Hi all,

I've been keeping a keen eye on all Empeg-related GPS projects (especially Rex's EmpGPS-project (http://www.ioctlsoft.com/empeg/empgps.html)), even though I've been fiddling around with Windows-based GPS stuff more.

Lately, I've been quite much toying with different acceleration/speed calculation programs. So I bumped into Åke Wallebom's OakGPS / OakCalc (http://www.ake.nu/oakgps/) and started doing some tests (as I'm a bit of a car freak). The way this program works is that OakGPS simply saves the normal NMEA-data that is received through the serial-port from the GPS itself onto the machine's hard disk. Then you can use OakCalc to calculate (with GPS latency correction etc.) acceleration data from the .txt -file that OakGPS saves. It also has a -realtime function to give results of user selected parameters _while driving!_.

What it can produce is results like these (the following are from my test run on my Golf V6 4motion):

Speed: 0-50 km/h in 2.73 seconds at 26.07 meters.
Speed: 0-80 km/h in 5.11 seconds at 71.94 meters.
Speed: 0-100 km/h in 7.22 seconds at 127.87 meters.
Distance: 0-201 m : 9.58 @ 117.51 km/h.
Speed: 0-120 km/h in 9.95 seconds at 213.66 meters.
Distance: 0-401 m : 14.85 @ 147.87 km/h.

For the record, 0-100km/h is the 0-60mph time and 0-401m is the quarter mile time.

So, what I'm thinking here is that it would be great to have this kind of functionality on the Empeg. While Åke's programs are (were) in Windows-format, I contacted him about this, wether he was interested in helping me (and I trust there are many others who are interested!) out with this. He sent me a great response and already HAS converted the OakCalc -program for Linux!

My vision about it's functionality here would be that it could be launched from either the EmpGPS (as an addition) or then Hijack - and it would display similar figures (user selectable) as above, while driving (ie. utilizing the -realtime -option). The original thought was that it would be launched as a second user-selectable screen for EmpGPS (ie. press knob or something to get OakGPS/OakCalc launched).

I have CC'ed Rex with the e-mail conversation between me and Åke, I hope we get this thing running. I am willing to produce some code to implement these things and Åke has shown me green light of using his code in this, if it will be produced as a 'binary' to the end-users . I of course have no problem if Rex gets his interests up in this little project and wants to work it out with Åke himself.

What do you think?

Amarth