Voice NAVIGATION

[Menion]

thanks svartbjorn, your posts are always welcome. Roundabout will be in today (mainly bugfixes release) but still with wrong images (only fixed sounds now) because my graphics need some time to create images ... but it will be

phoneguy ..
to be able to navigate on another GPX file then from cloudmade, there is need to add some more info into gpx file

Code Select Expand

     <rte>
          <rtept lat="51.17500" lon="4.39630"></rtept>
          <rtept lat="51.17600" lon="4.39630"></rtept>
          <rtept lat="51.17700" lon="4.39630">
              <desc>Head south on Perckhoevelaan, 0.1 km</desc>
              <extensions>
                  <turn-angle>269.0</turn-angle>
              </extensions>
          </rtept>
          <rtept lat="51.17600" lon="4.39630"></rtept>
          ...

so turn-angle is minimum that is needed in route point to have behavior as navigation point. At least I hope this sample will work . Data sample from CloudMade is here for example http://developers.cloudmade.com/project ... x-response, but this exactly will not work (if imported). So try mine ...

About icon ... it's not final icon. New is in creating ...

[phoneguy100]

Excellent, thanks for the reply Menion.

One bit of trouble I am having though - and its probably my own fault but maybe someone can help me out.

When I compute a cloudmade route, do I have to hit every single turn for it to work?  I mean, lets say my route has 10 turns, but I take an alternatie road at turn 4 and so miss out turn 4 altogether.  It seems that the software does not then see that I am back on the route and ready to hit turn 5, instead it does the long line-of-sight guiding arrows telling me I need to go back and do turn 4.

Is that correct or should it just pick up that I am back on route?

Many thanks.

[Menion]

I'll explain how my system work and maybe you (or anyone other) will have better idea. Everytime, Locus receive new location (or you move with map when GPS is off), I test lines to next five points and find nearest point. And that's all ... i then switch guiding "blue arrows" to next point after this nearest and also do some more computation with main navigation points that have some direction orders.  So when you return to track, guiding should automatically switch to nearest point (everytime new location comes, it move closer to you by five points). To get car as symbol, you have to be closer then 50m to nearest point on track. Hope that you understand my system (my explanation) a little.

[svartbjorn]

phoneguy100:
----------------
 what Menion explains here, works incredibly well! I just tried it again this morning when driving car to work. I took an alternative road one place and the blue arrow showed up with the great guiding line pointing to where the closest point was at the CloudMade route (continuously updating). When I joined the calculated route again, the blue arrow changed back to the car symbol and the navigation was back on track. Works perfectly!

Menion:
--------
I downloaded your latest version this morning. How great you now have the name of the road in a new window at the top!
I noticed the following:

- the name shown is the name of the road I am currently is driving on. I used Navigon some time back, and it has a similar window. However - but tapping the window, it could change between the name of the road you currently are on, and the name of the road you will turn into. That is very useful. When driving on motorways for example, you have these signs with exits and the name of exit road, and then you really want to see this name on your navigator.
So I really would like to suggest this feature. To tell which mode shown, I suggest an arrow symbol at the left of the road name: a straight arrow indicates that the name of the road you are currently on, is displayed; a 90 degrees turn arrow indicates that the name of the road you are turning into, is displayed. You switch between these two modes by tapping the name window.

- I noticed that the waypoint just before a roundabout is displaying correct text, like "Take 3rd exit". However, the turn window shows a 90 degrees right turn (I guess because that is what you do when entering the roundabout). When in the roundabout, it immediately changes to a 45 degrees right turn for the exit, even if your exit is the 2nd or the 3rd. I understand that you are working on a new roundabout image, so I guess this will be fixed then.

- When in a roundabout, the text in the "road name window", displays "he roundabout".

[Menion]

thank svartbjorn. Perfect as usual. I'll look at your suggestions. About text in title. In cloudMade data isn't current name of road, so I get this info from decsription of actual navigation point (to be precise - from previous nav point), so if there will be some problem (like you describe), please send me start and end point of track that goes over some problematic place and I'll compute on my phone and fix this text problem. Some with any other problems, like wrong arrow on some cross, etc. There will be probably problem on CloudMade site, but never know .. rather check at mine

[phoneguy100]

phoneguy100:
----------------
 what Menion explains here, works incredibly well! I just tried it again this morning when driving car to work. I took an alternative road one place and the blue arrow showed up with the great guiding line pointing to where the closest point was at the CloudMade route (continuously updating). When I joined the calculated route again, the blue arrow changed back to the car symbol and the navigation was back on track. Works perfectly!

Thanks alot for that menion and thanks for helping so muc svartbjorn.
I know exactly what you mean svartbjorn and that is exactly how I thought it would work as it tested it like that - but it didnt.  Now in all fairness, it did seem to fail in 'guide reverse', but I will try it again properly today and report back.
Also got the new version this morning and am really looking forward to testing it,  

[Menion]

in new version should be fixed only one crash during start. But by the comment on Free version on market ... not fixed completely :/ ... anyway for reverse mode, navigation do not work. For reverse it works in same way as "old guiding method".

[phoneguy100]

so reverse guiding does not work, thanks for letting me know menion as I thought I was going mad as tested the reverse navigation many times and couldnt get it to work.  lol

Cheers :-)

[Menion]

I'll do it later. After cca hour testing I decided to leave it be for now. Because I need to recalculate many things before I start guiding ... so it will be, but later ...

[svartbjorn]

In cloudMade data isn't current name of road, so I get this info from decsription of actual navigation point (to be precise - from previous nav point), so if there will be some problem (like you describe), please send me start and end point of track that goes over some problematic place and I'll compute on my phone and fix this text problem.

Attached is a CloudMade track where the road name displayed in the top navigation window is the name of the road I am currently driving on.

This track also illustrates another issue:
- Guiding sounds: I enabled "Guiding sounds" in Settings > Guiding.  I set Waypoints > "Type of sound notification" = "Beep on distance" amd Tracks > "Type of sound notification" = "Beep when you move too far from track". That caused Locus to beep something  like every 5-10 seconds or so, even though I was on the track. My conclusion from this is that there must be a lot of small track points and no waypoints. And I noticed that with Guiding On, you can see  a lot of small black points with equal distance along the track (see attached track), but the funny thing is that the distance between them is constant independent of zoom. Can you explain what this is?

- From the above I further noticed that the distance displayed in the large turn never shows 0 when at the turn point (red dots), rather is shows about 50-100m still left (try attached track). Why is that? Isn't the distance left calculated to the red dot? Doesn't seem to be.

- The larger red dots with navigation infomation also seem to be track points, not waypoints. Is that correct? Would it be possible to define them as waypoints? That would allow to have "Guiding sounds" enabled and get one beep before each turn. That would be a very useful feature! As I mentioned above, Locus is now beeping all the time.

- Automatic/manual recalculation: I choose another road, there is no way to recalculate other than to actually create the track from scratch. Since Locus knows when you are not on the track (blue arrow pops up), I guess that easily could trigger automatic recalculation. Since this requires internet access, this feature should probaly be user selectable (enable/disable). If disabled, tapping the small guiding popup window could show a new command: "Recalculate route" (from current position).

- When off track (Blue arrow pops up), the turn window continues to show the turns along the computed track as they pass as closest points. That doesn't make sense. I suggest the turn window doesn't show anything if off track (blue arrow). - Or maybe it could change to show the command/symbol "Recalculate"?

- One last thing: as I mentioned in an earlier post, the feature used in Navigon that tapping the top popup window toggles between showing the name of the road you are on and the road you will turn into. Refer pearlier post how to indicate which mode is active.

[phoneguy100]

Just some observations from using the voice navigation over the past few days...

My first problem is that although the route is the colour red which I set as it is easiest to see... when guiding is on the route is shown in dark purple/blue which conflicts with motorway road colours of blue and make following the route and seeing parts of the motorway (UK) very difficult indeed to diferentiate between.

Which leads to me to my next observation....

I was travelling down the motorway (UK) today and the route had me to come off at the next exit.  The problem was that (as stated above) the route colour when guiding was swtiched on was the same colour at the motorway and all lanes so it was very very difficult to see where my exit was coming.  The guiding arrow in the top left showed me to go straight on and the voice navigation kept telling me to go straight on.  I thought this was my exit so glanced at the screen and couldnt see where the exit was because of the colour clash and the navigation voice kept telling me to go straight on... so I did and in fact missed my turn.  It was completely misleading.

Another thing that is annoying to a degree is when going off the guided navigation route, the voice navigation stil speaks instructions.  I think that the voice navigation and turning symbols should cease completely untill you are back on your guiding route.

Guiding navigatin voices are speaking in 'metres' yet the arrow distance reads out in 'feet'.

Just a few observations there menion and good folks of this forum - loving Locus though and think the navigation thing is a superb addition.
Cheers menion :-)

[svartbjorn]

using the voice navigation

I must have missed something here - voice navigation? How do you turn that on? I have checked through all the menues and only guiding sound I can find, is the Setings > Guiding > "Guiding sounds" enable, which only enables beeps when the guiding steps from track point to track point.

[Menion]

yes, tap on turn arrow ... anyway all your very nice information are now included in Locus, like switching name, beeping, turning arrow when out of track, etc ... I did a lot of improvements, so if you'll have again some time and will want to test, it's more then welcome!!

phoneguy: It's really hard to find optimal color that should be visible on many different maps .. anyway I did again some improvements, so test next version. About the sound, it's more complicated. I'll look at it tomorrow, but I'm worried that angle associated with place where you have to exit motorway, is close to zero, so it looks like "straight". I'll at it, if there is not any clue to say something like "here exit motorway", rather then "go straight" ...

[phoneguy100]

Oh of course, I see your point menion.  The angle to exit the motorway was extremely slight as it is a 'slip lane' afterall.  Yes, I now see that it is difficult to get the software to recognise such a slight angle.

When I set a route in regular mode in Locus I always pick bright red as the route colour.  An option to change the calculated navigation route colour just like you can change other colours would be great.  I suppose a kind of stripey line would be out of the question?  Just a thought as to what would be best to be seen although a stripey route would probably look aweful.  lol

If there was a way for the nav voice to know the motorway exit was coming up and for it to speak about the exit then yes, that would be so much better than the 'go straight'.

Thanks menion, gonna grab the latest version of pro now.  :-)

[svartbjorn]

About voice navigation:

yes, tap on turn arrow

When I do so, I get a popup window saying "Choose voice" and on the line below only one option - "No voice". So no matter where I then tap, I do not get any option to enable voice navigation (have tried with Settings > Guiding > "Guiding sounds" enabled and disabled, but I assume these settings are only for the waypoint/track point sound notifications).