNav. Feels a bit like Xmas :) .
Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap | Comments Closed
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Speyer Vector Rendering (Data by openstreetmap.org and its contributors, CC_by-SA)
Thanks to the work of James Hollingshead, MoNav SVN contains the first incarnation of a vector renderer which aims to be a high performance renderer which creates the required map tiles “on the fly”. The current SVN code is a bit awkward to compile and use, hence this posting. The info provided here is replicated by the OSM wiki. The following bash commands have been executed using Ubuntu Lucid 10.04.1 LTS. You will at least need Qt 4.5 dev packages, and probably some additional packages before MoNav will compile properly.
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Posted in Coding, Openstreetmap, Software | Comments Closed
