Archive

Here is my rundown:

MS Mappoint is more of a mapping program as compared to navigation app. I think its possible to build a decent navigation application out of it, but IMHO you're doing the job that MS should have done. Too much work involved. Besides you cant do 3D views.

Destinator - Main problem with it is the fact that it's designed for PDA's. Otherwise it has some nice features, though it reminds of good old windows 95/dos days with its menu's.

Delorme Streets - Havent tried.

Copilot - Expensive. Seems to be one of the best 'out of the package' deals. All the little quirks that annoy people in other apps seem to be fixed in copilot. But personally havent tried it, so cant say for sure.

Routis - Personal fav. POI database is not the best, but functionality wise its exactly what I'm looking for. It's lightweight, does exactly what it should do without any unnecessary routines. Great algorithms for recalculating routes, good maps. Not overpriced.

Gave your app a test..

Took about 20 seconds to scan a folder of 15 files of mp3s. I noticed your making an xml list of them.. That in turn means its not very flexible when you add/remove mp3s as you would have to rescan the files everytime?

Few suggestions:

When you hit next, instead of showing "next", flash the song name.
I cant seem to jump to playlist when the vis is on, i have to turn it off before i can go back to it.

I didnt give the video player a try yet. Didnt see a directory i could specify for the video folder in the conf file? Does it use the same folder as mp3s? Because I did put an avi in there, didnt seem to find it.

Well, I called the company that makes Copilot regarding an SDK. I am waiting for a call back. I do not know who to call regarding Routis, could not find a number.

I also have called NavTeq (http://www.navteq.com) the company that provides all the navigation databases for 95% of the US and Europe. All factory GPS systems and most software solutions use them as the database backend. I am waiting to hear back from them as well. The problem with them is we would have to write our own GPS software, so that would be a major undertaking. I told them to get us in contact with a development partner that just offers an SDK that uses there databases.

We will see what happens.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [iG]

Gave your app a test..

Took about 20 seconds to scan a folder of 15 files of mp3s. I noticed your making an xml list of them.. That in turn means its not very flexible when you add/remove mp3s as you would have to rescan the files everytime?

Few suggestions:

When you hit next, instead of showing "next", flash the song name.
I cant seem to jump to playlist when the vis is on, i have to turn it off before i can go back to it.

I didnt give the video player a try yet. Didnt see a directory i could specify for the video folder in the conf file? Does it use the same folder as mp3s? Because I did put an avi in there, didnt seem to find it.

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Yeah, the media folder setting is for all media. We are adding a feature where if you hold your finger down on a song a submenu will popup to allow you to delete, etc. If you delete a lot of files you are better off rebuilding the database.

We will fix the visual and playlist switch issue you mentioned.

The media scanning starts when the splash screen goes away, you have to delete the Media.xml file to have it rebuild the database. If you are finding issues with files not showing up, then we do need to know that. We want to get all the bugs cleaned up as fast as we can.

Thanks for the feedback

HybridEngineer,

NavTe[c|q] provide the maps and mapping database for Routis, thats why there maps are superior to CoPilot. For example, CoPilot shows my house as being 1.5 blocks down down, Routis spot on.

Writing your own is indeed a big undertaking. If you have enough money, im sure Deluo would be more than happy to work with you.

While you are throwing money around, you should contract Febsperanza to skin your product too, thats one of criteria for success here it seems :)

nm, deleted my media.xml and did another rescan and it seems to work now. Video player is laggy for me. I'm testing on my 1.7Ghz p4 laptop w/ 512mb ram and cpu usage spikes to 100 periodically when playing videos.

Also it would be nice to be able to have some sort of control over jumping into different locations in the song/video. I personally have a lot of dnb mixes which is just a continuous 70 minute track. As you can imagine, it's a feature I'd like to have. Same idea for a movie, you might not want to restart the entire movie to watch the last 20 minutes ;) Fullscreen for video would be nice too. I think it should jump to full screen after x number of seconds on video, on touch it should restore the menus.

The vis's are awesome though. great stuff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [iG]

nm, deleted my media.xml and did another rescan and it seems to work now. Video player is laggy for me. I'm testing on my 1.7Ghz p4 laptop w/ 512mb ram and cpu usage spikes to 100 periodically when playing videos.

Also it would be nice to be able to have some sort of control over jumping into different locations in the song/video. I personally have a lot of dnb mixes which is just a continuous 70 minute track. As you can imagine, it's a feature I'd like to have. Same idea for a movie, you might not want to restart the entire movie to watch the last 20 minutes ;) Fullscreen for video would be nice too. I think it should jump to full screen after x number of seconds on video, on touch it should restore the menus.

The vis's are awesome though. great stuff.

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Most of the buttons have two states; click and hold. If you hold down the next button for a song it should scan. The video still needs this functionality.

We will do the full screen for video suggestion. Thanks again for all the feedback [iG], it is much appreciated!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HybridEngineer

Well, I called the company that makes Copilot regarding an SDK. I am waiting for a call back. I do not know who to call regarding Routis, could not find a number.

I also have called NavTeq (http://www.navteq.com) the company that provides all the navigation databases for 95% of the US and Europe. All factory GPS systems and most software solutions use them as the database backend. I am waiting to hear back from them as well. The problem with them is we would have to write our own GPS software, so that would be a major undertaking. I told them to get us in contact with a development partner that just offers an SDK that uses there databases.

We will see what happens.

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As far as Routis goes it's actually rebadged software made by Intellinav http://www.intellinav.com/ as far as I can tell. It's sold as iGuidance by iNav http://www.inavcorp.com/, Routis by http://www.deluoelectronics.com/customer/home.php and PrymeNav by Pryme Advance http://www.prymenav.com/home.asp

Hybrid

The http://www.intellinav.com/ site tells that they are happy to license the software and/or customize it for you...

Trying to play around with the program, but I just get a crash after it appears to build the database. This is the change I made to the config file:
<add key="mediaFolder" value="D:\MP3" />
I've tried "D:\MP3\" , "d:\mp3" and "d:\mp3\" been deleting the xml files in between tries. I running this on my desktop WinXP 2.4 GHZ P4 512 MB Ram. Any suggestions?

Edit: I reinstalled on the c: drive (had it on the d: drive) and it's working great!