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Friday, November 20, 2009

Navigon, TomTom, the iGPS360 and... debugging GPSSerial

Link for iPhone and iPod Touch users here

This is a post that describes how GPSSerial was debugged to fix the heading bug that appeared in Navigon and TomTom.

As you can imagine, it is very time-consuming to get on the road and do real-life GPS testing every time the code for GPSSerial is updated. As such I decided to record the output of the iGPS360 module to a file while driving my car on a route that was known to have heading problems in Navigon.

What you see in the above video is an in-door setup where the iPod Touch is connected through an interface board to my desktop computer. The desktop computer in turn plays back the on-the-road recorded GPS trace through the interface board. This setup is a huge time-saver when it comes to testing bug-fixes in the GPSSerial source code.

In the course of the debugging process, I also updated the iPhone Toolchain on the desktop PC (running cygwin) to firmware version 3.1.x as I first thought that the bug was related to the Toolchain version. This was quite an experience in itself: not without problem; although the instructions at Saurik's page are very good, they are not complete, and neither up-to-date (yet) for the 3.1.x firmware.

After having spent a lot of time on testing and debugging the code, all the work has finally paid off: the latest GPSSerial version is finally working correctly with Navigon. The incorrect-heading bug is now fixed and the red GPS bar does no longer appear when you are not moving.

You can download and install the latest GPSSerial version by following the instructions on the Orange Gadgets site here.

The new version should hopefully be available through Cydia soon as well.

Try it out and feel free to leave your feedback in the comments.

Enjoy! PmgR

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't download the 1.3.1 deb file from your URL.
404 Not Found

Anonymous said...

File not found 404

GPS said...

@anonymous: link is fixed now.

Matti said...

Nice! I'm going to try it out now!

Haris said...

First of all I would like to thank you on all the effort regarding new GPSSerial version.
Recently I became iGPS360 user.
Unfortunately I live in part of Europe where iGo is the only acceptable solution because of great coverage (very detailed map of Adriatic Region) but new version didn't heal allready known illnesses...Can You please fix this in announced version 1.3.2...

Best regards, Haris.

GPS said...

@Haris: for iGO, first unplug your module, then start up iGO and then plug the module back in. It's a workaround, but other people have reported that it works this way. If it still does not work, first reboot your device to reset the serial port (it seems iGO locks up the serial port for some reason; probably they are accessing the serial port in their code)

Haris said...

@GPS: Unfortunately I allready tried everything you mention without any result. By the way I'm using jaibroken iPod Touch 2G 3.1.2 FW, GPSSerial 1.3 (not 1.3.1) and iGPS360. iGo is all the time looking for GPS signal but can't find it. Navigon is finding signal immediately. iGo also finds signal using GPSSerial 1.2 but then it seems I'm driving backwards. Anyone succeed running iGo on similar configuration?

Tnx, Haris.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Please release gpsserial as open-source as you promised! It will profit you company in the long term!

GPS said...

@anonymous: I do not own the rights to the GPSSerial source code.

jk said...

MapQuest App from itunes store crashes on start with GPSserial 1.3.1. Also in future version can you pleasee add support for Magellan Roadmate, offmaps and starmap pro. With Xgps i am really having problem downloading offline maps it take forever on cable connection. Navigon and Roadmate are best apps for NA.

Thanks for updating GPSSerial :D. I wish igps had bios software instead of relying on GPSSerial to emulate iphone gps.

GPS said...

@jk: Magellan will already work in GPSSerial v1.3.2 (confirmed) and most likely the other apps that don't crash on startup will too.

Regarding Mapquest, please email your syslog file (see here) after the crash.

For xGPS, use xGPS Manager to download maps with zoomlevels 1-7 (avoid level 0 as it is not really needed and takes too much time). Also start with a small area and add to it later on.

xGPS accesses the iGPS360 directly and works very smoothly. For AppStore apps, due to Apple's restrictions, you will have to use GPSSerial.

Haris said...

Does iGo my way work with GPSSerial 1.3.2? Anyone?

jk said...

@Haris haven't checked. Magellan seems to work haven't given it full test.

@GPS Not sure were to post this debug log but posting it here:

http://pastebin.mozilla.org/687711

Please let me know if you need anything more.

Thanks

Haris said...

Confirmed.Finally iGo works...Than You!

xavier said...

Hi :)

I would be extremely interested by the procedure to get navigon installed on the ipod touch.

I have a legal copy of navigon, but it refuses to get installed on the ipod from Itunes...Could you tell me how to get it installed ?

Great job anyway ! Thanks !

GPS said...

@xavier: I will make a detailed post soon on how to do this. It is pretty straightforward actually: unzip the .ipa (after having it renamed to .zip), copy the .app folder over to the /Applications directory on your iPod and make sure to maintain permissions (if not, correct them with chmod). Then reboot your device.

jk said...

@xavier Also you can install "Installd Patch" via iPhone.org.hk repo that work as well i believe.

Haris said...

I noticed only one problem with iGo...when not moving iGo loses GPS signal...

xavier said...

Thanks a lot to you both :)

I copied the whole app (1,84 Gb), then recursively chmodded it in 755...And it didn't show up, despite a complete reboot and a bunch of "killall SpringBoard".

In the end, I installed installous (I had AppSync but not Installous) and the app showed up after having installed Installous :)

Thanks again. I'm very happy with Navigon after having tried iGo and Symbic (but I am not going to launch a long story about which one is best :))

GPS said...

@xavier: forgot to tell you to delete a plist before rebooting:
rm /var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installation.plist

GPS said...

@Haris: are you using the latest beta:
GPSSerial-beta20091202-1.3.2.deb

Haris said...

@GPS: Yes, I'm using latest beta:
GPSSerial-beta20091202-1.3.2.deb...

jez said...

confirmed working:
copilot live 8 ver: 8.0.0.417 uk map
igo my way ver: 8.4.2.98402 uk map
navigon ver: 1.2.0 uk map.
sygic ver: 7.71 uk map

not working:
tomtom ver 1.2 uk map. same issue...going wrong way???
would ver 1.1 work ok???
ive got ipod touch 2g jailbroken 3.0 .
GPSSerial-beta20091202-1.3.2.deb

GPS said...

@jez: TomTom v1.2 has been reported to work fine with the latest GPSSerial. Please see the Xwaves forum here

jez said...

rebooted ipod touch...tomtom v1.2 now works. apart from one snag. when vehicle is static tomtom jumps erratically on my display screen. any ideas??? thanks.

jez said...

also i get no sound? every time i higher it on my ipod...for some strange reason it lowers itself right back down to zero level....which is weird? do you know what the problem is????? thanks.

GPS said...

@jez: That has nothing to do with GPSSerial. GPSSerial doesn't touch any sound settings. Maybe a bug in TomTom.

jez said...

the sound thing sorted itself out? but still, when vehicle is static tomtom jumps erratically on my display screen and turns from colour to black and white???then when i move off...its all god again? oh well, prob just a bug or summit. thanks.

H.-J.Dai said...

iGPS360 works perfectly with PAPAGO Taiwan!
good job!

opai said...

how can i get 1?