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Messages - auric

#46
heh.. "unfinished track detected"
Cool :-)
#47
What I experienced is this:
- Today I started a recording, then got it paused for 12 hours now. I wanted to re-start the recording only to find out that it wasn't possible anymore: recording has stopped, track is in the track list but unchecked...

During the day, I did use my phone for other things.
You know what I think? Android is killing Locus since it wasn't used that much and wasn't doing anything at that moment.
So I ended up here with the "recording track" notification in the notification area but clicking it doesn't allow me to continue the track.
Why did I notice this? The tracks that I unchecked this morning in the tracks list, were now checked again.

Don't know whether this could be the reason why locus "stopped" recording during the trip the other day: there were other applications running, mainly a heavy navigator, maybe Android ran out of resources and killed Locus to give the navigator more resources. And mainly, I don't know whether you can do anything about it, since Locus is in the background at that time and although it is not idle (it was recording!) Android kills it anyway to free up resources. And on top of that, I don't know whether Android kills background running, non-idle apps...
#48
Other features / Re: manual pages
March 07, 2011, 19:11:17
Good catch :-)

I started one but didn't want to tell you yet, until it was more or less finished :-)

I sometimes find it difficult to find new features, like Augmented Reality? Don't know about it...
So I think that it would be a good thing to describe the things that are a little hidden. You know, the "record" button is there, but what about the more hidden features?
#49
Implemented / Re: NMEA type export
March 07, 2011, 08:44:50
That is really great,  trying it out now!

... how is the file naming done btw? I see 2011-03-00 and a -01 and -03 and -04 but they're not made on the first/third/fourth of March...
#50
Didn't experience such behaviour. Don't have a rooted phone though. I experienced once a complete lock, when I configured Locus to use a Bluetooth GPS receiver, close it, connected to the Bluetooth receiver using BlueGPS4Droid, then opened Locus which tried to access the bluetooth gps as well and obviously didn't succeed. But it locked up my device.

Concerning the problem I reported, there are several logfiles (crash-xxxx.err). There isn't one for each day the logging went wrong. I found only two that are created on the time that the logging was interrupted.

I'm sending you those files in the logs.zip file.
The others are empty files or OutOfMemoryExceptions, probably created while I was downloading too many tiles :-)
And optional.zip are two log files that I'm sending to you without specific error reporting, but they might interest you :-)
#51
Implemented / Re: Upload Tracks to Sharing Site
March 03, 2011, 16:00:14
My thought? If you export the track as kml, host it somewhere on a webserver (a blog, dropbox, ...), then add the URL in maps.google.com, it'll display the entire file.
If you import it to maps.google.com, it'll break it into pieces, so the limit might actually be true.
Discarding some points isn't the way to go, there's a reason why you record all those points.

Didn't try with MyTracks yet, only manual upload using a computer :-)
#52
Implemented / Re: NMEA type export
March 03, 2011, 14:55:18
In one case yes, this is usable: You'll have the NMEA data for the time that Locus is active.
The NMEA recording in this implementation is just an unordered dump of data. Nothing wrong with it of course, mainly since nobody but advanced users will activate the NMEA feature, which is all about recording ALL data available, even (and that is important) the data while no decent signal or even no signal at all is available. From that perspective this implementation will do.

From a users perspective, this is not really user-friendly though. You have a great recording system that can even be paused and everything is split in tracks. So I'm thinking about whether it wouldn't be better record NMEA the way it is chosen in the GUI: if Locus is recording and the "record NMEA" option is activated, then save the NMEA data as well (in filenames containing the date and the time of recording, just like the tracks. Re-start a paused recording will append the data to the file).

The cleanest way of doing this from a users perspective is one step further: provide an extra option during the "Export" function, so that to the user can see one track and have the option to export it as NMEA or as GPX (or both, which immediately raises the need of a new feature: possibility to export multiple formats at the same time  :D ). However! NMEA recording is very very verbose, because you're logging each single second even when there's no (decent) GPS signal. That is at least 5, probably 8 lines every second. In 24 hours this will generate about 38MB of data! Probably a lot to put in a database :-)

So, while it might be cleaner to have that option to export NMEA rather than save it on sd immediately, it might be the best choice to save it directly anyway due to the large amount of data.
Plus I think it would be better when you can start, pause and stop the recording together with the tracks, keeping in mind that even the no-signal data should be captured.

What do you think?
#53
Implemented / Re: NMEA type export
March 03, 2011, 13:27:15
Just did a one minute test and it seems to work well!
One remark though: there are extra newlines inthere.

$GPGSV,4,1,13,04,49,292,24,13,57,208,26,20,50,094,22,23,75,095,27*76

$GPGSV,4,2,13,32,23,090,19,02,15,312,,07,,,,10,21,277,*4D

$GPGSV,4,3,13,11,,,,17,18,229,,24,09,144,,25,00,352,*47

...

It would be nice to have them without that extra line in between:

$GPGSV,4,1,13,04,49,292,24,13,57,208,26,20,50,094,22,23,75,095,27*76
$GPGSV,4,2,13,32,23,090,19,02,15,312,,07,,,,10,21,277,*4D
$GPGSV,4,3,13,11,,,,17,18,229,,24,09,144,,25,00,352,*47
...
#54
Update: Yesterday I started logging my tracks. At home, I paused the logging and kept it that way over night. This morning, I wanted to restart the logging I paused yesterday, however, the track was stopped and not checked (so invisible)
When I look at the statistics, it says it has recorded 679 points for 19 minutes (the time that I actually recorded before I hit pause).
The only option I had this morning, was to start a new recording. GPS was disabled as well, it didn't enable automatically when opening Locus and Locus displayed the question: "GPS is disabled, do you want to enable it?"
#55
On the "Tracks" screen, there is this behaviour when you have a lot of tracks (on a Desire HD it is clear when you have more than 8, preferably more than 16 tracks)
- Scroll down to the bottom
- Select/deselect the last track
- The list scrolls back to the top.

This behaviour is annoying when you want to select/deselect multiple tracks in the middle of the list, since you have to search for the correct position :-)
#56
Troubles & Questions / Tracking stops by itself
March 01, 2011, 16:44:10
Ok, this is one just to keep in mind, since I wasn't able to reproduce it consistently and thus difficult to test or fix. It is however quite problematic seen from the tracking point of view.

The problem is that Locus stops tracking after a while. Not always, just sometimes. Coincidence or not, it seems to be happening only when I use the HTC Locations application as well. I thought of different possible scenario's:
  • It might happen when HTC Locations (and thus "another application that uses the GPS") stops listening for GPS signal. However, in several situations, the tracking just continued when I closed the application at arrival.
  • It might be caused by the fact that Locus responds on tap-inputs, although it isn't the active application. However, I think that would be strange and by the way, it also happens when the "stop" control isn't visible.
  • It might be because Locations makes a strange call to the GPS and force disables it. Don't know whether that would be possible, I haven't tried to write an application that disables the GPS after a while. It seems to happen often when I re-calculate a route, causing Locations to "disable", then "enable" gps again and recalculate. However, the problem never occurs when I do a manual recalculation as a test.

Fact is that, when the problem occurs, these are the symptoms:
  • The track isn't visible on the map, while it is displayed while recording is going on
  • The tracking buttons (record, pause, stop) are in status "stopped" so that only the "record" button is clickable
  • The track is visible in the list of recorded tracks. However, it is unchecked, this in contrast to the behaviour when you hit "stop" after recording: when you hit "stop", the track is saved and checked by default, so that it is still visible on the map. When the problem occurs - as said - the track is visible in the list but unchecked.

In some occasions, tracking stopped during my trip (driving) and in other occasions, it stopped when I already arrived at my destination.
I'll keep you updated when I discover more information, but I wanted to share this anyway. The pattern "stops recording but doesn't activate the newly recorded track" might be a good start to discover what's going on, since that is not default behaviour..
#57
Troubles & Questions / Re: sort order for tracks
March 01, 2011, 16:11:31
Cool, thanks.
wanted to report this one as well, but saw it change with the most recent update :-)
#58
Your quick response and fast fixes are more than appreciated! :-)
#59
There's a weird map refreshing issue when doing these steps:
- Open Locus
- tap upper right button "start screen with online/offline map select and download ability"
- Choose "Download map" and tap "This screen" to start "this screen" downloading
- hit cancel (btw: this screen is ALWAYS in landscape mode)
- You're returned to the map view
- hit "Zoom in" button (lower right)

The zoom key will stay grey and the map doesn't zoom in.
However, when you start panning the map (tap and drag), the zoom button becomes black-transparent again and the map's zoom level is adjusted.
Zooming out has the same problem.

You can repeat this until you stop restart Locus. Zooming in will then perform normally again.
#60
The track pausing feature is cool, really. I thought I wouldn't have a use case for it, but I could immediately use it the first day I downloaded the new version from the market.

When Locus is active but hidden behind another application, GPS is disabled, which is great to save battery.
When a track is recorded and Locus is hidden behind another application, GPS is kept activated, which is great as well, obviously.

However, when a track recording is paused and you hide locus, the GPS is still activated, unnecessarily draining the battery since you're not using it: recording is paused and Locus isn't active. It would be a nice improvement when GPS was deactivated when track recording is paused and Locus isn't active.

The current behaviour when NOT recording is:
- Start Locus
- Enable GPS (gps is activated)
- hit HOME button (toast message displays "gps disabled", gps is disabled.)
- long tap HOME button and select Locus again (toast message displays "gps enabled", gps is activated)

The requested behaviour when recording, but PAUSED:
- Start Locus
- Enable GPS (gps is activated)
- record track
- hit HOME button (gps is still activated)
- return to locus, pause recording
- hit HOME button (toast message displays "gps disabled", gps is disabled)
- return to locus. Now, to be consistent with the "non-recording behaviour", GPS is enabled again
- resume track recording
- hit HOME button (gps is still activated)