Back Side of Rastatt Castle

Today’s trip led from Karlsruhe to Rastatt, an ancient german town with several baroque buildings. I decided not to make it a grand mapping trip, but to use openrouteservice.org to find the way. This means I expected not to find new ways because the route was calculated based on existing ones.

The way led through the woods and fields between the two towns. Many of the ways originally have been mapped by me several years ago and needed maintenance. Tracktypes for example didn’t exist in those days yet. Surprisingly I found some new ways anyway while others meanwhile have been paved.

Unfortunately my bike caused some trouble again. I’ve been at the shop three times, but they just don’t manage to get their stuff done. I’m already looking for another dealer and a new bike. I wanted to avoid spending the money, but today it broke my neck. It’s just no fun when your vehicle of choice doesn’t do its job.

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.

Ottenhöfen, Black Forest

Around Ottenhöfen, a Black Forest town, some ancient watermills have been restored. A hiking trail connects all of them. Today’s weather was not that great, e.g. too cold for May, and it was a cloudy and windy day. We grabbed the occasion anyway, stuffed eleven people into two cars and entered the black forest, leaving the cars at Ottenhöfen station. Here’s one of the watermills:

Watermill near Ottenhöfen (wikimedia commons, Andreas Frick, public domain)

Meanwhile I know why I’ve been elected to book and drive a van of the local car sharing provider. Along the trail, a lot of fountains are sited, and some of them act as a very special selling point (called »Schnapsbrunnen«). The black forest aborigines place bottles of schnapps in the water, add some drinking glasses and an offertory box. Hikers just serve themselves and leave some money. Needless to say that some of us served themselves very well :) .

Of course I used the occasion for some mapping. Most tracks and ways already have been mapped, but not very well. I added some ways, details along them and fixed some broken crossings. I’ve also modelled the water mill trail for appearance in the hiking and bridle map, but it will take some time until it gets rendered.

Finally we had some coffee at a local restaurant, enjoying local cake. This is a typical black forest cherry cake (»Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte«):

Black Forest cherry cake (»Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte«)

A great trip, and it begun raining just as we returned to the cars. An excellent timing :) .

Lœwenstein Castle

As the weather is fine at the moment (and my bike is broken again), it is hiking time. Slowly it becomes difficult to find unmapped terrain, as openstreetmap.org meanwhile does not only attract car drivers but also hikers and (mountain) bikers. In the region where I grew up a lot of medieval castles can be found, and I visited them all. Time to resurrect the hobby of my youth as long there are still trails missing in the woods.

The first trip was near a homestead called Gimbelhof. Leaving the car there, it was easy to visit the Lœwenstein (see the above picture), the Hohenbourg (next picture) and the Wegelnburg. The latter one is sited in germany, which means you will cross the french german border near the source Maidenbrunnen, a spring.

Hohenbourg 1

Hohenbourg 2

This seems to be the main entrance, nicely decorated:

Hohenbourg Entrance

Nearby there’s another castle called Fleckenstein:

The Fleckenstein as seen from Hohenbourg

This is the Wegelnburg after passing the border. I find it quite interesting that they used relatively small rocks to build their residences upon:

Wegelnburg

Yesterday I visited the Blumenstein and the Wasigenstein castles. Due to the trees, you cannot see much of the Blumenstein castle:

Approaching Blumenstein from Uphill

I guess this stair is not as old as the castle, but a later addition. Unlike this one, the original stairs often show steps which are very different in size and shape:

Medieval stair inside Blumenstein

Thousands of lizards are populating the ruins nowadays:

A dinosaur on Blumenstein

This pine found it cool to grow on top of the ruins, enjoying the marvellous view over the valley:

A pine on top of Blumenstein castle

This last picture of Blumenstein shows how most of those castles are built. A languet on a hill got truncated to create a fosse. The rock then was uncovered from earth and the buildings put on top of it. As they only had hammers and chisels, the whole process must have been painful and surely took ages:

Leaving Blumenstein

Wasigenstein is built on top of a notched rock, and two castles have been built upon, Gross Wasigenstein and Klein Wasigenstein. The first one is hillside:

Approaching Gross Wasigenstein

Here’s the rather impressive fosse they built by dismantling the rock:

Fosse of Gross Wasigenstein

They also built a basin on the ground. Nowadays the water hosts frogs, newts and other animals:

Newts in a basin near Gross Wasigenstein

That’s the top of Gross Wasigenstein. It’s a really quiet place, so it was time to enjoy a little sunbath:

On top of Gross Wasigenstein

Klein Wasigenstein is much smaller:

Klein Wasigenstein ahead

Here are two doors inside it. I wonder if those are still romanesque or already gothic. In my opinion it’s in between. Big romanesque walls, but more elegant doors and staircases:

Doors inside Klein Wasigenstein

Here it is again, the alsacien castle lizard. I think it is endemic, as I only have seen them there :) :

An inhabitant of Klein Wasigenstein

This picture provides an impression of the tightness of such a medieval castle. Thus they tried to use any square inch:

Leaving Klein Wasigenstein

From the opposite side it is possible to see the two castles on the split rock:

The Wasigenstein castles as seen from the opposite sited hill

Here’s the last one for today, the Frœnsbourg. I’ve never seen such a bug before. A medieval remain, I guess :) . Anyway, the N900’s macro mode did a very good gob:

Bug near Frœnsbourg

The Frœnsbourg is a very narrow one. The rock partly only provides a thickness of about 6 to 8 feet:

On top of the Frœnsbourg

Here’s a picture showing it from bottom up:

Frœnsbourg bottom up

The various remains of workmanship shed a little light on the former usage of the castle. I guess that there have been a lot of wooden booths and buildings around the rock:

Frœnsbourg caves

I really enjoyed the trips. The N900 is a perfect general purpose companion. The weather was nice, and other hikers used several languages like english, french or the local german dialect of the french people who live nearby.

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 :) .

The images have been taken during a mapping trip near the Gimbelhof, a hamlet in the woods near Lembach. I’ve visited three ruins of medieval castles:

Nearby you’ll find two further ruins, the Frœnsbourg and the Fleckenstein. The latter one is a partly reconstructed tourist attraction.

Here’s the Gimbelhof as seen from the Loewenstein. I used the landscape mode of the camera. While the branches in the foreground are captured well, the target itself is rather blurry. What I wanted to achieve is the opposite. Obviously I need to learn how to use the device correctly:

The Gimbelhof as seen from the Loewenstein

Here’s the same problem again, the Fleckenstein as seen from the Hohenbourg, using the landscape mode. Maybe the auto mode would have been more sufficient:

Fleckenstein as seen from Hohenbourg

Here’s a typical fault when taking pictures: Overexposure due to heavy sunlight. The sun was on the left, so the blue sky appears as a white area and the front wall of the Hohenbourg ruins appeares too bright. The right hand parts of the image however appear too dark:

Hohenbourg Overexposure

This image is too dark. I should have adjusted the exposure time a bit. Additionally I’m not pleased by the depth of focus and the placement of the target:

Hohenbourg Depth of Focus

In this image I’m not pleased with the depth of focus at all. While the stones right in front of the camera position and the tower seem to be OK, the stones in the second quarter of the image are rather blurry. I have no clue yet how I can avoid such a result in the future:

Hohenbourg Depth of Focus

Two further pictures, both showing the Hohenbourg (fr) as seen from the Wegelnburg (de). I tried to circumvent the lack of depth of focus and the overexposure using two techniques, which both didn’t help much. Again I used the landscape mode of the camera. I did focus apart from the target, pressed the camera button halfway down and then moved the camera to the final viewport. Appearantly the camera still has adjusted the exposure time, which was a bit surprising:

Hohenbourg as seen from the Wegelnburg

In the second image I included more of the sky area in order to get less overexposure. It didn’t help much:

Hohenbourg as seen from the Wegelnburg II

Obviously I’m in need to learn more about the N900’s camera, especially how to cope with depth of focus and exposure times. What I’m missing compared to the Canon cameras I’ve used:

• Pressing the camera button halfway down and moving the camera afterwards should preserve the exposure settings.
• Better control of the focus. The in-screen focussing area is rather large. I guess the camera software internally works with some multi area focus, as the Canons can do. If so, I miss the possibility to switch to a centered focus if desirable.
• A (if possible live) histogram would help a lot to avoid overexposure.
• A stitch mode, which preserves the exposure time for a series of images was a very cool additional feature.

If you think the N900’s camera is crap, judging from what I’ve written above, you’re completely wrong. It’s not exactly fair to compare a built-in camera of a handset to a dedicated camera. If the camera is not good enough for you, just keep on carrying your SLR with you each time you leave home :) .

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.

I still need to figure out how to cope with its focus and exposure settings, though. Most people might be pleased with the results of the auto mode, but I’m not. There are limits for automatisms, and in such cases you need to help the camera manually. Of course this requires more knowledge about photography at the user’s end.

Here are some wishes for the further development of the (excellent) camera application anyway. Try to find out the main difference of the following photo compared to the one on top of this posting:

Photo without Geotags

Got it? Yep, the latter photo has not geocoding information embedded. How comes?

When you take a picture, the camera application grabs the current location information (latutude and longitude), connects to the internet and contacts a server to get a location name by doing reverse geocoding. After this process was successful, both the geocoordinates as well as the location’s name are added to the meta data section of the image file. That’s just great and makes it unnecessary to do the geocoding by correlating some tracklog to the photos after the trip. Thanks to anyone involved.

Recently I’ve been hiking along the german-french border. The phone indicated that it will connect to a french provider (actually »orange«) if necessary. To avoid roaming costs, I set the N900 to offline mode, which, according to the manual, disables cellular, WLAN and bluetooth connectivity. The GPS subsystem, however, still was working, which was a good thing to keep my navigation application up and running. In offline mode, the camera behaves as follows:

• While taking a picture, it asks whether it should disable the offline mode to do the aforementioned reverse geocoding. There’s nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it shows this as a modal dialog each time you take a photo. The dialog comes up right at the moment when you press the camera button half down to focus the object to capture. As the dialog is modal, you can’t take the picture before you have cancelled the dialog. That’s really a showstopper when you try to capture a moving target.
• During my last test, the dialog was not shown while the button was pressed down halfway, but when the image was being processed. That’s better, as it does not prevent you from taking a picture. It still kept asking for each individual image, though.
• If you cancel the dialog, the camera won’t connect to the web to do the reverse geocoding. However, it subsequently also denies to write the latitude and longitude to the image file, though a GPS fix is present.

This triggers the following requests:

• Do not alert the user while he’s interacting with the camera application, e.g. alert about missing web connectivity while the image is being processed, not while the user is taking the picture.
• Write latitude and longitude to the image’s metadata if a GPS fix is present, regardless whether the reverse geocoding was successful or not.
• Alert the user only once a session, not for each individual picture.

The camera application remembers the last used mode persistently. The Canon, however, automatically falls back to auto mode each time you switch it on. IMO it would be great if the N900 behaved the same. In case you want to take a snapshot and you notice that you are still in video mode, which you used three days ago, it might be annoying :) .

Quelques Guis

Aujourd’hui j’ai éte en Alsace, pour cartographier quelques chemins au bord du Rhin.

The cold and dark winter months finally are over. At the Rhine, the temperature was about 22°C today. A warm and sunny day combined with a light northern wind. A perfect day to open the biking season.

Assuming the sun was not that strong yet I decided to avoid the woods and better cycle in direct sunlight. According to my mirror, this was a big fault. Red Hat is a Linux distributor, and Red Head is a Linux user :) .

I crossed the Rhine using the ferry near Neuburg and went down to Seltz. There was an almost 50 year old ferry until 2005, crossing the Rhine to Plittersdorf. It was a special construction, which was powered by the water flowing down the Rhine. In 2005, it has been rammed by a ship and never been restored. First there were rumors that there will be no replacement, as there is a bridge nearby, connecting Wintersdorf and Beinheim. The more I was surprised that there is some ongoing work to build a new construction:

New ferry construction between Plittersdorf and Seltz

From an economical POV, the ferry is unnecessary. Nevertheless, it helps to bring french and german people together. If you think that this is useless, consider that the german and french inhabitants share a long history, including many wars. Both Germany and France are the main protagonists of the european union, and germany pays a huge amount of money to make it a success. The new ferry will mainly be used by pedestrian and biking tourists – which is a good thing to cultivate friendships and to visit cultural events on both sides of the Rhine.

The delta of the Sauer a bit upwards is a quite interesting ecosystem. Here are two photos of the last segment of the Sauer, before it enters the Rhine (which can be seen in the background of the first image):

La Sauer entering the Rhine

This photo shows the other side of the bridge near Munchhausen:

La Sauer arriving in Munchhausen

All kinds of birds are busy copulating and nest building. Detect two storks in the image below:

Two storks building their nest

I mapped several tracks accompanying the Rhine, to make the osm data more complete. Those are not important for routing, but at OSM we are proud of the level of detail we can provide.

I really enjoyed the trip. It’s been a while since I’ve last been there, and due to a bug in the code of my very own software I wasn’t able to map all details. Seems I need a further trip to collect the missing data :) .

Plane drawing curves on the sky

Again I was mapping using the N900. I permanently had Mapper, osm2go, FM Radio (respectively an audio player) plus a text editor running. Additionally I took a couple of photos.

Some fungi catched with the N900's camera

Again I’m quite impressed by the quality of the device’s camera. The only thing I miss is a manual focus. Which IMO is a problem of luxury.

The fully charged battery powered the device for 3 hours. The N810 was capable to last up to four hours, but a comparison is invalid. The N810 did not provide cellular connectivity, I never used it to play audio and I seldom used it as a camera. Plus the battery capacity of the N900 (BL-5J, 1320mAh@3.7V) is almost one sixth less than the one of the N810 (BP-4L, 1500mAh@3.7V).

Additionally I was again trapped by “the big bug“, which I assume has an impact on the battery. I really hope this bug can be solved rather sooner than later.

All in all I think the power management of the N900 is excellent. If you think 3 hours is very poor, just use the N900 like an iPhone: Avoid multitasking whenever possible :) .

For the N810 I bought (and used) a second battery for mapping trips. I just ordered one for the N900 as well. If necessary I’ll order a third one, which will be surely enough even for all-day mapping trips.

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.

Camera

I tried to take some pictures using the built in camera. I was especially interested in its macro mode and the result of close-up pics of fungi and the like. Less surprisingly it is not as good as my Canon A650. But it gets very close, so I learned my lesson. Here’s a picture taken with the N900, showing small deadwood fungi:

Small fungi on pine wood

Here are some small lichen. On the A650, I have of course more control over the focus. But the auto mode of the N900 does a good job:

Cladonia (cup lichen) near the Heilbach

The following fungi appeared in light red and black colours. The image did not preserve the original impression, but I doubt the A650 did better. Unfortunately I left it at home. Otherwise I could have taken a comparison picture:

Deadwood serving some fungi as a habitat

Additionally the camera software will automatically add GPS coordinates to the photos when geotagging is enabled via the menu of the camera software. No more struggling with correlating the photos to GPS tracklogs. I’m really pleased with the camera. I still need to test it under bad light conditions, though.

GPS Receiver

A track crossing the Heilbach

The GPS Receiver of the N810 was rather weak, so I always used an external bluetooth GPS mouse. While the G-Rays 2 was not that pleasing, the Blumax always served me very well, except for the one time it accidentally got bricked.

The more I was surprised concerning the accuracy of the N900’s GPS signal. Thanks to AGPS, it finds the current location quite quickly, and today’s mapping was a joy with the positioning signal that the N900 provided. I expected some deviations, but I would say it is almost as accurate as the Blumax. I will create a comparison track during the next mapping tour.

Mapper (formerly known as Maemo Mapper)

Maemo Mapper has seen some overhaul compared to Maemo 4, and I’m really grateful that there is some ongoing work. I’m not really used to the new version yet, which now provides some on-screen-controls:

Maemo Mapper on Maemo 5

It provides OpenstreetMap Mapnik tiles per default. However, unlike the version on the N810, it currently fails when trying to add To add a repository for tiles of Osmarender or the »Reit- und Wanderkarte«, a map which is optimized for horseback riding and hiking (available for de, at, ch and northern italy only), ensure you select the proper type in the dialog where you add the tile URL. The Reitkarte consits of two layers, one for the base graphics, one for the details. I added the following two tile sources, while marking the second one as a tile layer. The type I selected is »XYZ_INV«:
http://topo.openstreetmap.de/base/%0d/%d/%d.png
http://topo.openstreetmap.de/topo/%0d/%d/%d.png

Mapper currently does not support the plus-minus buttons on the top of the device, but there are on-screen-zoom-controls. Loading tiles and especially exporting the tracklog to a file is much faster now, and after a system crash (see below) the track has not been lost (which happened quite frequently on the N810).

It’s really a great “must have” application.

osm2go

Detail - Bank of the Heilbach

I used osm2go excessively on the N810. Sometimes I was struggling with it, especially when selecting objects. The preset menu was slow and sometimes hard to use.

On the N900, I was completely overwhelmed with its usability. It was snappy, selecting objects was a joy and it is much more finger friendly as on the N810. Of course it still requires a stylus to draw the geometry objects. Frankly, I hope Nokia will ship the next device with a resistive display and a stylus still. I cannot imagine that a tool like osm2go can reasonably be used with someones fingers only.

The Big Bug

Deadwood dams up the Heilbach

There is a known bug which will freeze the whole device, requiring a hard reset. It might be a driver issue and affects several applications, like Mapper, osm2go, and Mæp. I knew about the issue before the trip, and have been affected a couple of minutes after I started both Mapper and osm2go. I hope there will be a solution for it, as this bug is one of the main reasons why Mapper is only available via extras-devel.

Circa one hour later, both Mapper and osm2go started to behave weirdly again. The system was not frozen, but both applications didn’t respond properly but have been very busy to show all kind of weird stuff in their viewports. Restarting the applications did not help, so I rebooted the device.

Battery Lifetime

Water of the Heilbach flowing off

I left home with the battery not fully charged. The two reboots might have had an additional effect. I permanently used Mapper, osm2go, the GPS subsystem, cellular internet connectivity and took several pictures.

The battery was drained after two hours, which is very poor compared to the four hours the N810 did provide. But I think this is mainly due to the mentioned bug (and the reboots it triggered). Anyway, even 4 hours were not enough for a 100km biking trip, so I need to purchase a second battery.

Settle Down

Gravel bank in the Heilbach

Though I needed to perform two hard resets, I’m really impressed by the device, its capabilities and the software tools that are available for it. I’d like to give credit to the crowd of the @maemo-developers mailing list who helped me with some coding issues, Alberto Mardegan, the current maintainer of Mapper, who patiently helped me to get used to Mapper on the N900, and Till Harbaum, the author of Mæp and osm2go, for letting me play with his two N900 (I still apologize for having removed the weather applet from your desktop :) before I bought mine. Thanks, guys.

I considered the N900 too expensive for bying for some time. But I finally could not resist. Et je ne regrette pas.

This winter was a cold one, and there was enough (though not much) snow for winter sport activities at the black forest. Currently it’s melting, which is due to spring, not global warming :) .

Daylight saving time starts next sunday, so I hope I can reopen the biking season. There are two obstacles, though: the weather forecast and the fact that my office hours tend to regularly extend beyond 7PM.

During the cold weeks, I did some mapping trips in the nearby woods which I didn’t blog about. Time to post some pics of the trips :) .