Hi all,

As I've mentioned earlier, I've been experimenting with empeg-car's display and I've now made a simple scroller application. It's not to amaze anybody but instead to prove that 3rd parties also have possibility to develop their own applications as well!

At the moment, it comes with a ready-made binary and datas - no source code yet. This is mostly due to the fact that my development environment is currently rather tricky, involving bunch of different sources and makefiles, as I'm still looking the right way of building the environment properly.

Anyhow, I'd be more than happy to share tricks, tips & knowledge for people how are looking into creating cool add-ons for empeg.

Verement has put it on-line to empeg dev-site, go get it here.

Kim

This is excellent, we all loved it :-)

Rob

This is excellent, we all loved it :-)

Thanks - that's nice to hear.

I'm just getting deeper into the things, so you can expect to hear more from me later on.

Kim

I'm just getting deeper into the things, so you can expect to hear more from me later on.

I hope so!!! That was really cool! Can't wait 'till we get to hear a MOD in the background! Keep up the good work!

Ahh... The traditional demo "Be seeing ya!"... brings tears to the eye.

Also seeing all the cool demo-effects of old... You can always tell a fellow scener. ;) So now, I just need to become your close friend so I can get greeted at the end of the first empeg demo... When can we expect that? ;)

Who knows.. maybe they'll open up a new compo just for all of us. :)

(O|||||O)

farewell from The Hit Man of ACiD ;)

Ahh... The traditional demo "Be seeing ya!"... brings tears to the eye.

I kinda of waited for such comment and that's why it ended with that phrase

Also seeing all the cool demo-effects of old... You can always tell a fellow scener. ;) So now, I just need to become your close friend so I can get greeted at the end of the first empeg demo... When can we expect that? ;)

Only the time will tell... Currently, I'm busy with more practical stuff than effects, to be more accurate, call it GPS. Oh, I have the feeling that most people can't even see wet dreams of what empeg is actually capable of.

Kim

That explains why I haven't gotten the startup program yet. :-)

Actually, I am interested on your work with the GPS. I plan on ensuring that the serial port is accessable in the car dor something like this. What GPS unit are you working with? I plan on buying one soon, and although the one that clips onto the Palm V is very cool, I want one that will work with my Palm V, Laptop and empeg.

And I know full well of what the empeg is possibly capable of. Sitting at a bash prompt just proves that to me, and I haven't even done that much with mine yet beyond getting the D.net client running all the time reliably.

My empeg site is:http://24.236.3.131/empeg/

That explains why I haven't gotten the startup program yet. :-)

Sorry, it's coming, but I had to play with the GPS last weekend and I've quite little time on weekdays.

Actually, I am interested on your work with the GPS. I plan on ensuring that the serial port is accessable in the car dor something like this. What GPS unit are you working with? I plan on buying one soon, and although the one that clips onto the Palm V is very cool, I want one that will work with my Palm V, Laptop and empeg.

I'm using a Garmin GPS 35 TracPak PC and I'm very satisfied with it. In addition to longitude, latitude and altitude information it knows the UTC time/date (hey, my Mk1 knows the time :), board temperature, speed over ground, course over ground and loads of information of satellites currently in view. As I got it just about a week ago, I've not had enough time to really concentrate on the software. Currently it just prints the speed and position to the screen and in addition draws a simple route of where I'm driving - which shows that it's quite accurate. I think the GPS accuracy is between 5 and 10 meters.

To reveal my plans even further, I'm looking into the possibility of using my forthcoming Palm Vx to communicate with empeg in a way that I could browse the GPS maps on Palm screen (160x160 beats 128x32). As the Palm OS has quite nice support for IrDA, I don't see why that wouldn't be possible.

And let's not raise the safety issues of browsing GPS maps on Palm screen while driving

Kim

And let's not raise the safety issues of browsing GPS maps on Palm screen while driving

It can't be as bad as looking up directions on it while driving. I was good though and pulled over to initially connect to the internet and get the directions, but I was going back and forth between two screens while driving in weird Denver traffic. Having a wireless internet connection can be useful at times, but MapQuest sucks for directions, since it didn't have exit numbers.

I'm using a Garmin GPS 35 TracPak PC

I'll have to look into this one. It looks to be a basic unit, and that would work well for me. I've looked at a few, and they use a non-standard protocal, and that ends up forcing you into their software. Getting a DB9 -> Palm V cable is easy enough for it, or the whole IR thing with the empeg would be really nice. Sometime down the road I want to put a generic computer in the car, and have the MK2, the car computer, and possibly my laptop on a LAN sharing things like a GPS or wireless internet connection.

My empeg site is:http://24.236.3.131/empeg/

I'm carrying out a similar project, using a combined GPS/CDPD unit that plugs into the empeg's serial port. (CDPD gets me a 19.2Kbps wireless Internet connection.)

In this case the GPS protocol is a simple UDP exchange, but I get the same information Kim mentioned.

What would really be nice is to get an empeg<->Palm protocol going so we can do things like external maps, playlist management, and IP tunneling so passengers have something with which to amuse themselves besides watching visuals.

Hmm, this is getting off-topic.
-v

Hello Kim

Just wanted to know if you have gotten any further on your GPS project.
I'm thinking if buying myself a GPS, and I wonder; How are you storing all
of those coordinates found in all of those maps available??? Do you just upload a map you like onto the Empeg's disk and use it of from there.

Do you use the 'free-maps' found around on the internet?? (Like www.gpss.co.uk)

Will it be possible to have a copy of your program to put on my Empeg????


Regards
TommyE

Though this could be of some interest, even though it is for Norway!!!

Here are some coordinates for some automatic radar boxes here in Norway.
They are on the E6 from Oslo to Dombaas. You could put them into your GPS
software and have it warn you when approaching one of them!!! (hehe)

'Nordling retning' means 'Northbound route'
'Sørdling retning' means 'Southbound route'
'Begge retninger' means 'Both directions'

FOTOBK1 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0625700 7224000
FOTOBK2 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0565300 8094000
FOTOBK3 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0570200 7941000
FOTOBK4 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0620400 6897000
FOTOBK5 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0599800 6363000
FOTOBK6 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0599700 6457000
FOTOBK7 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0625200 7262000
FOTOBK8 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0561400 8217000
FOTOBK9 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0547500 8271000
FOTOBK10 I Nordlig retning 32 V 0537300 8370000
FOTOBK11 I Begge retninger 32 V 0623000 7325000
FOTOBK12 I Begge retninger 32 V 0623300 7006000
FOTOBK13 I Sørlig retning 32 V 0568800 8033000
FOTOBK14 I Sørlig retning 32 V 0619400 6890000
FOTOBK15 I Sørlig retning 32 V 0557100 8241000
FOTOBK16 I Sørlig retning 32 V 0530000 8375000
FOTOBK17 I Sørlig retning 32 V 0529500 8452000

Regards
TommyE

I like that idea... =)
You could have a button to press if you spot one, which would store the coords for later uploading to a central site... =)

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

Just wanted to know if you have gotten any further on your GPS project.
I'm thinking if buying myself a GPS, and I wonder; How are you storing all of those coordinates found in all of those maps available??? Do you just upload a map you like onto the Empeg's disk and use it of from there.

The system I've been building differs quite a lot from any other GPS software I've seen. As I'm not relying on any pre-defined data, all maps (mainly the areas where I drive) have been first scanned to bitmap images and then uploaded to empeg (takes over 200MB). Then, with the Palm interface, I've marked points from map, so that I can get geographical positions which correspond to specific coordinates in the bitmap. This way, using linear interpolation along the closest points, the current position can be calculated. And to answer to your question, the coordinates have been beamed from Palm through IrDA to empeg, which saves them to a scratch partition (always rw mounted).

Do you use the 'free-maps' found around on the internet?? (Like www.gpss.co.uk)

No. Basically, the maps I've seen so far are way too inaccurate (atleast in Finland). The scanned maps I use are in scale of 1:20 000, which gives quite nice accuracy, so that you actually can do street-level navigation. There are couple of companies selling good digitized maps but the prices are enormous, between $1500 to $20000. Though, the digitized maps contain a lot more than just the maps in bitmap format. They provide maps in vector-format plus information like which way you can drive a specific street. Given all that information, it would be possible to do a fully automatic navigation system which tells you where you have to turn in order to go to the target point. So far, I'm missing that information and have to do the navigation manually.

Will it be possible to have a copy of your program to put on my Empeg????

The system is currently heavily under development, and as it is, it requires kernel modifications to the IrDA stack, specific scratch parititions to be available, etc. But we'll see on the future, how the project goes and so for.

Though, what I could consider at some point is to get some pictures and put them somewhere available.

Kim

Great!!

Looking forward to some pictures.

TommyE