Episode: 1466
Title: HPR1466: Thoughts on GPS
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1466/hpr1466.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:36:18

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Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm Poki and I'll be your host again today.
I wanted to do a show in general about my experiences with GPS, different devices, different
units, how I use it.
There's so much to it and it can be so useful and it's got so many different ways you
can use it.
There's a couple for some pretty specific things and I find it very useful.
I started off with a TomTom unit which I still have and I still do like it.
I think out of all the things that I have, the TomTom still seems to work the best for
car navigation from getting from point A to point B by means of an automobile.
I bought my TomTom used at a pawn shop, I think I paid 60 bucks for it and I've been
very happy with the device.
I think it's been worth every penny.
The device is good.
The service, the company behind it, I don't have quite as many good things to say about
them.
The biggest downside to a TomTom is their awful, awful software that's required to update
the device.
It, first of all, is Windows only, specifically Windows that will not run under wine.
I don't think it'll work in a VM, though it may, you're welcome to try.
But just the USB drivers don't work unless it's running right on a Windows machine.
For the first time ever, I'll say fortunately I have a Windows machine around that I can
do that on.
Probably hear my wife and my mother-in-law in the background, they just got home.
The second thing about their software is that even when you have a Windows machine and
it's running properly on there, it's still a piece of crap software.
It's possible to brick your device, your TomTom, using their software that they require
you to use.
If you do get a TomTom, especially a used one, which I wouldn't buy a new one, they're
just too expensive.
If you get a used one, the first thing I would do, as I do with any devices, go through
all the settings and make sure that they're to my liking.
What I would do specifically for TomTom to protect it is make sure that it is not set
up to automatically accept updates and downloads.
Make sure it doesn't do that.
Make sure it asks for permission first.
Otherwise, as soon as you run the TomTom home is what their software is called.
As soon as you run TomTom home with that TomTom plugged in to that Windows machine, it's
going to start downloading their updates.
Like I said, it's likely to just brick that machine, I don't know why it's just terrible.
What I do instead, make sure it doesn't do any automatic updates, plug it in and back
everything up, back it up twice.
They have a feature in there that will do a whole device backup and then they have the
capability to backup individual parts of the device.
You can back up the firmware and then you can back up the map and then you can back up
your points of interest data that you've added, et cetera, et cetera.
I like to do both.
I like to back up the entire unit and then I like to back up those pieces individually
because I've had occasions where TomTom home has broken both and I've needed to fix
it in different ways.
It's an incredible pain in the neck, their software, but as far as I can tell, it's the only
way to get anything done and you really want to make sure you have a backup of that map
because it's a very expensive map if you lose it and they are not going to give you another
one.
Not unless you bought a new device and you have a code to download it with, so just keep
that thing backed up.
Once you do that, though, there are some updates you can get for it that are useful,
but I have found the most success by doing the updates one thing at a time, so let it
look first, update your map if you have a map update.
Then go out and get your voices and then go and get your points of interest or whatever
it is you want to add to it, the little icons if you want to do something like that.
Just do them all separately.
Don't try to do them all at once because it just seems to choke on any large task and
it does everything very, very slowly.
You're going to spend a day doing this.
I'm not certain, but I suspect the bottleneck is actually the USB connection.
I think it's like a USB 1.1 in this thing, not a USB 2.0, so that seems to just slow everything
to a crawl.
It takes a long time, but that's what I do.
If you do have a TomTom and you do use their software and you're updating stuff, you
can do a search for the welcome screen, the splash screen, for Hacker Public Radio because
I uploaded a copy of our little oval sticker, so you can use Hacker Public Radio as your
splash screen.
I thought that was something fun.
If you're ever traveling through New Hampshire with a TomTom device, you can also download
the New Hampshire State liquor store point of interest list because I made those personally
and I verified all those locations, there's like 70 of them, a little over 70, I think.
But since liquor stores are the only places in New Hampshire where you can buy liquor and
it's one of our touristy things because there's no tax on there, I thought it'd be useful
for people.
That exists.
Things exist, those are somewhat my creations or at least my up loadings.
You can edit and modify stuff on the fly on your TomTom, like speed limits and stuff.
I do that an awful lot, wherever I'm driving.
If there's not a speed limit there, I go ahead and I put the speed limit in on the road and
I allow when I hook up the TomTom to get my firmware updates and stuff like that.
I do allow it to back those up to their servers and it lets them share it within the
TomTom community, speed limits and stuff and I don't mind that.
I know it's kind of like doing work for someone else but the way I see it is that if I ever
lose my device one way or another, at least that stuff is there, it's backed up.
I can probably download it again, though you can't specify which corrected map data you
want.
It does get incorporated one way or the other.
But until you need to do that, make sure that you have that community update stuff.
If you're updating your own device and correcting your own maps and stuff, make sure you
have that turned off because I made the mistake one time of accepting community map corrections
and they overwrote my corrections and theirs were all wrong.
So I had to do like all the speed limits for my local area where I drive all the time.
I had to do all over again because they had 30 mile an hour zones where it should have
been 20, just ridiculous.
I was really upset about that and there was no way to undo that mistake and get that back.
I know that a lot of people, like in cities and stuff, I don't live in the city, I live
out in the country pretty much or small city, I know a lot of people don't like to leave
their Tom Tom in their car where it can be seen, they're afraid someone's gonna bust
the window and break it out of there or steal it out of their car or whatever.
I don't think that that likelihood is incredibly high for me so I just kind of leave mine in
the window all the time but I have a contingency plan there and that is that the Tom Tom has
a lock on it.
You can put a software lock on there and you need a for-digit pin code to unlock it and
you can put like a message on the screen this device belongs to blah, blah, blah.
So what I've done with mine is I've put that lock code on there so the machine cannot be
unlocked.
It can't be reformatted or plugged in.
There's nothing you can do to it to unlock it without that code as far as I can tell.
Maybe you could write or build a specific tool that did that but you can't get into the
machine itself on your own and their Tom Tom home software won't allow you into it
without that pin.
So while that pin is up there, mine says this device belongs to name, reward, if found,
and a phone number.
So I figured that's probably enough to get the thing back if anybody, you know, quote
unquote, finds it, you know, tries to use it, plugging it, doesn't turn on.
The can't get the pin number but, you know, you get a reward for turning it in.
That might be enough to get the thing back.
Maybe not but that's all I can come up with and I got my fingers crossed.
What else can you do, right?
So the next bit of GPS tech that I'm very fond of is an application for Android, which
is available through the F-Troid market.
I believe it's also available through the regular, what I call Google Play Store but I don't
use that as much.
I really like F-Troid.
It's an application called OSMTracker, OSM referring to OpenStreetMap.
You may have heard the show I did on editing OpenStreetMap using their potlatch editor.
I did get a piece of feedback about that, a question about that saying that potlatch had
updated their version.
The potlatch is the editor.
Online it's a JavaScript editor for OpenStreetMap project and somebody asked me how that
update had affected what I said and I don't think it affected at all.
I don't see any difference in the editor that affected anything that I said in that show.
So that information as of early summer 2013 is still accurate.
So if you haven't begun editing OpenStreetMap but you have any interest in that, please
go for it.
It's great stuff.
It's great fun.
But anyway, the OSMTracker is an application that tracks you.
Intentionally, you start it up, you tell it when to begin recording and it records so
many seconds, every interval.
You specify the interval.
I think I have mine update every second and it's fairly accurate on a two different cell
phones, no two different Android phones.
It's usually accurate to about three or four meters is what it says.
It tells you it's accuracy.
It records everywhere that you're going and at any given time you can take a note.
There's a few dozen free programmed notes that you just have a button and it adds a word
to a point on your track.
So when you view that track later, it's like a, I think the trace of where you've been
is blue I think and the notes that you take are like as an orange dot and some orange letters
or word, whatever you type out there, a text note below it.
You can also take a photograph, but I'm not quite sure how that works because it doesn't
seem to upload the photographs and you don't view them the same at least not through the
pot latch editor.
Maybe there's another way to do that.
I haven't gotten around to figuring that out.
It hasn't been too drastically important to me so far to take pictures or dictated notes.
I just use a text note and that's fine.
Now I'll use mine with my phone up on the dashboard mount in the car and I'll run OSM
tracker.
The roads around here are all mapped really well.
They're really done very well.
Very rarely do I find a road that I get to add now it's usually like a new development
or something and it's real obvious when those show up everything's there but what isn't
there a lot of times is the speed limit information.
Just note data whatsoever.
I'll kind of like time it so that as I'm going past a speed limit sign I'll hit the text
note button and then as I'm driving down the road I'll put in the number of the speed
limits.
As I pass a 35 mile an hour zone sign I'll just hit the button and then as I'm driving
hit 35 and it places that dot where it was when you hit the text note button not where
not where you are when you complete it.
That's a efficient way of doing that kind of thing.
You can take other notes as well.
There's one for like gas station so as you're driving by a gas station you can hit the
gas station one or fuel I think is what it says because they don't call it gas everywhere.
It's petrol in some places but you already know that.
There's other notes you can take to whatever kind of data you like collecting is the kind
of data you're going to be interested in and I'm not here to tell you what to do.
Just how to do it if you have any interest in it.
The other thing that OSM tracker can do is if it's got an option to quote unquote display
trace.
So when you do that when it does it pulls up a map from the open street map it brings
up their map and it lays your trace over it so you can use it as a working map.
You can use it to show you where you are right now and you can use it for navigation.
It works especially well on foot I use it for that when I'm out hiking or hunting
or whatever.
I'll leave it running and it doesn't seem to eat up much battery if the screen is off.
It seems to be able to go for quite a long time so it's not something I worry about and
if I am going to worry about it I'll bring an extra battery for my phone like an external
you know USB charger or whatever those are those are really great to have if you're out
in the woods relying on your phone.
I've been considering a rafting trip lately and I'm thinking of doing the same thing to
map the river but I'd want to take a you know an older phone a backup phone for that and
stick it in a couple of plastic bags but which is something I've been considering.
The other thing that's nice about OSM tracker is it has the capability that I much appreciate.
It has the capability to directly upload your traces to open street map you do have to give
it your username and password on the open street map website but I think don't don't
quote me on this you want to do your own research.
I think it's an approved application by them where I think they're somehow involved in
it.
I don't know I don't see a problem with it for myself maybe you do but you know look
into that but I do like the ability of it to upload directly to open street map so
usually you know my my traces as they're called in the website my traces are waiting for
me by the time I get my computer turned on.
So I think it's a useful product I love it.
There's also I want to look now because now I forget there's another open street map
somewhat approved OSM droid there's another one I like to get the one off the asteroid
market as I've said not just because I like the asteroid market but in this case because
in the Google market there are two programs called OSM droid and they're not the same program
and one of them I really didn't like but for some reason it still has high ratings and
I don't know it's there's something hinky going on there some fishy then I don't like
and I stay away from that one so grab that one from asteroid if you can.
OSM droid is pretty much just a map viewer if you want to pan around and look around at
open street map data and look at the map that's a good one to view the map with because
it just it lets you pan around and stuff conveniently.
One thing about those both of those programs is they seem to be kind of conjoined twins
they use the same folders on your directory in your phone and access each other's data
as far as you know what they download from open street maps so I do like that about them
that you can use both programs without using up more storage space but you know as instead
of if you if you used a third program to view the map or a different one it would download
its maps all over again or you'd have to link directories or something and these two
just kind of take care of it that's that's the upside to them the downside to them is
that they don't cash data very well if you look at something on the map it will download
that particular tile that they're not vector graphics they're not vector maps they're
they're tiled like jpeg maps it'll download the jpeg for the size of your screen at that
scale at what you're looking at and if you pan around a little bit it'll download
those as well and it'll store those but that's the extent of caching you cannot ask
it to download you know your entire state at every scale it just won't do that for you
nor would you really want it to with jpeg images you want a vector map for that oh and
they don't automatically update once it's downloaded it it's downloaded if you want fresh
maps for either osm tracker or osm droid if you've made edits and you want those edits reflected
you have to delete the existing files and then view the old files again so osm tracker
like I said it's great for navigating out in the woods while you're walking around but only if
you have pre scanned that entire area and looked at it or if you have a cellular signal out there
if you're going out in the woods where you got no cell signal and you haven't pre scanned that
stuff you are toast if that's the only gps you brought if that's the only map you brought you're
going to be in trouble so don't do that please but for downloading a pre cached map and
a vector map this is where osm comes in or or osm a nd or however people want to pronounce it
I'm not really sure but it's osm meaning open street map a nd not meaning android surprisingly
what did it stand for something like something and navigation something I don't know it
stands for something it's a pretty good it's a pretty good product if especially if you're
an open street mapper it's it's really the only one that I have found that allows you to
you know do car navigation with your own edits and have your own edits affect your navigation
it's still it's not a hundred percent it's still I don't know if it's officially a beta but it
kind of feels like a beta when you use it osm and it does work really well as car navigation it's
not quite as good at routing as the tom tom I don't think so and my my phone has kind of a small
screen so it's much more difficult for me to read the names of the roads as as I'm approaching them
but I will say that osman seems to be far more accurate in estimated time of arrival for whatever
reason that just seems to be not that the tom tom is way off but you know there's usually a three
or four minute difference and osman is like for me anyway it seems to be dead on now maybe that's
because I have taken the time and made the effort to specify every every speed limit area and where
the signs are where this like specifically where the speed limits change for my area maybe that
has something to do with it maybe not I don't know I think it's just got a good guessing algorithm
in there because it seemed to be real accurate even before I put in the speed limits and yeah and I
like osman they're vector maps so you can you can pre-cash them you can download an entire state
or many states or your country whatever country you're in you know anything that's available
on open street map dot org you can get downloaded in osman the which is the upside you can pre-cash
you do not need an internet connection for this thing to work and work properly it does offline
routing properly it displays your maps your location everything all you need is clear enough
sky to get a GPS signal which it pretty much just does the downside of osman as far as mapping
and map accuracy goes is that the guys who run osman who who are building and maintaining it it
takes them quite a bit of time to render the vector map from open street map data they seem to
only get the entire earth done about once a month maybe twice a month so if you go ahead and edit
open street map your edits may not show up for quite some time it could be it could be up to a
month before your corrections show up and if those are corrections are lying on there they just
may not be there when you need them so edit early and edit often folks you know get that done
osman's got some features in it that would be really really fantastic if I had a bigger phone if
you've got like a note you know one of the galaxies or whatever the big screen on it you may find
that you really really like osman because you can load up the screen with interactive features
there are things on there for for measuring distance you can mark a point and then mark any
other point on earth and it will it will measure a straight line distance between those two things
and I have found that to be tremendously useful in specific circumstances about it's for hunting
for one there's a there's a law in our state that says you cannot discharge a firearm within
so many yards of a residential building and and that can change depending on how buildings are
situated how close are to one another etc but without even being able to see the nearest building
I was able to place that building on the map and find out where I was at before ever going out
and we know see where I was planning on hunting and just make sure that I was legally far enough
away from that building to discharge my firearm while hunting and there's other use cases I'm sure
but that's the one that I found useful it can show you elevation which I don't get on my tom tom
I think you can if you're going to like some submenu but it doesn't just display it for you
you can get your speed that you're doing and your max speed it can display that for you
which the tom tom does also but not nearly as accurately I can place speed limits on open
street map exactly where the signs are whereas with tom tom the closest you usually get is the
next nearest intersection and if you go along stretch a road with very few roads intersecting it
but you know maybe like there's a section of business and there's an open section with the
speed limit can change three or four times in a segment of road like that so the tom tom is far
less accurate when it comes to showing you the current speed limit for where you're at so
osman's much much better at that than anything else I've seen what else can osman do pull up in
his menu for you you can you've pretty much got with osman an unlimited number of favorites and
of points of interest that you want to add in there tom tom limits you as to how many favorites
you can have which it's quite a few but if you bump into them it's it's pretty frustrating because
now you got to get rid of some of your points of interest for others and I or like your favorites
and I have like everything favorite it I I use my my GPS all the time and I'll use it to show me
the most efficient route even if I already know it I just like to have the the route shown to me
there and and you know the most the quickest way to get from two places that I don't often drive
between you know and I may find some back roads that way that I didn't think about or whatever
but I do like doing that and when you bump up against that kind of artificial limitation that
you can only have so many favorites it's just that's frustrating to me because I know there's more
memory on the device there's not a reason why they should limit you yet they do and in osman they
don't do that another nice thing about osman is it's got different modes and you can specify
different menu settings for different modes without having to go in and change the whole menu around
you can't do that with the the tom tom you want to change some features you got to or some settings
you got to change those settings whereas in osman you put it in car mode you set it up the way
you want it to behave in your car and it behaves that way and then you can switch over to bicycle
mode or walking mode and it will display your preferences and and settings the way that you have
them for those you know maybe you don't ride a bicycle but maybe you on a rollerblade so you use
the bicycle setting for that or whatever the the point is it's got three or four different modes
that you can just switch to on the fly and I find that incredibly handy it's got lots and lots of
settings it's got lots of experimental features and they're always adding new features to it and
updating it and it's one of those programs to where you never run out of exploration to do within
it's it's just been a lot of fun I think that's about it I think those are the four things that I've
used I know I've used some other GPS software on android and I've seen a couple other devices but
I haven't used them long enough to even remember them or to find them useful in any way but these
four programs I use I don't use osm droid as much anymore I find that osm tracker and osman cover
cover the bases that that thing you know I used to use that for but I have it on my phone just
because it doesn't take up any extra space and you know very often you know I'm the weird oh I
guess that's got two GPS's running in the car at the same time you know and I'll put in my location
in both of them and see which one you know comes up with the best route because usually I know the
best route to get from where I want to be from where I am to where I want to be I know that
for the most part oh and that's another thing that I will grant tom tom on the upside and they're
routing like if you use it to get to work and get home again you know every day and it gives you
a route that you know to be inefficient or or not the best route and you ignore it and just go
another way it will eventually learn that that's the way to go now whether it knows that because
that's the way you go or whether you follow it and it notices your speed decreases and it learns
traffic they're documentation teams to imply that it learns traffic patterns but I'm not so sure
that that's true I think it may just learn where you like to go and route you that way eventually
and it doesn't do it immediately it doesn't even do it in the first few weeks but it seems like
eventually it will learn your preferred routes and take you that way whereas osman simply won't do
that and and again osman's routing sometimes I've seen it take you or take me rather I've seen it
try to take me a half a mile out of the way you know take a left and then a right and then another
right and then a left where I could have just gone straight and I have no idea why I would have
done that I you know the speed limits were all everything indicated I should have gone straight I
don't I'm not sure why it did that but it tried to do that once but it's it's coming along it's
getting there it's getting better all the time I gave it a really positive review on the android
market but I think I have to rethink that review and just it's absolutely fantastic it's fabulous
if you're an open street mapper but maybe for the average user it might not be the best thing in the
world but I I really do like it I know there's others out there there's there's the the google maps
and they're routing that that probably comes with Android phones I guess I think I've disabled
that because that thing just annoyed me though it's routing seem to be pretty good it just wasn't
what I was looking for it had all the downsides of of osman and of the tom tom without having most
of the benefits of of either you know small screen because I have a small phone you know limited
functionality it just I it wasn't for me I didn't like it a whole lot of a coworker who likes to
use ways w a z e I believe it's called and that's kind of a neat concept in that it seems to be
the first GPS though several have tried this it seems to be the first one that can update traffic
situations in real time I'm not at all sure how it does that whether it just knows how fast you're
going and makes the assumption several people in the area going a certain speed that there's
traffic or if you have to report it I don't know I haven't used it I know you can report like
accidents in ongoing situations through it but I don't know I haven't used it and they just got
bought by Google so if you love Google that's the way to go if you hate Google you might want to
avoid that one I don't know that's been my experience so far if you have had a different experience
or you like to add something to it you know be more than happy to to hear what you have to say
about your GPS is your your mapping and your navigation and your topic please you know consider
doing that here on Hacker Public Radio thanks a lot have a great day
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