Mapping software under Linux

2005-11-14T08:00:00-08:00

(notes) A quick rundown of the mapping packages that I’m aware of. None of these quite serve my needs but Roadster looks very promising.

gpsdrive: raster-based maps. Downloads maps from Expedia so they look nice but you pretty much require a full-time internet connection. With some effort you can use the Blue Marble satellite data set from Nasa but then you lose the street names. Development appears stalled.
roadmap: vector-based maps. Useful but the GUI and the maps it generates are fairly ugly. Development appears stalled.
navsys: Has a very useful car-friendly GUI. Excellent bearing and satinfo display on the main page. Development is slow but still appears active.
GMap: Looks promising. Requires Mono.
Roadster: Produces the most beautiful maps I’ve seen, better than Expedia and Google maps. Might be stalling…? GPS stuff is currently broken.

In-flight entertainment

2005-11-12T13:08:00-08:00

The car computer somewhat works one day before leaving on the long trip. I should start documenting it.

First, I didn’t like any of the existing Epia cases that I could find. They’re too big, too flimsy, or too hard to work on. The case that’s running Trestle would never ever stand up to the vibration in a car. So I figured I could make what I wanted out of $30 of plastic and $10 of brass fasteners.

Here’s a picture from a few weeks ago: the case under construction on the dining room table. Behind it is the cardboard mockup I used to figure out dimensions. So far I’m happy with the result. A solid, compact, open-flat case… I think somebody should manufacture this.

Some thoughts… It idles at 40 degC, quickly spikes to 65 degC when compiling, and right back to 40 degC when idle. Each jump takes only a few seconds. I would expect the heat sink to have more thermal mass than this! I’m wondering if it is properly attached. Since I’d have to destroy its plastic mounting pins to take it off, I don’t have any good way of finding out. Maybe it’s because I remounted the fan vertically to make room for the 12V power supply…? I wouldn’t think it would make that much of a difference. I should find a small copper heat sink and be done with it.

I had a hell of a time finding a distro to run this. First I tried my favorite, Ubuntu. But its xorg packages won’t work with the CLE266/mini LCD combo. Then I tried Mandriva (man driver?) but their free OS is just too crippled and I was unwilling to pay unless I’m sure it’ll work. Then I tried SuSE 10 but they didn’t supply many packages that I need and I ran into dependency issues when compiling them from source. So I went Gentoo. Except for the 3 solid days of compile time needed to bring this thing up (1 for base system + kernel, 1 for X, 1 for mythtv/mplayer/xine/etc), it’s working great. (I tried using distcc to cut this down but see my earlier blog posting about conflicts with other distros). So, I liked Gentoo, then I didn’t like it, now I like it again. How fickle.

I made the mistake of enabling 3dnow yesterday and then emerging a ton of packages. Erm, this CPU has sse but no 3dnow. Who’d have thought? No problem. Just find out which ones were compiled poorly and recompile them. A huge thanks to marienz on #gentoo for coming up with this:

grep -l m3dnow /var/db/pkg/*/*/CFLAGS | sed -e 's:/var/db/pkg/:=:' -e 's:/CFLAGS::' | xargs emerge -v1

Current status:

X+LCD works
audio works
touchscreen works
mythtv works
802.11 usb key works (zd1211)

Still to do:

Hook up 12V power supply
Mount PVR350 board.
Get video capture and fm radio working.
Load all my media.
Get GPS receiver working

And:

Mount fuel pressure gauge
Fab lock boxes for the rear tailgage. Fix vandalized tire.
Get some pliers, wire, and wire nuts for the trip.

Not enough time!

Shed Your Head: Category Carcomp

Mapping software under Linux

In-flight entertainment