 |
GpsMid |
|
GpsMid is a free, fully offline, vector based map application for your mobile phone. It displays your current position on a zoomable map and can be used to search for and navigate to roads or points of interest of your liking. As all data is stored in a compact binary format on your phone you will incur no charges for extra data downloads.
GpsMid uses map data by OpenStreetMap, a wiki based open source map. Yes, the world is
not really complete yet, but in an increasing number of areas it is starting to be comparable to, if not greatly exceeding, the level of detail found on other commercial maps.
Furthermore, as a wiki, you are always able and invited to help improve it and GpsMid tries to give you the tools to do so. Look at
Getting Involved with OpenStreetMap
for more detail of how to contribute to the map.
Currently supported features:
- Vector rendering of the roads, areas and points of interest
- Displaying the map either north on top or in the direction of driving
- Centering the map to a position received from your GPS:
- NMEA GPS-unit with bluetooth connection.
- Devices with built-in JSR179 compatible location provider
- Based on Cell-ID (using opencellid.org)
- Zooming in and out to arbitrary levels of detail.
- Displaying the name of the street you are on and the maximum speed you may travel.
- Searching for a name (street, city or POI) and jumping to it on the map
- Searching for close by points of interest
- Calculating a route to a target street and navigate to it with voice guidance and textual instructions
- Adding and deleting of waypoints to the map
- Recording and displaying of track logs
- Importing and exporting track logs and waypoints to and from GPX
- Taking geotagged photos with your mobile
- Fully customizing which OSM features are used in GpsMid and how you want your map to look
- Live editing of OpenStreetMap way tags
Features in development
- Usability improvements
- Further improvement to the routing algorithm
- More OpenStreetMap editing support on the go.
More information about current development can be found here
|
Important links:
News:
- Version 0.5.0 has been released with many new features
|
Limitations
Although GpsMid aims to run on as many devices as possible, due to the large variety of handsets and the sever resource limitations of some of the older mid-range phones, unfortunately not everything works equally well everywhere.
- Limited memory: Some phones have very limited memory, such as the Motorola Razr V3 series. On these it may not be possible
to zoom out fully without exceeding available memory. Midlets of about 3Mb size should be fine though, at least
when zoomed in.
- Maximum jar size: Some phones, such as earlier S40 phones of Nokia, restrict the maximum size of a jar file they will accept.
As GpsMid bundles the map data into the jar, this may limit the area one can incorporate into a single midlet. Experimental support
of storing the data on the file system has been added in version 0.4.0 to overcome this.
- Permissions: Java 2 ME unfortunately has often a DRM policy, which only allows signed midlets to access certain phone features
used in GpsMid. As an open source project, and with the data bundled into the jar, we however cannot offer signed versions of GpsMid
at this moment
Installation
Pre-bundled midlets are currently only provided for a few demonstration areas due to space restrictions. You can however easily create a bundle for your custom region by yourself. Look
at Osm2GpsMid to find out how to create such a bundle.
Each jar-file is a bundle of the application itself and some map data. Either send the midlet via bluetooth or simply copy it (.jar and .jad file)
to the correct directory on your device. Choose install new and select
the jar file.
Usage
After accepting the initial splash screen, you will get to the main menu. If you have a GPS receiver or a location aware phone, select setup to configure your Location Receiver. Select discover to choose your bluetooth GPS-device or use the built-in Location-Provider-API (JSR179), if this is implemented
on your device.
Go back to the main menu and select Map. After a few moments you should see a map with your
actual position in the centre.
Keys
- 1: zoom out, 3: zoom in
- Arrows and 4,6,8,2 pan the map. Once panned, the map no longer follows your position. To re-enable centering on your position, hit 5
- 7 switch through several overlay displays
- Hold 9 for a second to enable a key-lock. While GpsMid is running, the normal key-lock will most likely not activate.
- Shortcuts to menu entries
- * Opens a setup dialog to configure some display options
- 0 toggles between full screen mode
- # Keeps the backlight on even with no key activity
- Hold * for a second to jump to the waypoint menu
- Hold 0 for a second to toggle track recordings on or off
- Hold # for a second to jump to the tracklog menu
Search location
To find names in the search screen press the number key with the letter on it once. For example if you want
to search for otto* press 6886. Initial results are presented after entering the first two digits. If you see
only null entries, the names are not resolved yet. Wait a bit and the names
should be displayed soon after. Use the up and down arrow to select an entry and press the fire button to
jump to this location on the map screen.
Search for close by points of interest
If you are in the search screen, select nearest POI from the menu. In the new dialog select which point
of interest you are looking for and specify a maximum distance. After hitting OK, you should see a list of
points of interest ordered by distance from the position of the cursor in the map.
Routing
Select your destination as the target either by searching, or by navigating the road and select "As target" from the menu.
Once you have selected the destination, go back to your start position, e.g. by hitting 5 if you have a GPS enabled. The route
will be calculated from the current cursor position to the target once you hit "Route" in the menu.
Demo
If you have a java plug-in for your web browser, you can have a look at a live demo of GpsMid to see what it offers for you. The page presents a mobile phone emulator that is running GpsMid in which you can try out viewing the map, searching and routing.
Due to starting the java plugin and downloading GpsMid, the demo page might be slow to load!
For security reasons, don't handle this software while driving.
Last updated: 17/05/09 --- GpsMid is licensed under
GPLv2