Is it 0.4.2 or 0.4.1?

In any event, thanks for all your work on this. The program is fantastic.

Mine said 4.1 and installed great.

Thanks again for the updates. Please consider some easy way, unless I missed it, to jump to the last point, as that as some of the summary data. Alternatively, the other sumarry data mentioned before would make this not so important.

I just added these requests on your tracker website

1. Can you add marine units ie Knots

2. Is there any way to add a Waypoint (GPS Mark) on the fly to mark say a good fishing point

Great app by the way.

Knots would be nice for aviation too. I used this app for the first time at 37000 feet. And 4.1 installed great here too.

Yeah, 0.4.2 was a typo, of course it's 0.4.1. Fixed in the announcement.

About the knots: yes, adding new units of measurement is rather easy now. So knots will definitely be in 0.4.2, but since I don't know anything about knots (apart from what Wikipedia tells me): What units should I use for length and elevation in this case? Miles/Feet?

Regarding the Waypoints: There are two similar concepts which some call Waypoints.

• Marking a point you've just reached (recorded) with some label and/or a timestamp, so that you can find that interesting point again later.
• Entering coordinates of a point you'd like to reach and let it display the direction and distance to this point

I'd like to implement the first one soon and the second one some time in the future. I think you meant the first one.

Does anyone know of simple terms to distinguish those two? In my mind both are called Waypoints, but that would be confusing, wouldn't it?

Regarding jumping to the last point: Yes, when I started the program no track was so long that using up took very long, but 1000+ Point Tracks are rather common now, so it gets harder.

Should choosing the current point be changed? Is the left/right up/down method to slow? Should up/down go more than 10? Maybe 1%/10% of the track instead? Or is a simple shortcut / menu entry to go to the last point enough?

In aviation, we use the following:
Speed= "knots" or nm/h (nautical miles per hour i.e "460 nm/h" or "460 kts")
length/distance= nm (nautical miles i.e. "50.1 nm")
Altitude = feet


Not sure on the two points. I'll let someone who uses GPS for land navigating/geocaching, etc. give you ideas on that one. I'm sure there are some standards but I can't recall what they are.


Awesome app by the way!

In Oz Marine would be

Speed=Knots (kt)
Distance=Nautical miles (nm)
Elevation/Altitude/Depth= Meters (m)

Yes the first one, and as for the naming they are both the same but used differently.

1. As you said you, during your trip you hit say "center button" and enter your name for that point, eg "Fishing Hole XXX".

then

2. You would have a menu item called say "Find" then "Waypoints" then select your previously named waypoint "Fishing Hole XXX" then you could have 2 options, a) "View" to simply see your point on your track or b) "Go To", this would then guide you to that point.


----------------------------------------------------

• One other enhancement I think would be good for lengthy trips, rather then compress your whole journey on the screen as it becomes cramped, could you have a configuration to show the last 100 points and maybe a time stamp or something similar.

I've been thinking about this as well. I'm just wondering which unit to select here. The last 100 Track Points? The last 10 Minutes? the Last 10 km? Ask each time the user selects "Zoom In".

Another possiblity is to always view n km around the current point, no matter how man Track Points that includes.

Another problem is how this would react when the selected point is changed.

And the implementation won't be exactly trivial, so I assume that's a candidate for 0.5.0 rather than 0.4.2.

You figured out the spacebar and that is great. How about S for Start and E for End.

I know you have a lot of your plate. I would encourage you to finish the two key summary items before you jump ship (knots) or take a trip with JC . That is add the total elevation gain and max and average speed calcs to the summary. At that point you have a very, very effective base app.

Saua,
I've been using this tracking software for a while now. It all works fine once a bluetooth connection is established. However, getting the intial connection is proving to be quite difficult. If any time goes by between uses the program will not connect. I try turning bluetooth off and back on. I try turning the puck off and back on. I've even tried refreshing the service list in Bluetooth device options. The only thing that will make it work is a reboot of the device. Then it will work for a few times and then the next time I want to use it I have the same problem. When this happens I'm able to go into BBMaps and get bluetooth connection and satellite signal. I can go into Google and get it and even TeleNav but the bbtracker app will not pick up the connection.

Do you have any fixes on the horizon for this or any idea why it would not connect when the other apps connect just fine?

Thanks,
John Clark

It took a while. But I finally figured out how to use it. It rocks. I am glad to have an application that will tell me latlong. I figured out how to download to Google Earth and it works just fine.

Thanks for all your work.

I am having the exact same problem. A solution (or even a workaround) would be great because rebooting the BB everytime gets very annoying.

Keep up the good work!

Unfortunately I can't reproduce the problem since I've got no external puck and have never experienced the problem with the internal GPS.

There may be two possible solutions:

• Either I need to tweak the parameters I pass to the Location API, but I don't know what exactly I should tweak there, it all looks fine or
• I'm accessing the bluetooth GPS pucks directly via the Bluetooth API, which will definitely be more work, but might be worth it for more direct control (#34 (Add GPS access via Bluetooth API) - bbTracker - Trac).

Does everyone who experiences this problem use an external GPS puck? Which programs do not have those problems? Which share the problem? Did you try GPSTrack? It only uses the Bluetooth API, if that connects reliably then I'd know that this is a feasible alternative.

Saua,
I just installed GpsTrack, per your suggestion. When BBTracker quits picking up the GPS, GpsTrack will still pick it up every time. If you could incorporate that same bluetooth system into your app it would sure help. Right now it's too unreliable and inconvenient. When it works, it works great. When it doesn't, a reboot is all that will fix it. Hope this info helps.

Thanks for a terrific app!

John

I'll have to modify the code from GPSTrack a bit, since it's based on CLDC-1.0 which is kind of low-tech compared to what the BlackBerry and other modern phones can do, but luckily enough GPSTrack is free software released under the GPL, just as bbTracker, so I can use their code. You can expect the direct Bluetooth access to GPS in 0.5.0 probably (I've still not decided if there will be a 0.4.2 or not).

(I usually increase the second number when any major features are added and the third only for bug fixes and minor features).

Good news: I was able to borrow a GPS puck (Holux GPSlim 236) for the weekend, so I'll work on getting this to work.

Saua, as much as I like the Alpha representation of direction, is it possible to also include the degrees information back again.

Those in the aviation arena might like that too.

I wouldn't mind seeing the direction in degrees. Would be a nice little luxury.

John,

Direction in degrees is displayed on the Details screen along with the user friendly direction.

SIB