Mapping bus stops using Treo 680 & GPS

[oronzous]

there are a couple of freeware that allow you to record POIs and tracks

Lap Logger or GPS buddy. you can find them at:
gps Freeware Palm phone and pda programs, Free Palm OS software downloads.

If you have a Garmin BT reciever, you can use their Mobile XT software.

Once you have a gpx file, you can view it on Google Earth converting it to kml. You will need GPS bable (also free) or you can do it from GPS visualizer web page.

Or if you want to draw a Garmin compatible map, there are also ways to it for free.

I did start a map from my treo 680...
....collecting tracks and points from Mobile XT ...
... processed it with GPS Mapedit (shareware) to make a gps compatible map ...
....Then adding more info from satellite pictures (Google Earth), public maps, and calibrated maps (OzyExplorer) ....
... then compiled in mapcenter 2 ...
... and see where it got:

Mapset details

[jeffq]

Update: I bought a Freedom Keychain GPS 2000, which LotusLord suggested, from TigerDirect (through Amazon). It's an amazing little device that seems to work extremely well. I say seems because so far I haven't found any application that just does what I want in any simple way. Most of the apps mentioned above seem to be able to read the data coming from the Freedom, but none of them make it easy both to collect points of interest and match them to an existing map, like Google Maps. Where Am I? will bring up GM with the current location centered, but that's all it does (at least for the free version, and I don't recall seeing anything in the paid version description that collects multiple POIs). Lap Logger provides solid data, but has no maps. PrettyMap and Pathaway can display maps, but you've got to create them yourself, so they'll require a heck of a lot of work for me. So it goes for everything I tried.

I got sidetracked for a few months by some major problems, but I hope to continue my research soon.

[dwkerux]

Thanks for the update. How does the keychain work as a GPS and does it interact with the Treo well? Good luck and keep us posted.

[LotusLord]

Glad we didn't scare you off.

dwkerux, the keychain recieves GPS signals, and transmits them to the Treo via bluetooth. It requires a GPS software and maps package (I use Tom Tom Navigator).

[dwkerux]

Originally Posted by LotusLord

Glad we didn't scare you off.

dwkerux, the keychain recieves GPS signals, and transmits them to the Treo via bluetooth. It requires a GPS software and maps package (I use Tom Tom Navigator).

Is that a separate software package and is it very expensive? I'm just curious. Need to get caught up from buying my 680 and the D-LINK (DIR-655)
Xtreme N Cable/DSL Router (both unexpected expenses), but would eventually like to have something like this. Not that I as a man ever need directions or anything.

[jfa02]

The telenav program on ATT phones TT I dont know if thats the same as the Navigator package they are advertising now is 10.00 a month. if you have voice recognition its sup[posed to do turn by turn voice announcements so the screen size really doesnt matter (so they say)

[LotusLord]

It runs around 150 for Tom Tom Navigator with the maps. Of course that means a one time cost, besides the cost of occasionally having to buy updated maps.

[jeffq]

So others don't have to repeat my frustrated experimenting, here are some usage notes on the Freedom Keychain GPS 2000.

The tiny (3"x6"), 2-page-per-language manual doesn't say much, so here's how I found I could reliably do a Bluetooth connection between it and my Treo 680. (BTW, I'm using AT&T's Treo680-2.11-ATT software update. It doesn't seem like this would have any impact at all on Bluetooth, but I mention it just in case.)

First you need to pair the devices, so that they have a (relatively) secure mutual connection:

1. Turn the Keychain on, and its blue light (Bluetooth connection status) will glow solidly.
   
2. Start the Treo's Bluetooth app, turn Bluetooth on, then set "Visibility" to either "Visible" or "Temporary". (The latter will make the Treo generally visible for only 2 minutes, if I recall, but that's more than enough time to pair the devices. Once paired, "hidden" devices can still communicate with each other.) NOTE: While you're proceeding with the next few steps, the Keychain's blue Bluetooth light will start blinking, indicating that it is exchanging information with nearby devices.
   
3. On the Treo, press "Setup Devices", then "Trusted Devices", then "Add Device". Almost immediately, the Treo will show "Unknown device". (It may show more than one "Unknown device" and/or other identified devices if there are more around, including other people's, if they're not too savvy about security. You should see what I found riding on a bus!)
   
4. After a few seconds, the Freedom's "Unknown device" entry on the Treo will turn into "Keychain GPS 2000". Select that (even if it's the only entry) and press "OK".
   
5. The Treo will say "Enter passkey for Keychain GPS 2000". Annoyingly like most other Bluetooth devices, the Keychain's passcode is "0000". (Some security!) Enter that, press "OK", and Treo will saying "Verifying", then "Disconnecting", and then display the "Keychain GPS 2000" device as a trusted device.

You've now paired your Treo and Keychain! You can press "Done", "Done", and then exit the Bluetooth app now. (In fact, you can probably just jump to any other application without having to back your way out of the Bluetooth screens.)

"Trusted device" means that the Treo and Keychain recognize each other without re-entering the passcode. Whenever you use any GPS application, at some point the app will open a Bluetooth-devices screen that offers "Keychain GPS 2000" as a selection. Just select it and press "OK", and the Keychain will start feeding the GPS app all satellite data as long as the Bluetooth connection is maintained. (The moment you turn on the Keychain, its orange GPS light -- which looks like a stylized atom, or more appropriately, rings of satellite orbits -- will glow solidly while it searches for satellites, and blink once a second as it collects data from one or more of them. It does this automatically, in parallel with anything you're doing about Bluetooth, so you don't need to do anything except be somewhere where a satellite feed can reach you.)

The pairing process may seem like a lot of steps, but once you do it a few times, it'll be easier and only take a few seconds. Most of the time you shouldn't need to do it between GPS sessions. Two things may interrupt or confuse the pairing, and will occasionally force you to re-pair the devices:

1. You've used another similar Bluetooth device with either your Treo or your Keychain. (I'm still a little fuzzy on how similar devices need to be to cause this to happen, but I think you're supposed to be able to use an "audio" device, like Bluetooth headphones, without messing up the pairing of a "serial" device like the Keychain. Even so, I wouldn't try to use them at the same time!)
   
2. Either the Keychain or the Treo (probably the latter) just gets confused, or the Treo crashes or resets for other reasons. Bluetooth strikes me as still a somewhat fragile technology, and I've often lost my audio connections for no apparent reason, so I expect the same might occasionally happen when doing GPS. On the other hand, I suspect the serial data from a GPS device is far less of a load on the Treo, so maybe it'll prove to be more stable.

One more note about GPS serial connections. Most of the applications I tried either have a particular speed (e.g., 9600 baud -- bits per second, roughly speaking) or require that you tell them at what speed your GPS device communicates. Some even include setting other protocol elements like parity and stop bits. This is a holdover from the old days of really dumb serial devices (how well I remember them!). Modern devices like the Keychain (which has a maximum speed of 115200 baud) should be able to automatically sense this stuff and adjust. But I had problems with some of the applications that needed particular settings, and I didn't spend much time trying to analyze where the problem was.

If you want to test your Keychain with a free GPS application, just to make sure it's working, I recommend LapLogger (0.6.7-PRE build 0015, dated 25 March 2007). It consistently connects to the Keychain and starts updating position, altitude, and speed data that you can watch as you move. Another that worked the first time I tried it is KML Creator (0.3). It does the same thing, and its name implies that it can create a KML (Google Earth) file of your travel, which is almost half of what I'm trying to do. (I'm trying to get a Treo GPS to record POIs -- points of interest -- only when I press a button, instead of every X seconds as most of the tracking apps do, and I want to display them on a Treo-compatible street map, which the Palm version of Google Maps doesn't seem to allow yet, even for Google's own KML format.) Anyway, these will at least demonstrate that any problems you might be having with your other, possibly expensive GPS software are the application's, not the Keychain's or the Treo's.

I hope folks find this verbose post useful. I'll try to add some specific application experiences as I can document them.

[dwkerux]

Thanks Jeffg for the very detailed post. It was very imformative. I assume that the freeware does not have maps, but only gives coordinates?

[jeffq]

'Fraid so -- no maps for LapLogger or KML Creator. Where Am I? is "donationware" (with a few extra features if you contribute to the author, "Carlos") that does two things: reads your GPS data, then jumps to Google Maps, centering on your current location. It actually requires you to tap a button to fetch the data, then tap a button to jump to GM. Were I a Palm system programmer, I'd sure like to turn that into some kind of "driver" process (assuming such a thing is possible) that would just do this while you're using GM, so you could actually watch yourself move about. But that's not my main project anyway, and I haven't figured out how to make Google Maps for Palm save *any* points.