Database Develop

GPSInit: See if this helps you with GPS initialization problem!

I just slapped a small program to initialize the GPS port. Just wondering if this program helps people with GPS initialization problem. Please let me know. I cannot test it out 'cause I am deep inside a building!
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Interesting Sherpa. I will try this later, I'm hoping that it will (by using your "Exit" button) kill GPS. Some GPS apps have a habit of leaving GPS open when they exit. So not so much to start GPS for me but to kill it!!!
Thanks for sharing.
Mike

mikechannon said:
Interesting Sherpa. I will try this later, I'm hoping that it will (by using your "Exit" button) kill GPS. Some GPS apps have a habit of leaving GPS open when they exit. So not so much to start GPS for me but to kill it!!!
Thanks for sharing.
Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the Exit button set to kill the GPS connection.

sherpa said:
I have the Exit button set to kill the GPS connection.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great!
Mike

First of all, good work.
I'm not trying to knock your work, and I do plan on utilizing it. I haven't tried this yet as I just got my device on Friday and haven't really had time to molest it. However, I was hoping someone would make something more along the lines of a Google Maps launcher that would activate GPS then load gMaps; or a program similar to the VJUtils that can activate and deactivate GPS with a button press.
Those are my thoughts....

Problem is, Google Maps activates the GPS just fine. It just doesn't wait long enough to get a fix. I suppose an app that started GPS, got a fix (delayed for some length of time) then launched Google would work, but it's probably not worth it when retry or two is all that's needed normally at worst.

GiODi said:
; or a program similar to the VJUtils that can activate and deactivate GPS with a button press.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What VJUtils are you talking about in this context? Searched this forum and VJ's website, but could not find a tool by his hand that starts and kills GPS . I am trying to find out wether or not my GPS is automatically stopped by an app when I quit the app, or stays on in the background, consuming power. I see that when I kill TomTom, the red LED stops blinking, but does that mean that the GPS is truely off?

GiODi said:
First of all, good work.
I'm not trying to knock your work, and I do plan on utilizing it. I haven't tried this yet as I just got my device on Friday and haven't really had time to molest it. However, I was hoping someone would make something more along the lines of a Google Maps launcher that would activate GPS then load gMaps; or a program similar to the VJUtils that can activate and deactivate GPS with a button press.
Those are my thoughts....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was actually thinking a 'GPS' entry in the htc comm manager would have been sweet. In original style icons of course.
Still, this app's pretty cool, good work sherpa.

GiODi said:
First of all, good work.
I'm not trying to knock your work, and I do plan on utilizing it. I haven't tried this yet as I just got my device on Friday and haven't really had time to molest it. However, I was hoping someone would make something more along the lines of a Google Maps launcher that would activate GPS then load gMaps; or a program similar to the VJUtils that can activate and deactivate GPS with a button press.
Those are my thoughts....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Re-reading my post, it is a little unclear. The VJ Utils i was referring to are the ones for the radios (bluetooth, wifi...). There is not one for GPS, but there should be.
Another thing I was thinking was maybe to have this program have an auto off by timer. Or maybe have it automatically close itself after certain programs that use gps close. Just throwing idea's out there.

I'm researching more regarding GPS functionality. My goal is to create something more functional. I hope time allows me to accomplish my goals. Thank you all for your feedbacks.

I was actually thinking a 'GPS' entry in the htc comm manager would have been sweet. In original style icons of course.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I personally think adding a button to the Comm Manager would be great! I could press the GPS icon there, and then start my GPS programs. This would add a small amount of buffer time to lock on to some GPS signals and get a fix.

sherpa,
Thanks for your great work.
Could you give us more information about what you do internally?
Do you just connect to COM4 or you need to send some data to this port in order to be initialized?
Thanks

As far as I can tell, the right hand LED blinks amber when GPS is active. Every GPS app that I've tried so far, lights it up and works with the GPS. Upon exiting the amber light always stops blinking, so I'm saying that in the several weeks of use so far, no app has left the GPS in an ON state.

GiODi said:
Re-reading my post, it is a little unclear. The VJ Utils i was referring to are the ones for the radios (bluetooth, wifi...). There is not one for GPS, but there should be.
Another thing I was thinking was maybe to have this program have an auto off by timer. Or maybe have it automatically close itself after certain programs that use gps close. Just throwing idea's out there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aha, you mean VJVolubilis. I am using that for my GPRS and BT, great app, should indeed be a likewise solution for GPS as well. I don't know if the GPS stays on after quiting TomTom or Google Maps, the LED goes off, but does that mean the GPS is off? Does anyone know how to check that?
I am totally in favour of adding this to the CommManager, like I am totally in favour of adding a 3G/GPRS switch in there too, but it only has so many spaces to use unfortunately and I have only 1 left..

staryon said:
sherpa,
Thanks for your great work.
Could you give us more information about what you do internally?
Do you just connect to COM4 or you need to send some data to this port in order to be initialized?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is pretty much all this program is doing right now. It is connecting to COM4 at 4800 baud rate and opening the port. When you exit, it closes the port.

Location sharing app other than latitude?

Does anyone know of an app where my g1 can track another g1 via gps? Basically, if Latitude would actually update for me, that would work. Im still playing with it to get it to work but it seems to have problems updating regularly.
Anyhow, I'm just wondering if there was an alternative to Latitude so my wife and I can see where each other is. No I don't suspect cheating, I just hate having to answer calls on my way home from work to hear "Where are you so I know when to start dinner?" If I share my location, she knows right where I am and I can continue streaming pandora in the car.
Anyone wanna try to tackle this if there is no good alternative? I need to find a "Android Development for Dummies" book.

You could try Glympse. It's concept is a bit different though: It allows to send a text-message or e-mail with a link that one can use to track you. You would have to do that every time you start your way home though. It also is more real-time than Latitude, therefore draining the battery more quickly. Either way I recommend you to give it a try.

Hellek said:
You could try Glympse. It's concept is a bit different though: It allows to send a text-message or e-mail with a link that one can use to track you. You would have to do that every time you start your way home though. It also is more real-time than Latitude, therefore draining the battery more quickly. Either way I recommend you to give it a try.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool. I'll check it out.
Thanks

Does anyone know of an app where my g1 can track another g1 via gps? Basically, if Latitude would actually update for me, that would work. Im still playing with it to get it to work but it seems to have problems updating regularly.
Anyhow, I'm just wondering if there was an alternative to Latitude so my wife and I can see where each other is. No I don't suspect cheating, I just hate having to answer calls on my way home from work to hear "Where are you so I know when to start dinner?" If I share my location, she knows right where I am and I can continue streaming pandora in the car.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LIES! i think your a secret agent ninja spy...

You can also try Loopt

+1 for Loopt
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Glympse is very cool, especially the browser app that goes with it.
It was exclusive to android i think with iphone coming later, so its a quality app, no question.

According to the website of GLYMPSE , the app is available for Windows mobile phones too.
It says you can download it on the marketplace for windows mobile
I am looking half an hour now for that program, but cant find it..
Can somebody / anybody please sent me a link ???
Your help will be appreciated !! thanks

freaknormel said:
According to the website of GLYMPSE , the app is available for Windows mobile phones too.
It says you can download it on the marketplace for windows mobile
I am looking half an hour now for that program, but cant find it..
Can somebody / anybody please sent me a link ???
Your help will be appreciated !! thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, here is a link :
http://rapidshare.com/files/304851189/Glympse_PocketPC-WM6.cab.html
( looks like I am the only one who can help ME )

Nexus keep changing my city on the weather app!

Hi, i have a little trouble with the weather in my nexus one... It keeps changing my city with a town nearby... sometimes when i refresh my weather app, my city is shown, but sometimes the little town nearby is shown, im not sure if this is a trouble of the maps, my gps, or the weather channel but, its a little bit annoying... im using cyanogen, but my nexus had this exact behavior when he wasnt rooted and had the stock firmware on it...
Just for you to understand... heres a little map: (the distance between one and the other are about 15 miles)...
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Thanx in advance my dear droid fellows!

I believe the weather app uses GPS, AGPS or WiFi to determine the current location. GPS would be accurate... AGPS depends on you cellular providers location broadcast based on triangulation of neighbouring towers... WiFi depends on you ISP's IP location broadcast... AGPS & WiFi aren't very accurate and provide a larger location ratio so you mite get incorrect location information...

Great!
Thnx Craig!
How can i know which method my N is using??

I have issues with the weather app also, small town problem I'm sure. But I disabled location based weather and manually update my zip code for reliability's sake. I recommend the same, as long as I'm in the same region its close enough.
You can check your settings with the Menu>Settings>Weather Settings options.

donchele said:
Great!
Thnx Craig!
How can i know which method my N is using??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that all depends... from my understanding... if you have your GPS on and have data/wifi, it should use the GPS position... if you have wifi on & connected, the phone uses wifi instead of data, so wifi location comes into picture... otherwise, with only data (no wifi/GPS), AGPS is used...

I have issues with the weather app also, small town problem I'm sure. But I disabled location based weather and manually update my zip code for reliability's sake. I recommend the same, as long as I'm in the same region its close enough.
You can check your settings with the Menu>Settings>Weather Settings options.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can try that, in fact i have done it, but im a travel person, so, i want to have my weather refreshed without doing anything!
Well, that all depends... from my understanding... if you have your GPS on and have data/wifi, it should use the GPS position... if you have wifi on & connected, the phone uses wifi instead of data, so wifi location comes into picture... otherwise, with only data (no wifi/GPS), AGPS is used...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a data plan, my wifi is always off and my gps on... so its a problem of my gps? are the cities to close or what?

I had a similar problem with a Droid Eris I used briefly, except it would change my location all over the world. I'm in Southern California but I suddenly got the weather for the middle of China or Egypt, sometimes getting as close as Arizona. Restarting the phone took care of it...

Tangent_ said:
I had a similar problem with a Droid Eris I used briefly, except it would change my location all over the world. I'm in Southern California but I suddenly got the weather for the middle of China or Egypt, sometimes getting as close as Arizona. Restarting the phone took care of it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WHOOOOOOA!! i dont know really whuts happening with mine, couse, i had this trouble since the first day i got it... (brand new)

donchele said:
I can try that, in fact i have done it, but im a travel person, so, i want to have my weather refreshed without doing anything!
I have a data plan, my wifi is always off and my gps on... so its a problem of my gps? are the cities to close or what?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've always believed that GPS should take precedence, but strangely, your scenario doesn't fall under that...
Well, I can only recommend you try one thing... go to the Maps app and check out your current location... try it with and without GPS...

craigacgomez said:
I've always believed that GPS should take precedence, but strangely, your scenario doesn't fall under that...
Well, I can only recommend you try one thing... go to the Maps app and check out your current location... try it with and without GPS...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I turned it off and :O
It changed to my city!!!
So which is the problem over here?
Im really confused, because when in the weather says "the other town" in google maps says "my city" (this when the GPS is on)
With the GPS off in the weather says "my city" and in google maps says "my city"

I just reboot it with the gps turned off and it fliped again to the town! I dont really dont know whut to do!

Well, I guess I was wrong about one thing... apparently, the weather app does not use GPS to find your location... it uses only WiFi and AGPS (@see http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=704ea3966b365ce1&hl=en)
And you could try one more thing... Go to Setting > Application > Manage Applications... look for all the Weather related applications and Clear Data & Cache... reboot and the check!!!

Google Maps adds Download Map Area

This is a feature that some of us have been requesting for a longgggg time, and it is finally here.
It is especially helpful for Nooks, since they don't have cell phone.
In Google Maps 5.7 - just released - go to Labs, and enable Download Map Area, and then, when you have Wifi access, you can download maps onto your Nook for places you are going to.
Then later, when you don't have Wifi access (because you are not home, nor in a hotel, coffee store or library), you can still use the downloaded maps to find your way ... to somewhere with Wifi access.
Thanks to Ole, the dev at Google for this feature.

Very cool. Will have to try it out.
Sent from my SGH-T959V using XDA App

Except the d/l maps only cover 10 square miles. It's hardly effective at doing anything except routing you over to your neighbors.

skylar.sutton said:
Except the d/l maps only cover 10 square miles. It's hardly effective at doing anything except routing you over to your neighbors.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it is a 10 mile square = 100 square miles. And you can download more than one area if you want. But you cannot do routing on downloaded maps, so this is probably more interesting for pedestrians than for drivers.

Just tried this, and it's actually 10 miles in each direction from the point you select, which means 20x20 miles = 400 sq. miles.
Only problem, where does it download the map to? I've got 7.0.3 running from my SD card. And yes, I'm new, or I'd probably know the answer.

Found the download location. Open the maps app (even though you're offline), menu/More/Cache Settings/Downloaded map areas.
Totally cool feature, OP is right. I prefer not to use a GPS, this'll come in handy.

Hell yes! Now I can download maps for all of the areas I may frequent and have them ready to go, no need to tether (painfully, mind you) with my GhettroPCS data...
Tested by downloading a map area that I hadn't cached before, turned off my wifi, and then zoomed into the square. Voila, all the street names appeared and the correct zoom-level map tiles loaded.
It takes only seconds to download map areas on WiFi.

Nice feature!

Nice feature, but still fairly worthless as it limits the downloads to 10. Perhaps the next update will allow you to cache a reasonable amount of maps.....

It's only 10sq miles at a time, you can just keep adding on more and more, I've cached the whole of greater Phoenix, Tempe and Sun City Arizona. This will definitely come in handy for me... if they add offline routing all the better...

joenathane said:
It's only 10sq miles at a time, you can just keep adding on more and more, I've cached the whole of greater Phoenix, Tempe and Sun City Arizona. This will definitely come in handy for me... if they add offline routing all the better...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I mean you can only have 10 squares cached at any one time. And in a state like NM, you need all the squares you can get.

Divine_Madcat said:
I mean you can only have 10 squares cached at any one time. And in a state like NM, you need all the squares you can get.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the best way to explain what I've done is with a picture
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I have quite a few 10sq mi areas cached, and let me tell you, the ladies love it!

"What we have here is.... failure... to communicate."
The squares for the city look good, but MY complaint is that basically, i would like to cache my entire state (I love being outdoors and on the road, and having a variety of maps available is always a good thing). But because you can only have 10 squares at any one time, the caching is still worthless to me (cached city data is not what i need. I need data on the boonies).

Divine_Madcat said:
"What we have here is.... failure... to communicate."
The squares for the city look good, but MY complaint is that basically, i would like to cache my entire state (I love being outdoors and on the road, and having a variety of maps available is always a good thing). But because you can only have 10 squares at any one time, the caching is still worthless to me (cached city data is not what i need. I need data on the boonies).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, so you can only have ten, 10 sq mile areas at any one time? LOL, that is indeed hard to communicate

How to disable "NetworkLocationService"

It should be simple as disabling network location and Google locations service on settings, but I was almost crazy trying to figure out how to disable this NetworkLocationService. It was appearing every time I started gmaps, and it makes wifi wakelock incredibly frequent, draining the battery as hell with phone sleeping and wifi sets as "only when charging" on wifi sleep policy. The only solution was remember to kill that process every time of opening gmaps.
That's the process:
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So I realise that on my gmaps settings, there were options to report my location and save my location history. And this was working even with locations disabled! Then I just disabled all that and voilà! The process went away!
That's the options on gmaps. Sorry for the Portuguese on the screenshots, but I suppose that it's understandable.
Now my wakelocks by wifi went away, so you can imagine the battery life after that.
Just sharing this because I didn't found a solution; there is only topics here on xda (on other device's forum) telling that you should downgrade gmaps to solve this.
If I'd helped you, just press "thanks". It's free!

Nice guide although,disabling all of that would lead that i can't have fast gps lock and you need to turn all of that if you want to use igo but you can leave with that

aigaming said:
Nice guide although,disabling all of that would lead that i can't have fast gps lock and you need to turn all of that if you want to use igo but you can leave with that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think so; the agps feature is independent from this network location. I tested mine right now, and it locks in less than 10s close to my room's window and it's raining. Not bad at all.
Sent from my LG-P990 using xda app-developers app

louiscypherbr said:
I don't think so; the agps feature is independent from this network location. I tested mine right now, and it locks in less than 10s close to my room's window and it's raining. Not bad at all.
Sent from my LG-P990 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope,its mendatory for fast fix
Try restarting phone and then try gps fix
Without it, took some time 2 get a lock,with it turned on i lock in 10sec's:good:

Thanks for sharing louiscypherbr.
It looks to work for me.

aigaming said:
Nope,its mendatory for fast fix
Try restarting phone and then try gps fix
Without it, took some time 2 get a lock,with it turned on i lock in 10sec's:good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can try for yourself.
I freshly installed dmx 1.5, disabled NetworkLocationService and started gmaps: exactly 22s to get a lock. Not bad considering it's the first fix on device.
Then I rebooted, waited all startup programs to load, certified that NetworkLocationService was not working in background and opened gmaps: 6s to fix! If agps was disabled it would be impossible to fix fast as that. I could make a movie, but I think there's no reason to do not believe.
Sent from my LG-P990 using xda app-developers app

It's independent from A-GPS, it's just some google service which tracks all routers and network antenna's and reports your location based on that. A-GPS uses data to track satelites quicker, correct me if I am wrong, but A-GPS just tells your phone something like: the satelites are over there. Google tells you: you are now on blabla street no 31, because they scan the whole world.

x_justin said:
It's independent from A-GPS, it's just some google service which tracks all routers and network antenna's and reports your location based on that. A-GPS uses data to track satelites quicker, correct me if I am wrong, but A-GPS just tells your phone something like: the satelites are over there. Google tells you: you are now on blabla street no 31, because they scan the whole world.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A-GPS doesn't mean "Assisted GPS"? A Standardized service wich help GPS software (Navigon, NDrive,....) to assist finding the best way depending on the trafic?

True,but you know when you cant find fix you first clear network location service...
Why then didnt you just freeze that service?It's easy couse we are rooted
Agps means assisted gps and it uses sotware(google servers defined in gps.conf) to pinpoint your location faster

aigaming said:
True,but you know when you cant find fix you first clear network location service...
Why then didnt you just freeze that service?It's easy couse we are rooted
Agps means assisted gps and it uses sotware(google servers defined in gps.conf) to pinpoint your location faster
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because I want an easy way to enable it when I need it, just holding the "gps" icon on notification and ticking "Google location service". But this resource uses a huge amount of battery, so i don't want it enabled at background while I'm not using it. Simple as that. :thumbup:
Sent from my LG-P990 using xda app-developers app

So I realise that on my gmaps settings, there were options to report my location and save my location history. And this was working even with locations disabled! Then I just disabled all that and voilà! The process went away!
That's the options on gmaps. Sorry for the Portuguese on the screenshots, but I suppose that it's understandable.
Hello,
I found your post very interesting and wanted to check my settings but somehow I can not find in GMaps settings options from your last screenshot?
Please, can you point me to this menu precicely if this in not problem for you?
GMaps -> Settings -> Location settings ?
Thank you in advance!
Cheers