Using QpeGPS with your PMA430

QpeGPS is a open source application that uses gps data
and map images to give you a nice picture of where you are.

To help get it to work properly on your PMA, I've made this document describing the following steps:

1. Get a GPS receiver
2. Get drivers for the GPS
3. Configuring QpeGPS
4. Using QpeGPS

1. What GPS unit should I use ?
Well, there are several options here:

- Serial port GPS
Most older gps receivers use a serial port. To be able to use those, you will need a usb to serial converter, as the PMA has no serial port connector. The most commonly used converters have a Prolific pl2303 chipset, and there are drivers available for that chipset.

- USB GPS
Many USB GPS receivers are very similar to the ones that use the serial port,
but have an internal usb-serial converter. And many of those use that pl2303
chipset too, so they should work great.

- Bluetooth GPS
To use a bluetooth gps, you will need to connect a bluetooth dongle to your
PMA. I'm not sure if there are different types of bluetooth dongles, but my PMA seems to
get along just fine with most common cheap-ass BT dongles, so you probably won't
need to worry about that.
The bluetooth gps devices, thats a different story.
There are many of those about, and there is no telling which ones work or don't work.
I have been lucky using a LeadTek 9553 GPS, but have had reports of people using a
Fortuna Slim BT GPS, that has the same type of chipset, that did not work.

Update:
I tested a "XAiOX BT GPS Wonde XL" that has a 16 channel nemerix chipset, and it also works !
It's likely to be technically identical to the "XAiOX BT GPS Wonde X" and this gps seems to be identical to the Adapt AD-300 , the eBonTek GPS-248 and the Oasis-Media BT GPS and maybe even more. All these seem to have way better battery life than my sirf-III LeadTek GPS, and come with a replaceble battery that is compatible with some nokia phone battery.

2. GPS drivers
I have a package available here. It should work for USB and serial receivers, if they use the prolific 2303 chipset. It works for my Leadtek bluetooth GPS too, but this is no guarantee that it works with other bluetooth gps receivers.

After installing the ipk, a icon should appear in the applications folder. Click it, and choose your gps type from the dropbox.
For serial and USB receivers, it will now load the drivers and create a link called /dev/gps
For bluetooth gps receivers, it will try to establish a bluetooth connection and make a it available as /dev/gps

3. Configuring QpeGPS
I have used QpeGPS version 0.9.2.3 pre, found here , but it seems they have released some newer versions, wich should be OK too. qpegps settings

When you first start QpeGPS, you will probably get a message about not being able to connect to the gps device. Just press Ignore, and go to the gps tab. Here you will need to specify "-p /dev/gps" in the "Args" box. After typing that, press enter. Now qpegps will try to start the gpsd daemon, and if that succeeds, you will get a green box with "OK" for gpsd.
Note that some receivers can take a while to find the satellites, and most of them require a good view of the sky to get a fix.
If all is well, the latitude and logitude are shown like in the picture.

qpegps settings

Now, you need to go to to the settings tab, and change the location for the maps to be stored to somewhere on the harddisk (/media). First, you need to create a folder for it, you can use the archos filemanager to do so. I would not recommend to use the Documents directory, because storing your maps there may cause Qtopia to use more memory for indexing everything that is in the Documents folder.
So, open the file manager, select the "PMA400" item on the top, go to the menu, and select "Create folder". Change its name to "maps"

Now, in QpeGPS, select the config tab, and specify "/media/maps" for the map directory. ( Remember, the archos filemanager only displays folders starting from "/media". In qpeGPS you need to specify your directory starting with /media )

You may want to change some other settings to use miles instead of kilometers as well.

Additionally, if you want to save tracks, you need to go to the "track" tab, that is the one on the right, and specify a location somewhere under /media , like we did for the maps.

4. Using QpeGPS

Now, we can start using QpeGPS ! And time for me to issue a warning:
Do not try to mess around with your PMA while operating a vehicle !
This is dangerous and a really stupid thing to do if you ask me. Instead, set up your pma before you take off.

Also be aware that QpeGPS is quite cpu intensive. Be patient, don't go try tapping the screen or pushing buttons while it is busy, it will just slow it down more or even crash it.

4.1 Downloading maps

Without maps, QpeGPS is pretty useless, but luckily, it has a built-in feature to download maps from Expedia.
Please note that the terms of use do not allow you to use these maps for anything else but personal use.

Here comes another warning too:
Downloading maps is slow, and because of the reformatting QpeGPS needs to do, the PMA is really, really busy when downloading maps. It may look like qpegps is hanging, but it can take hours to finish downloading and reformatting maps.

Because of the slowness, you should take care not to try to get too many maps, so I would suggest starting by specifying a small area, like 10 x 10 km, and a large scale, like 1000000.
I made a rough calculation, looking at a map of scale 100000, that it covers about 25 x 25 km, so if you use the preset values for downloading a cover area, like 200 x 200 km at scale 100000 there would be at least 64 maps to download and process. I found it can take up to 2 minutes (or even longer) to process a single map, so this could cost like 2 hours allready. And at half that scale, you need 4 times the amount of maps.... oh well, you catch my drift.

After pushing the OK button to start the map downloading, just wait for it to finish.

4.2 Buttons
qpegps fullscreen

QpeGPS uses the hardware buttons to zoom in, zoom out, switch to fullscreen etc.
Use the play (>||) button to get a menu. From here, you can switch between gps mode and map mode. In gps mode, the map is allways centered to your actual position. You can use the direction buttons to zoom in (up or left) and zoom out (down or right) , provided that you have maps of different scale for the position you are in. In map mode, you can move your cursor around over the map. If you now want to zoom in or out, you need to use the play button. The stop button toggles fullscreen mode.