New revision of AutoTouch

**Arathranar** · 10-08-2004, 01:53 PM

Yep - that's what occurred to me on the way to work. Just offering two configurable values - number of zooms to apply at startup (9 is the max - and it really seems more like 8.25 since the last click doesn't zoom much); and number of zooms to apply when entering navigation mose (2 is the max). That is far simpler and less error prone than tracking zooms in/out and trying to maintain that.

I'm mostly comparing it to MapPoint and S&T run standalone. Both use about a steady 40% cpu and are updating much more frequently. The end result is that when travelling in a straight line, the position shown is closer to where the car actually is.

Cpu usage I see is ~20-40% mappoint and ~40-60% autotouch *when* it's doing work (i.e during the spikes). It may just be that you're paying a lot of cost for the graphics rendering in managed (it uses gdi+ and that's not a very cpu friendly piece of code).

One thought I had about perf - can you use MapPoint in way to get various map tiles and do the recombination yourself. I.e. reduce the frequency you need to ask mappoint for a map and potentially reduce the work to rotate it. If you reduced the granularity on the map rotation some, you could be able to re-use the rotated image more often (e.g. when travelling in a straight line) and just keep adding on new bits from the next tile in memory.

The settings hang came back - it only happens when the GPS is connected. When I kill AutoTouch via task manager, MapPoint then crashes.

**Gremlin** · 10-10-2004, 12:37 AM

Originally Posted by Arathranar

Yep - that's what occurred to me on the way to work. Just offering two configurable values - number of zooms to apply at startup (9 is the max - and it really seems more like 8.25 since the last click doesn't zoom much); and number of zooms to apply when entering navigation mose (2 is the max). That is far simpler and less error prone than tracking zooms in/out and trying to maintain that.

Yes I agree this is the best solution On my web site now http://www.sarinarts.com/autotouch.htm you'll find version 0.62 (or you can grab just the exe at http://www.sarinarts.com/autotouch.exe if you already had version 0.61) You'll find a version with two additional attributes in the NavOptions the string should look like this:

<NavOptions Rotate="false" Port="-1" StartMapZoom="9" AfterRouteMapZoom="5"/>

The numbers for StartMapZoom and AfterRouteMapZoom are what you want to mess with.

Originally Posted by Arathranar

I'm mostly comparing it to MapPoint and S&T run standalone. Both use about a steady 40% cpu and are updating much more frequently. The end result is that when travelling in a straight line, the position shown is closer to where the car actually is.

Cpu usage I see is ~20-40% mappoint and ~40-60% autotouch *when* it's doing work (i.e during the spikes). It may just be that you're paying a lot of cost for the graphics rendering in managed (it uses gdi+ and that's not a very cpu friendly piece of code).

One thought I had about perf - can you use MapPoint in way to get various map tiles and do the recombination yourself. I.e. reduce the frequency you need to ask mappoint for a map and potentially reduce the work to rotate it. If you reduced the granularity on the map rotation some, you could be able to re-use the rotated image more often (e.g. when travelling in a straight line) and just keep adding on new bits from the next tile in memory.

Well you still haven't answered my question about if your machine is sawpping? Could you let me know about this. It's not a problem I'm seeing when I watch the performance meter, I'll need to try and watch with my CarPC instaed of my laptop and desktop.

There is no way to get tiles from MapPoint, the Object model supports nothing like this. Like I said it sounds like you're going to have to run with the rotation off.

Originally Posted by Arathranar

The settings hang came back - it only happens when the GPS is connected. When I kill AutoTouch via task manager, MapPoint then crashes.

[/QUOTE]

Known issue with MapPoint if you close it down improperly. I'm not sure what's going on with the GPS connect. You said this happens on CANCEL or OKAY? I'm going to check out the code path on both cases to see what's in it. What sort of GPS do you have?

-G

**rando** · 10-10-2004, 10:55 AM

Do you have any plans to release the source code?

Also, I can't seem to geta successful download. The download always stalls -- at a different spot each time. Is anyone else having this problem?

Finally, are you sure it isn't possible to control the zoom level precisely? My (limited) experience with MP04 is that you can set the zoomlevel precisely using the map.altitude property. You need to maintain the current setting external to mappoint though because when you read the altitude property, mappoint has a tendancy to round it based on an algorithm I haven't yet deciphered. So bascially any time that mappoint automagically adjusts the zoomlevel, you will have no way of knowing (precisely) what the zoom level is. If you set it, however, you will know.

**Gremlin** · 10-10-2004, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by rando

Do you have any plans to release the source code?

Not currently, I'd like to keep control of it for the moment.

Originally Posted by rando

Also, I can't seem to geta successful download. The download always stalls -- at a different spot each time. Is anyone else having this problem?

I apologise for those issues, I know the server has had a problem or two. Unfortunately I don't have another location that I can host it. If anyone else can host a copy could they let me know?

Originally Posted by rando

Finally, are you sure it isn't possible to control the zoom level precisely? My (limited) experience with MP04 is that you can set the zoomlevel precisely using the map.altitude property. You need to maintain the current setting external to mappoint though because when you read the altitude property, mappoint has a tendancy to round it based on an algorithm I haven't yet deciphered. So bascially any time that mappoint automagically adjusts the zoomlevel, you will have no way of knowing (precisely) what the zoom level is. If you set it, however, you will know.

[/QUOTE]

I didn't know about this property, or rather I thought this basically just told you the altitude of the land at that point. I will play with it and see if I can't figure out if it can work.

**rando** · 10-10-2004, 09:39 PM

Yah, the altitude property will do what you want ... it's what I'm using on my own front-end. Mine is nearly ready for use yet though. I understand about not wanting to give away your entire source base. Would you be willing to provide a snippet or even a skeleton of how you handle the turn-by-turn stuff in MP04? I want to add this capability to my own software but haven't given it a close look yet. It would be nice to save some time using something that's already working.

Also, since I can't get your software to download, there is one more question I wanted to ask about rotation. I had thought about doing this outside of MP too -- as you've described. The only problem I was that there wasn't any way I could see to get the fonts to show correct (i.e. never more than 90 degrees from horizontal). I assume your map rotation produces rotated fonts such that some of the text is actually upside down. Is that right?

**Arathranar** · 10-11-2004, 10:10 PM

OK. Worked out why we see different things regarding speed. I was comparing MapPoint tracking the gps to Auto touch doing navigation. Tums out Auto Touch cpu usage is pretty similar to Map Point cpu usage when just tracking the gps.

**Gremlin** · 10-12-2004, 01:22 AM

Originally Posted by Arathranar

OK. Worked out why we see different things regarding speed. I was comparing MapPoint tracking the gps to Auto touch doing navigation. Tums out Auto Touch cpu usage is pretty similar to Map Point cpu usage when just tracking the gps.

Thank you for taking the time to work that out, that is good information. In Map Point I'm having to do some work for directional stuff, but thinking about it some there's some more optimisations to be had in there

**loscooby** · 10-13-2004, 01:30 AM

Hi,

This app looks clean and simple, I like it a lot!

but, I can not figure out how to configure the Nav-part, I have Mappoint 2004 Europe installed but I can not seem to get the turn by turn signs going infact I get the it to display the map but and all control seems to work but for the routing directions that you showed in the screenshots?

I have mappoint 2004 communicating with my GPS-receiver so the hardware should be ok.

**Gremlin** · 10-13-2004, 01:47 PM

Originally Posted by loscooby

Hi,

This app looks clean and simple, I like it a lot!

but, I can not figure out how to configure the Nav-part, I have Mappoint 2004 Europe installed but I can not seem to get the turn by turn signs going infact I get the it to display the map but and all control seems to work but for the routing directions that you showed in the screenshots?

I have mappoint 2004 communicating with my GPS-receiver so the hardware should be ok.

Did you select a destination from the navigation menu? You have to have some place to go. Also when you first switched to a Navigation page do you see an indication of where you currently are? (This is what happens when you've picked up a GPS signal)

-G

**strohj** · 10-14-2004, 11:40 AM

sinc eI havent had a single minute to spend on this.. here is my beta version of the brushed metal skin... there are some buttons that dont do anything... I will remove those as soon as I get some spare time again.. but right now.. im on my way to atlanta.. for some serious partying...

Brushed Metal Skin

it does currently have the chevy logo... I will also update it to have other logos soon...