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GPS Navigation Interface for TS
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These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
GPS Navigation Interface for TS // Interactive Artwork
Post by Wigand // Feb 24, 2008, 10:28am
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Wigand
Total Posts: 462
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I am working on a GPS interface for TS.
If there are more than 5 persons who are interested
and want it, I will upload my work in a few days when it is finished.
Otherwise only over PM-connection.
More infos later. And if you have wishes or ideas please ask. |
Post by Burnart // Feb 24, 2008, 11:19am
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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This interests me but I have to admit I'm not real sure what it is your doing! - truespace is my hobby - gps are a part of my work life so I am very curious. |
Post by Wigand // Feb 24, 2008, 12:10pm
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Wigand
Total Posts: 462
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I see some future uses for this connection of GPS and TS:
If Virtual Earth in TPlaces is really comin...
Maybe you drive with your car and have your navi-unit connected with
Truespace.
Would it be something interesting, if you can see the virtual
scene on your pocket-PC or cell-phone before arriving?
"Oh is this really the shop I found these things, do they still have it
in stock?"
Or you are visiting the city and want to know where your friends are...
You have your version of virtual (Truespace) earth on your cell-phone,
you enter the names and you see your friends together in a pub near your
road.
Or a mother is sitting at home and wants to know where all her childrens are.
Just a click and she sees them on her pc-screen.
A truckage company has 30 cars and need to now where they are.
A coordinator for police or ambulance want the same. Who is the nearest?
I do not believe that could be the future, I know it.
And you are standing at the front line and see it growing.
(Everything man made, you can use for good and for bad.)
So, I wrote a program (it is a really easy one) which can read the
serial interface of my garmin GPS receiver into my computer.
From there I will send it to TS where I will see my position on earth.
That is my doing.
Burnart: Is this what you wanted to know? |
Post by ghost--scout // Feb 24, 2008, 12:16pm
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ghost--scout
Total Posts: 85
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Sounds pretty interesting! |
Post by Burnart // Feb 24, 2008, 12:57pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Just a thought - if we are talking about importing captured data you are going to allow westings and southings (-ve numbers) not just just easting and northings (+ve numbers)? No offense, its just that I have seen a few utilities over the years that simply don't work in the southern hemisphere or in some cases outside of the continent of creation because of limits placed on the numbers (Europe or North America usually.) |
Post by Wigand // Feb 24, 2008, 6:22pm
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Wigand
Total Posts: 462
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Just a thought - if we are talking about importing captured data you are going to allow westings and southings (-ve numbers) not just just easting and northings (+ve numbers)? No offense, its just that I have seen a few utilities over the years that simply don't work in the southern hemisphere or in some cases outside of the continent of creation because of limits placed on the numbers (Europe or North America usually.)
The easiest way to get the data from the unit is the NMEA-data-format.
In this format, the numbers gets a unit. "N" , "S" , "E", "W".
Here an example from a german site: http://www.kowoma.de/gps/zusatzerklaerungen/NMEA.htm
$GPRMC,191410,A,4735.5634,N,00739.3538,E,0.0,0.0,1 81102,0.4,E,A*19
$GPRMB,A,9.99,L,,Exit,4726.8323,N,00820.4822,E,29. 212,107.2,,V,A*69
$GPGGA,191410,4735.5634,N,00739.3538,E,1,04,4.4,35 1.5,M,48.0,M,,*45
$GPGSA,A,3,,,,15,17,18,23,,,,,,4.7,4.4,1.5*3F
$GPGSV,2,1,08,02,59,282,00,03,42,287,00,06,16,094, 00,15,80,090,48*79
$GPGLL,4735.5634,N,00739.3538,E,191410,A,A*4A
$GPBOD,221.9,T,221.5,M,Exit,*6B
$GPVTG,0.0,T,359.6,M,0.0,N,0.0,K*47
$PGRME,24.7,M,23.5,M,34.1,M*1D
$PGRMZ,1012,f*36
$PGRMM,WGS 84*06
$HCHDG,170.4,,,0.4,E*03
$GPRTE,1,1,c,*37
as you can see in the $GPRMC, $GPRMB and $GPGGA line etc., there is a ,N, and an ,E, .
The only problem "as always" will be the converting to TS format.
The angles in TS are hard to understand. Maybe you have a good idea? ;) |
Post by Burnart // Feb 24, 2008, 7:51pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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There is this link if anyone wants to look at the coded info available in gps some more.
http://home.mira.net/~gnb/gps/nmea.html
I'm not really very familiar with the technical stuff but I can always pick the brains of the guys at work!:)
With the positioning being in lat/long (degrees, minutes, seconds) I guess the simplest thing would be just to convert to degrees decimal but I'm not sure how conversion routines would be constructed. Also if you think about it, in quadrants N & E could be +ve while S & W could be -ve. Or does NMEA view E & W as a 360* arc with N being +ve 180* and S -ve 180*? |
Post by Wigand // Feb 28, 2008, 11:05am
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Wigand
Total Posts: 462
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My first GPS-Reader-Version is finished.
I still use my Clipboard.DLL but later I will write an other dll to
call the functions directly.
Now you have to start a program named NMEA_Reader.exe . It reads the
RS232 Input and sends the data to the clipboard.
In TS there are several objects in use:
TimerEvent : You know what it is
CLIP : Calls the Clipboard.dll functions
Init Clipboard : Puplicizes the dll to TS
GPS_Reader : Fills the output with the data |
Post by Burnart // Feb 28, 2008, 11:46am
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Good on you Wigand. Nice work. You now have position data brought into tS. :banana:
Now what? Will there be a world spheriod (supplied by Virtual Earth ha ha! :p) to map onto? Will we be able to establish projections onto a flat surface? I'm just wondering what the next step will be.
BTW is the NMEA_Reader your invention or a Garmin utility or from somewhere else? I did a quick search and didn't come across it. |
Post by Wigand // Feb 28, 2008, 6:27pm
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Wigand
Total Posts: 462
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Good on you Wigand. Nice work. You now have position data brought into tS. :banana:
Yes, thank you.
Now what? Will there be a world spheriod (supplied by Virtual Earth ha ha! :p) to map onto? Will we be able to establish projections onto a flat surface? I'm just wondering what the next step will be.
That is up to you. :D
I found a source of height data in the internet of the whole earth.
Well, that's pretty much data. I have no plane or boat, only car and bicycle. So, I have to build some objects of our street, put my program and
TruePlay on a notebook and test it. Maybe.
My purpose was to give others a tool to work with, and to show
what is possible. The future will show the need of it.
BTW is the NMEA_Reader your invention or a Garmin utility or from somewhere else? I did a quick search and didn't come across it.
There are some other programs (VisualGPS) on the net, but I wrote my
own. I collected all data I could find and build it with VisualBasic6 and
then with VBScript on TrueSpace. |
Post by Burnart // Feb 28, 2008, 7:36pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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I think I would like a flat earth! I know Google and Virtual Earth are about spheres - which makes sense if you are trying to capture the world as a whole. As a tS user I only want to get my little area of it (most of the time) - flat is better. For a start I would forever be upside down here in Australia! Of course trying to do things flat gets into the whole messy business of map projections. Not unsolvable - its only mathematics after all! :) |
Post by frootee // Feb 29, 2008, 12:44pm
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frootee
Total Posts: 2667
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Nice Wigand! Sure, I'm interested!
It's good to see a method for getting data into truespace from conventional sources (RS-232). |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 17, 2008, 7:37am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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For a start I would forever be upside down here in Australia! :)
Nah mate! That's just a silly Northern Hemisphereocentric mapping convention - in reality East should be at the top of the map! :D |
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