GPS Display
Today, there are a large number of cheap bluetooth GPS devices on the market. These devices allow you to connect to the device wirelessly, which is great for when you’re driving and don’t want cables draped all over the car.
However, what happens when you can’t drag your computer out to act as a display of your position? No bluetooth GPS on the market today for under $500 has a display of any kind. When you consider that these things can be had for $70, that makes purchasing one go from likely, to ridiculous. What’s the point of a handheld, easy to use GPS if you can’t use it to see where you are?
If you’ve been asking this question, I’ve got software which has an answer for you. GPSDisplay will allow you to connect to NMEA compatible Bluetooth GPS devices and display your position fix. It is written entirely in Python, using NMEA code from Forum Nokia. It requires only that you first install Python for Series 60 on your device, and should work on all first and second generation Series 60 phones. Simply download the .sis file, send it to your phone, and you’ll be all set to go — you can use your phone as a display for that new cheap Bluetooth GPS you bought, and stop dragging your laptop out into the woods to go Geocaching.
January 14th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Hi Christopher
I’ve installed GPSDisplay on a 6680(Rev 01,OS 8.0,V 3.04.37). The GPS I’m using is the Nokia LD-1W.
I have found that the display update freezes after about 15 seconds.
Restarting GPSDisplay does not work. It never gets past the Bluetooth connection stage.
GPSDisplay will only start working again after I wait a minute or two for the Bluetooth connection to the LD-1W to time out.
Then I can start the application and see the GPS data displayed.
It then freezes again after 15 seconds.
I believe that the problem may be socket or thread related.
I have been trying to get my own python scripts(This is the first time I’ve used python) to read from the LD-1W and I’m getting the same situation with a halt in data coming from the socket.
The only script that works reliably with my HW/SW is ‘gps-series60.py’ from the PyTrek-20050713-Zaragoza package.
http://www.argo.es/%7Ejcea/programacion/pytrek.htm
This script runs the GPS data collection in its own thread. I wonder if this is a clue.
Maybe it’s just a problem with my HW/SW combination.
Thought Id mention it.
Dave
January 15th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Dave –
I’ll look into the problem. Working in seperate threads is a bit more difficult from a UI perspective, but if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, eh? It does look like the Etrex script is doing pretty much the same thing — I’ll come up with a sample script and have you test it, to see if I can work out what’s causing the problems.
Thanks for the heads up!
January 16th, 2006 at 5:53 am
A friend of mine has been working on a similar project at exactly the same time, scarily: http://journal.gagravarr.org/104793.html (and http://www.livejournal.com/users/gagravarr/104455.html and http://www.livejournal.com/users/gagravarr/104402.html)
January 16th, 2006 at 6:26 am
Snap:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/gagravarr/104793.html