I found this today on my HD it was some gps soft. Im not exactly sure what it does cause I havn't gotten a change to look though it. *I did not write this* I had this from back in the day when i had a computer in my car for a mp3 player. I think this is the software i was messing around with to tell direction, etc...
Hope this helps. I can't test it cause I can't find my gps and im in the process of looking for a new one.

-Greg

I've been looking at the Tiger data and the precision. With mcomb's GPS log, I've been able to determine that the accuracy compared to coordinates given by GPS is anything between 0 to 40m.

I'll attach a rather big GIF file which contains a piece of map generated from the Tiger data combined with mcomb's GPS log. The green lines represent the roads and the red line represents the output of the GPS receiver.

To give you idea of the map scale, one pixel represents about four meters.

Kim

Hi Kim.

That looks promissing for me. It seems to be possible to automatically adjust the current offset between map and GPS positions, given that the staring point is corrected by hand.

cu,
sven

Well I've got the linux experience and a Garmin eMap.

Not sure what I can use for Maps in the Uk - I do have the Garmin Maps but not sure what format these are in!

Great project - let me know how I can help!

Regards

Paul

Hi,

If you need grabs from Denmark, I can gather several as I drive around a lot.

How's it coming guys?! I've got some $$ burning in my pocket for a GPS reciever and probably a few more $$ left over for the developers that write the software to use it.... =]

Just curious why it got quite all of a sudden on this thread... i was so eagerly following.

Hehe. I was JUST going to post then I saw that loren did. I bought a Garmin Etrex from BestBuy today after tons of trouble from Amazon.com and made a data cable with a credit card and some wire. I am interested as well on how the project is going. I am also willing to test ; D

-Greg

Just curious why it got quite all of a sudden on this thread... i was so eagerly following.

We've been running various experiments with mcomb to find out how the biggest problems could be overcome.

Initially, we started with the Tiger data (that is freely available for the whole US area). The problems with that data is that it's fairly inaccurate and it's missing one-way info/turning restrictions.

Recently, I've looked into the USGS DLG data (also freely available for the whole US area) which has better accuracy and has one-way info. But since the data lacks street names and numbers, it is essential to combine these two maps together. However, the map conflating seems to be quite problematic. I can get about 80% of the streets mapped correctly, but the rest gets mapped to incorrect streets.

This is a common problem in map conflating and without a relatively complex algorithms and manual tuning afterwards, it is hard to get good results.

Read more here and here.

Another problem with the one-way that can be extracted from the USGS data is that I haven't been able to figure out which way a road is one-way. If a road is marked as one-way, it's not necessarily always one-way towards the same direction as the data is digitized.

Kim

I guess it would be more worthwhile to find out what kind of agreement Smu could get with TeleAtlas, as most likely everyone will pay for a data CD.

Till

Hmm. Just an idea.... Would it be hard to get information from retail mapping software? I didn't want to say M$ streets and Trips but i have the licensing info here so I thought I'd just mention it. Anyways, licensing is really cheap if bought in volume. Im sure there are other mapping software out the that has better maps and M$ usually over charges so this could even be cheap... but I dont know if you can read from those map or not.... the m$ maps do have a feature to export to a win-ce or palm device.. so even those maps could be used. Here is the m$ info:

Microsoft Open License Pack (MOLP)
Microsoft® Streets & Trips 2002 Win32 English OPEN Level C OLP C

Version: 2002
Part Number: B17-00036
Environment: 32-Bit Win
Media: Non-specific
Pool: Applications
Level/Unit: Level C/1
Estimated Price: $28.00
Notes:

-Greg

We've been running various experiments with mcomb to find out how the biggest problems could be overcome.

My experiences so far is that the tiger data by itself is not accurate enough for route planning. It lacks information on one-way roads so it constantly does stuff like tell you to go up freeway offramps. I have also had problems with dead ends that the current system assumes go through. I have also been meaning to ask Kim if there is enough data present to allow for easiest vs fastest vs shortest route selection. I believe the current algorithm tries for shortest where I would generally prefer easiest (stay on freeways as much as possible, etc) or maybe fastest (quickest route assuming you are going the speed limit the whole way).

But, and this is a pretty big but, the tiger data and Kim's nav system is very helpful as a supplement to written instructions. It is great to know what street you are on, what address range you are in, what direction you are heading, and be able to use the moving map as a reference if you sort of know the area. It is enough to get you around with crappy directions or no directions in an area you are sort of familiar with.

Hopefully Kim will be able to pull some more info out of the USGS data or someone will be able to come up with another data source.

Anyway, after using Kim's software for a couple of weeks I am still very impressed. An accurate datasource still seems to be the biggest missing piece.

-Mike

Kim, Any chance of being able to try out what you have or a demo or something? I completely understand if not but I thought I'd ask. This "demo" would be tried without bugging you of couse (like asking how to install it, why something isn't working, etc) cause I know that would probobly be annoying.

:::Crosses Fingers ;D
-Greg

the tiger data and Kim's nav system is very helpful as a supplement to written instructions. It is great to know what street you are on, what address range you are in, what direction you are heading, and be able to use the moving map as a reference if you sort of know the area.

You know what? This statement got me thinking...

I would still pay for that functionality alone. I mean, even if it didn't even attempt to route-plan for me... If I simply had a moving map on one part of the screen, and a arrow with range/bearing to my destination on the other part of the screen, I would love to have that on the empeg display. I could still get anywhere I wanted to go with that kind of data.

I know that there are more sophisticated nav systems already available which can do proper on-the-fly route planning. But those require room in my dash for the large screen, something I no longer have now that I've got the empeg. So until I can buy an integrated 1.75-din NAV+MP3 device, I'm going to be content with whatever I can get on the empeg.

Now here's something else that just occurred to me. The Tiger data doesn't have enough detail to do proper route-planning. But if I log into MapQuest.com, it will route-plan and will give me proper directions (well, most of the time. I've seen it glitch before).

Of course, we can't get our hands on the dataset that MapQuest.com uses, so it's no good to us.

Or is it...

Let's think for a second. Before we leave on a trip, we usually know our destination, correct? Well, what if we punched it in to MapQuest, have our (hypothetical) Windows client software screen-scrape the HTML that MapQuest spits at us and extract the route-planning instructions. Click a button on this client software and it automatically squirts the route into our empeg. That route is fed to Kim's software which simply parrots the MapQuest instructions while using its internal Tiger data to verify we're on the right road and display our progress.

The only thing we'd lose is the ability to accurately route-plan "on-the-fly". But if we can punch in an address and we've still got the moving map and the range/bearing data, that's still useful for on-the-fly calculations.

Of course, where the Tiger data and MapQuest data differ, there will be glitches. Okay. And it's a bit of a rube-goldberg solution for something which should be much slicker. But until we get our hands on better map data, it's at least something, right?

Hell, I'll even volunteer to write the screen-scraper, that's pretty simple. I've already got software in VB that does this sort of thing.

Surely I can't be the first person to have thought of this?

Good call Tony. I was thinking the same thing but was trying to thing of the best way it would work before I posted. There are many sites that tell how to program simple apps like your talking about. I was looking around and even saw a scaled down version that gets your destination maps from mapquest then puts waypoint on your etrex. The same thing could be done on the empeg. A sort of waypoint database. The cool part is that once those waypoints are in you empeg you could have the program make a list of them so you could use them in the future again.

-Greg

I was looking around and even saw a scaled down version that gets your destination maps from mapquest then puts waypoint on your etrex.
>

Wow, so where do I drop off my firstborn for a port of that to the empeg :P

I'll pay for shipping and everything!

You know what we should really do? We should each get a GPS and toodle around our own town gathering data and then transcribe it. Then release it ``open source'' and let everyone who needs street data use it instead of having to deal with all this data. There's bound to be a freely available analog street map from the US Govt. (maybe the USPS?) that we could compare against. I realize that it would be a big pain, but it would be a boon to the community at large. I'd start doing it myself if I had a GPS or some money with which to buy one.

I'd be willing to do it. There is also a bunch of small apps out there with maps. Im not sure how accuarate they are though.

btw: The Garmin Etrex comes out to $100 with standard shipping if you search for a amazon.com $5 of any puchase coupon. Then all you need is to make/buy a datacable and your set. Amazon screwed me twice though so I was forced to buy it at Best Buy for $30 more.

-Greg

Unfortunately, I don't have a job right now, so just paying my rent is hard. Frivolous purchases have gone by the wayside. Otherwise, my response to the recent poll elsewhere would have been ``I'm buying many more CDs now''.

There are some maps available at Mapopolis.com ... they've got maps for palm pilot software ... their platinum plus gps maps are $10, and they're from NavTech ... accurate enough to do door-to-door directions, streets and addresses, water, landmarks, etc...

Do you think you can reverse engineer one of these into something usable? I've got one of their older free maps of dallas, I could send it to you if you like.

The maps are of US and Canada only right now ...

Also, I've got Microsoft Streets as well as Rand McNally's Streetfinder maps. Both of these have GPS support and driving directions. They also know about one way streets.

If you like I can send you some of this data, or a whole ISO image if you prefer.

Greg

While reading Beowulf and watching Lord of the Rings I thought of something. Does anyone know how hard it would be to read from the maps that are used on a palm? I was thinking something could be made just how the palm works. Most people who use GPS on the palm dont have a huge ram card with every map on it, instead they just have use their desktop computer to choose the map they want and then sync it. The same thing could be done with the empeg. I've seen this software VERY cheap. Even some around $10-$30. M$ Streets and Trips (which is a bit more expensive) has that same option to export maps for a palm. Here is the info from Streets and Trips 2002:

Microsoft Pocket Streets 2002: Easily create and download maps to your Windows CE 2.0 or later palm-sized or hand-held PC to take on the road with you.

-Greg

I haven't upgraded to Streets & Trips 2002 yet, but I got Streets and Trips 2000 for like $10 after rebate or something. Pocket Streets was (is?) a free download. Pocket Streets 2000 is on my Pocket PC now and it works pretty well. I don't think the pocket version does routing though , just map viewing and finding locations and stuff AFAIK. I think you need the desktop version to do routing.

Yeah, what I was thinking was to take those exported maps that were meant for the palm and put them on the empeg and have the gps software on the empeg read them. The empeg gps software would do the routing according to the map.

-Greg

Here is the map file that comes out when you "Export map for pocket streets " if anyone wants to try to read it. It should just be a map of some streets in my neighborhood. The file is zipped to be able to attach it in here.

-Greg

I guess you can get the maps for free. My whole state is a 200k file.

http://www.microsoft.com/pocketstreets/mapdownload/MapDownload_EN.html

-Greg

These are all good ideas, but I think that the problem with all these maps is that they are proprietary and their format is not freely available. Thus, kim's software won't be able to make use of them.

Sean

...and if you did manage to reverse-engineer them, Gates' minions would be at your door within minutes.

Not really.. They can't do anything about Star Office reverse-engineering the Word .doc format... This would be the same thing.

I looked at the free map file for my area, and with a little data processing some of the information could be figured out. Unfortunately, there's a lot of unknowns that have to be figured out for any of the data to be useful. Probably a comparison between two different maps would be needed as well as a lot of guesswork..

They can't do anything about Star Office reverse-engineering the Word .doc format... This would be the same thing.

Eh... Not so fast, my friend. DOC, XLS, PPT are just file formats. What we're talking about with Streets & Trips is *data* in a file format. That data itself likely has some kind of copyright attached to it, and, I'd bet, was purchased by Microsoft from some other company. That company would likely be the people who would sue you, not Microsoft.

It seems that reverse-engineering file formats doesn't raise many eyebrows at Microsoft, and the law gets really grey when stuff like that happens... But taking proprietary *data* and reverse-engineering that, I think that's a little different. We'd need a team of lawyers to sift through the Streets & Trips EULA, but I'd imagine there's a clause in there prohibiting using the data for anything other than their software... Whether it would hold up in court is questionable since EULA's always have at least one ridiculous non-enforcable and downright illegal clause in them, but I would bet the map data is protected more strongly than the DOC format, which is just a format.

You're right.. reverse engineering the data format isn't illegal, using their data would be.. Knowing what's in the data isn't really useful though, if you can't use the data you figure out.

Looking at the data in the Pocket Streets downloadable map files, I wouldn't even attempt to reverse engineer the files. The stuff from mapopolis are easy to figure out.. looks like[coordinates, other info, street name] chunks, where the Pocket Streets info is stored much differently..