Automatic Weather Update/GPS Location Labels.. How they work and problem solving.

Sonicxtacy02 · 10-09-2007, 12:40 PM

I'm creating this thread as a guide to those who dont understand the new GPS based Location features as well as those who are encountering problems using this new native feature.

What is the feature?

Simply put this new feature allows your weather skin to be updated with information based on where you currently are and not from the pre-defined location in rr.ini. Another conveinent feature is the ability to "locate" the current city, state, zip code, and county you are driving in.

Future plans will expand this feature to read movie times and traffic conditions for your current zip code.

How does the feature work?

There are two basic ways to have this feature work to determine your location. But before we discuss these options lets discuss the minimum requires to put this feature in use.

-Road Runner version 9-30 or later
-Zips.dat installed in Road Runners Program Directory(i.e C:\Program files\Road Runner). Zips.dat can be acquired from the main road runner mirror site as a part of the gas price files. There are alternative zips.dat files available for download on this site that may provide more accurate data at a cost of more time to "read" said data
-GPS that is read-able by RR. Test this by displaying the GPSSAT label. If you have more than 3 sats the feature should work.
-Sorry but for now.. United States ONLY.
-(optional) zipslocator.dll file installed and registered. This dll is said to be used for slower systems.

Assuming you have the minimum requirements here are the options to put the feature to use.

a. Simply by running the "LOCATE" skin command. Please note that should you use this method only that you need to run the locate command before the weather skin will update to your location. If you run the "WEATHER" command prior to running "LOCATE" the rr.ini location will be used.

b. Automatic calculation on location based on specified intervals. In order to use this method you must add LOCALDATACAPTUREINTERVAL=? to rr.ini. The options for this interval corespond to the time (in minutes) the data will be acquired. You may choose from 1,2,5,10,15,or 30 minutes. So for instance if you wish to have the location updated every minute simply add LOCALDATACAPTUREINTERVAL=1 to rr.ini

[continued below]

Sonicxtacy02 · 10-09-2007, 12:53 PM

Problems and Solutions

The main problem i've seen with this feature would be the potential for rr to slow/freeze while acquiring your location. This problem has primarily been attributed to the optional zipslocator.dll file. Should you have freezing issues while automatically or manually acquiring location you should delete this file.

If the file doesnt exist or the problem persists, please change your capture interval in rr.ini. Obviously a slower system should not use 1 minute updates because of the strain this could cause on your cpu. A 5 minute or greater interval should be more than ok unless you're traveling thru cities that are so tiny you pass thru in less time!

If both the above solutions are attempted and fail to work i would suggest you try to locate the city you are in at the time of the freeze in the zips.dat file. Open the file within notepad and use the FIND (CTRL+F) feature to find your city. If the city is found. Compare the LAT and LON figures on the same line with the GPSLAT and GPSLON labels in RR. Are the numbers similar (not exact.. but similar)? If not then the problem lies with incorrect and potentially corrupt data within zips.dat. If the numbers are similar then the feature SHOULD work.

As more solutions become available i will keep updating this thread. But hopefully this FAQ will help eleviate duplicate posts with the same/similar problems.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Skin Codes:

Commands:
LOCATE- Manually retreives your current GPS based location

Labels:
CURRENTCITY- Displays your current GPS based city
CURRENTSTATE- Displays your current state
CURRENTZIP- Displays your current zip
CURRENTCOUNTY- Displays your current county

Sonicxtacy02 · 10-10-2007, 08:24 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by gonewa

I have a zips.dat file for towns/suburbs in australia - please pm

attach it to your post so that others in your area can utilize the file. Zip it up and attach it