GPS Cyborg Implant
Last week, I wrote a short Python script that uses a USB GPS device under Linux to help with navigation. It doesn’t have maps or anything — it just gives distances and, while you’re moving, the direction to the destination (as in “two o’clock”). It prints this info on the terminal and speaks it using speech synthesis.
I joked about this in Comic #407, but it’s actually a pretty practical way to get around. Just knowing what direction something’s in is a huge step toward finding it. This past week I’ve used it successfully to find my way around towns I don’t know, and we even used it while driving to navigate to an out-of-town destination.
Plus, there’s the bonus that when you’re walking, wearing an earpiece, laptop in the bag, listening to the computerized voice whisper “TARGET DIRECTION THREE O’CLOCK DISTANCE ONE POINT THREE KILOMETERS ETA FIFTEEN MINUTES” into your ear, you feel like a cyborg. I’ll have to set it up with a female voice and rename it “jane.py”.
Edit: I’ve just been testing the recent changes to this script, and it’s really not in a condition where I should be posting it anywhere. But if you can use it as a starting point for hacking, here’s the link. Some of you might find it useful sometime soon.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Vid or it didn’t happen.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Heh, that’s actually a pretty entertaining concept. I’ve been looking into getting a USB GPS for my Debian system for awhile now, and this is icing on the cake.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:43 am
What are you running this on? Are you carrying around an Eee PC in a bag or something and listening through the headphones? Also, I see that the program requires figlet. What are you using figlet for, just printing the directions in a big type?
This really sounds awesome. If I had a device running linux which I could carry around (pocket-size, preferably), I would TOTALLY use this as a combined iPod/find-my-way-around device.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:48 am
A few years ago on a trip to Houston, I used a Pocket PC with Compact Flash GPS running some navigation software.
I didn’t want to wander around holding the PPC in my hand, so I experimented with the PPC in my pocket, and an earpiece. I could hear the directions as I was walking around, without having to look at anything.
http://dudegalea.co.uk/?p=5
However, the drawback was that the software didn’t really understand what it meant to be a pedestrian, so if I was in a park (for example) it gave me stupid directions.
Your solution, with the simple clock instructions sounds like a neat idea.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:49 am
let us know when you come up with a death laser implant or something
May 20th, 2008 at 5:52 am
> What are you running this on? Are you carrying around an Eee PC in a bag or something and listening through the headphones? Also, I see that the program requires figlet. What are you using figlet for, just printing the directions in a big type?
It uses figlet to print the directions in large type, yeah. And I used it by sticking my EEE-sized laptop in my backpack.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:58 am
When the GPS gives you the general direction and not the navigation data, it feels like you are traveling in the see or in the desert but it is still very useful :)
A couple of obvious points: you must have used some maps to create the route in the first place.
And as said above, does one need to take the laptop along to the expedition?
May 20th, 2008 at 6:03 am
> you must have used some maps to create the route in the first place.
From what I gather, it doesn’t really have a route as such… just gives the direction and distance as the crow flies… “You’re here, it’s there, which is sorta in that direction, c’mon, you can figure it out”.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:07 am
If Grand Theft Auto has taught me anything it’s that I wouldn’t be able to navigate using this system.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:13 am
> From what I gather, it doesn?t really have a route as such? just gives the direction and distance as the crow flies? ?You?re here, it?s there, which is sorta in that direction, c?mon, you can figure it out?.
It’s not a terrible point though. If you want to translate “Broadway and West 65th Street” into latitude and longitude, you need something like google maps. And if you have google maps, why not just write down the directions? Is that how you find out lat and long, Your Exalted Geekiness? (I think that’s a fitting title)
As über-geekery goes, it’s pretty neat, but it would be nicer if you didn’t need something like google maps first.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:14 am
You don’t really need maps. Having used handheld GPS constantly for two years now geocaching, I can say that I very quickly got the hang of taking distance & direction and adapting it to the available trails, sidewalks or highways I can see. You never get very far astray. Unlike constructed mazes, human-usable routes are actually laid out with the general goal of enabling you to get there, wherever ‘there’ happens to be :)
May 20th, 2008 at 6:15 am
@Oskar - yes you need Lat & Long for your goal but you can get that from a web-enabled phone in a pinch.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:19 am
…or txt someone who’s near a browser
LOL
May 20th, 2008 at 6:20 am
So Randall - the reason I came to comment, four posts later: Are you implying that a soon-to-be done cartoon will contain another GPS clue (a`la Dream Girl)?
May 20th, 2008 at 7:10 am
heh, excellent idea. if i knew any python i’d get to playing around with this right away… since i don’t, i’ll have to learn before i start :P
i’m thinking waypoints as a useful feature - particularly for long journeys involving, for instance, a river or harbour - straight-line directions won’t cut it there, and telling the script that you need to go via point x first would be handy. similarly for a two-part journey such as picking someone up on the way to somewhere else.
also, lol at the jane reference there. 6 months ago that would have flown over my head, but no longer :D
May 20th, 2008 at 7:46 am
I used to do this anyway, before I got my TomTom. I had a Garmin GPS12 and I used to enter the Lat/Long and mount it on my dash, then keep an eye on the bearing and distance. OK, it’s not always perfect because sometimes there are large obstacles that can confuse you (e.g. a big one-way system), but most of the time it works just fine. The main reason I prefer a full satnav when driving is the safety aspect - peering at a small LCD was always slightly risky. But I can see the attraction of the spoken version when walking - that really would be cool!
May 20th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Thinking of getting this running on N95, fits in my pocket a little better than my laptop, now if i could only output a HUD to some glasses, hmmmm
May 20th, 2008 at 8:04 am
I just had a quick look at your code.. it’s not too bad :)
One major issue (and a pet-peeve of mine :) is that you use
“# Main program starts here” instad of the massively more useful ‘if __name__ == “__main__”:’. This construct allows you to not only use your module in interactive mode (in which case __name__ is __main__) but also to import it as a module without problems (e.g.: import cyborg; cyborg.mps2mph(…)).
(see: http://docs.python.org/lib/module-main.html)
May 20th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Maybe a more useful reference:
http://docs.python.org/tut/node8.html#SECTION008110000000000000000
May 20th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Hey Randall, what’s at 37.355451,-121.959123?
May 20th, 2008 at 8:43 am
have you read the somewhat related wired article from a few months back?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html?pg=1&topic=esp&topic_set=
Very interesting stuff. Take a look at the warning at the end; I find it both scary and fascinating:
“When the original [...] experiment ended, Wächter, the sysadmin who started dreaming in north, says he felt lost; [...], his brain had remapped in expectation of the new input. “Sometimes I would even get a phantom buzzing.” He bought himself a GPS unit, which today he glances at obsessively. One woman was so dizzy and disoriented [...] that her colleagues wanted to send her home from work. “My living space shrank quickly,” says König. “The world appeared smaller and more chaotic.”
May 20th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Bonus points if instead of “kilometers” it says “klicks”.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:27 am
@David :
Let me guess: you live in the US.
I challenge you to do the same thing in France. We love our little streets not straight, going sligthly round but not completely, crossing randomly, with a mixture of one way streets. There is no way knowing direction and distance can help you within that maze. But GPS can
May 20th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Pittsburgh, PA would be a tad frustrating for general navigation because of all the hills and rivers. Even maps can be misleading, as I found myself walking up a rather steep hill to get to the bus station, only to realize a few moments later that I had to find some way down the cliff and across the Interstate at the same time. (In this case, there were stairs and a pedestrian bridge, but they were half a mile away.)
Incidentally, Geocaching, a hobby I’ve had for six years now, is essentially based on just this type of navigation. You may want to check it out.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:54 am
> There is no way knowing direction and distance can help you within that maze. But GPS can
et. al.
This is, basically, a speaking compass (okay, and DME). Its basic, but very useful and functional navigation. People got around just fine before GPS.
In fact, I see so many people who cannot navigate that maybe there should be graduated licensing for GPS. You have to use the direction and distance mode for 25 trips before you can use route mapping.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:28 am
@Bluebird: You’re on. Just arrange our relocation and work visas and I will gladly take up the challenge. We should be readily employable. We both already have some French and would be happy to take a 4-6 weeks immersion course to top it up. I am a CISSP working in ITSec and my wife is a commercial construction Project Engineer and OSHA-trained safety monitor.
When can we expect the tickets?
( :> )
May 20th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Pilots will obviously like it .. Unless they have too much other stuff to listen
May 20th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Any plans for supporting Linux-compatible bluetooth GPS devices? This would be relevant to my interests…
May 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Needs a sexy fembot voice.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
This sounds like an awesome application for Google’s Android - too bad they only allow python…
May 20th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Bear in mind that Randall is not some zombie doing an automated tree-traversal in the hope of getting to his destination. Or so one hopes. Instead, he surely uses his learned database of how cities, roads, bridges, and such are typically arranged to do a recursive approximation of the best route.
Mind you, the idea of him getting in a cab and shouting “Take me to… THAT WAY!” ala Invader Zim is pretty entertaining. The day his Python scripted laptop achieves enough AI to prefer cupcakes to guidance systems he’ll be in trouble, though.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I wonder if Summer Glau could sell recordings of her voice for purposes like this? One might be able to piece together something useful from captures off of Firefly and Sarah Connor chronicles.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
> I’ll have to set it up with a female voice and rename it “jane.py”.
Win.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Handy, your destination is 2 meters in front of you, but also 100 meters lower/higher…
How to handle that?
May 20th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I don’t want to seem like a fool for possibly not getting this whole Jane thing or for being obvious about actually getting it. Therefore I will give information about what I think I’m meant to get and anybody else who gets it can put me out of my misery. Please. Is there a Gate Over The River?
May 20th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Hey Randall, you should have a read of PEP 8 (http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/), the style guide for Python coders, or other Pythonistas may not want to look at your code ;). For example, use spaces around the “=” and operators, don’t use parentheses for the if condition.
Some general tips for your Python code:
Have a look at the enumerate function, which can be used for looping over the index and the element of iterators, maybe you can get rid of some combinations of range, len and [i].
You can loop over the lines of a file, just like this (no need for readline): for line in open(path, ‘r’): print line
In the loganize function, you can use a list comprehension which is much clearer than the while:
current_time = history[-1][0] - time
return [entry for entry in history if entry[0] >= current_time]
May 20th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
@Umbrae:> what’s at 37.355451,-121.959123?
That’s a store near my apt where we were testing this :)
May 20th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Is that a Speaker for the Dead reference? Great.
But I think it would be cool if you could make it into an ear piece, with the female voice and all.
HA HA OH WOW.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
For full jane-ification, add voice recognition that can search google maps for the coordinates.
Or forget jane and make it talk like glados.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Ooo no wait, for some real fun, have the target coordinates constantly uploaded from a friend’s GPS.
The hunt is on. Parkor ensues.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
Ooo no wait, have the target coordinates constantly updated from friend’s GPS on a similar setup.
The hunt is on. Parkor ensues.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:25 am
I just sat down and read 300 pages of Speaker today before I saw this post. I had forgotten what a huge crush I used to have on Jane. The prospect of having some semblance of a Jane following me around is driving me wild. I must have it!
May 21st, 2008 at 12:55 am
Ender was not a cyborg.
<3
May 21st, 2008 at 12:57 am
> I’ll have to set it up with a female voice and rename it “jane.py”.
But wouldn’t you feel horribly guilty whenever you turn it off?
May 21st, 2008 at 12:58 am
It took me a little bit to find this article, but it is similar, and extremely interesting:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp_pr.html
May 21st, 2008 at 1:26 am
Great, ok, now I’m ganna have to code a Jane simulator that I can take with me everywhere… you happy? Lol, probably won’t make it far, but it’d be cool. Like put a mac os on an ipod or something along those lines and have it run a simulator. If you could incorporate speech recognition into it that would make it so much cooler as well.. Maybe I’ll start with trying to just make one that sits on my desktop or something… if I don’t put it aside and forget about it like I always do that is…
Jane was so cool, and yea, it would be weird to turn her off (no pun intended) but I guess I’ll have to make it so she forgives you if u ask nice enough. But I guess that sorta defeats the purpose of Jane because she went beyond programming. =\
May 21st, 2008 at 2:04 am
The trick is going to be to get this program working on hacked phones or something. This is fucking awesome though.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:06 am
“Bonus points if instead of “kilometers” it says “klicks”.”
Or indeed Smoots.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:10 am
First, the current captcha says Howard’s Malmstrom, which is pretty much the coolest thing ever.
And secondly, I’m going to go ahead and register ‘Jane’ as a project on Launchpad. I’m thinking of a modular python audio UI ala emacs-speak, but just for updates.
…
Actually come to think of it, one could just plug *your* program into emac-speak and create the same thing.
And Jane is born :)
May 21st, 2008 at 7:34 am
One of the professors at my university did something like this.
They had an ipod with linux on it and some sort of gps device (It was a while ago I heard about it) and it played music just like normal, except it seemed to come from the direction you were to go in.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:46 am
There are some java based gps apps for phones. I’m now trying out the free (with a 3 sec ad) j2memap. Just using the compass display in combination with a bluetooth gps device (including logger) always brings me to the destination. Problems are bad gps reception due to slow walking speed and high buildings. And you have to apply the rule that any surface is walkable as long as the inclination is less than 45 degrees.
The question is, does anyone know how to program such java apps that handle bluetooth gps connections? It shouldn’t be so hard to expand the program so that it plays prompts through a connected earpiece.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am
How long after these exist until someone hacks them?
“Turn right here.”
(After turning right)
“Hah, you moron, I didn’t say Simon says!”
or reprogramming it so all roads lead to sextoy shops or giving distances in umbrella steps.
Other random messages:
“Wizard needs food!”
“Warning, proximity alert! Raptors at 6, 9 and 3 o’clock! Take evasive actions! Oh my God they’re everywhere! We’re going to die!”
The last one should probably not be given in the middle of traffic circles or on bridges.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Why not do a parade of a lot of people loaded with glow sticks and phosphorus paint running through the night to a fixed location. would make some freaky Satelite pictures.
This could be used for good or evil, Like misleading people who want to find a whorehouse but instead send them to their mothers, or those who want to see their mother being sent to a whorehouse. And if someone wants both then we send them to a psychiatric hospital.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
make it so you have to do math to figure out where your going or make a code that only you understand. and make it so that if there is somthing directly between 9 and 10 you have raptors attack you
May 21st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Well, this is gonna be cool. I’m putting it on a Nokia N800 internet tablet with Bluetooth GPS and headset. Totally cyborg, and no backpack required. It’ll be perfect for geohashing. I should even be able to make it connect to mpd and fade down the music while speaking… This will be FUN.
BTW, Randall, if you haven’t, you should really look at the N800 and N810; the N800 is around $200 these days, and you’ll _never_ regret it.
I’d recommend it over an N800 to most (technically inclined) people. 800×480 touchscreen, 802.11b/g WiFi, BT, USB OTG, 2xSD, and most importantly, *Linux*, all on a 400MHz ARM in my shirt-pocket.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Woah! I’d recommend the N800 over an eeePC, not over an N800…
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:01 am
the ETA string construction seems to have an error.
instead of “ETA x hours y minutes” it is “ETA x hours y hours”
instead of
etastring=etaprepend+str(int(eta/3600))+etainpend+str(int(eta/60)%60)+etainpend
it should be
etastring=etaprepend+str(int(eta/3600))+etainpend+str(int(eta/60)%60)+etaappend
I would also suggest to add seconds portion for times under two minutes.
the ETA stands for Estimated time of Arrival that is time you are expected to be at the destination point. What your program is announcing is different.
I don’t know what is the standard name for it. May be Estimated Time to Destination ?
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:53 am
Oskar: here’s why a one-time access to Google Maps to obtain the directions is not enough. You can always make a wrong turn, or find out a road is blocked. A GPS navigator will usually recalculate the directions for you if you do so, but without permanent internet access on the road, you can’t do that with Google Maps. BTW, Google Maps’ EULA disallows using it to build automatic GPS navigation systems.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 am
This is a great idea. For me, it’s probably even better than the regular GPS navigator. With the Garmin navigator that I use, I drive the same paths over and over again, blindly following the turn-by-turn directions and never having a chance to learn what roads there are, how they meet each other etc. If I happen to be without my navigator, I can drive the same ways I usually do, but once I have to make a small detour, I’m totally lost because I remember the step-by-step directions, not the road network. With a direction-only GPS, I’d probably learn the roads eventually.
I’m currently waiting for my developer’s version of the OpenMoko device to ship. As soon as I get my hands on it, I’ll try to make an implementation of this idea, probably using a blutetooth headset to say directions,
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:04 am
I thought about implementing some thing like that too. It would be a great thing for geocaching.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 am
Oooh something to put on my Neo Freerunner (if I ever get one) :)
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
MadJo: Also, if it is ever released.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:09 am
I have both an OpenMoko version 1 and a nokia 770. The 770 is easier to set this up on, since it already has flite and python. I’ve done mobile java programming for years, so I could probably whip up a j2me version as well.
Now to develop some game concepts based on that.
“You are in danger. Run.”
Getting within bluetooth range counts as a “kill”. This could be good.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:45 am
>Now to develop some game concepts based on that.
>“You are in danger. Run.”
>Getting within bluetooth range counts as a “kill”. This could be good.
Oh, you’re so right! This would be an awesome game! Three guys are “hunters” and one guy is “prey”. The prey receives info on the locations of the hunters every two minutes or so (in the “Five o’clock, 200 meters”-format) and the hunters get the location of the prey every eight minutes, and coming within 20 meters of the prey counts as a kill.
Give the prey a two-minute head start in an urban setting and forbid every method of transportation except by foot: The hunt is on!
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
This will enter a new world of awesome if the iPhone 2.0 has a GPS receiver ( http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/05/iphone-20-to-in.html ).
May 25th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
make somthing that actually has a geocash algorith in it and it only tells you your direction to that point
May 26th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Does anyone know where one can find more flite voices? I have done quite a bit of googling and have so far found none.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Alas, flite doesn’t have pluggable voices. You can port festival voices, which shouldn’t be too hard; but you have to recompile flite with the new voice. I’ve been unable to find any preported festival voices ready to drop into the source tree, so it’s only good if you really want it…
But the default’s not bad, for 8 kHz…
May 27th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Of course, the .py extension isn’t strictly necessary. Then it won’t feel like you’re talking to a snake.
May 31st, 2008 at 10:09 pm
> Of course, the .py extension isn?t strictly necessary. Then it won?t feel like you?re talking to a snake.
Haha I laughed (although actually if you want to get picky, Python was named after Monty Python’s Holy Grail… in one of the more major Python guides, Learning Python, all the strings in the examples are Monty Python references like “Spam” and “Lumberjack”).
P.S.
I can’t stand it when the text in my parentheses is longer than my actual sentence, but oh well…
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Seems you’re probably on Ubuntu (you make Ubuntu/Debian references in the code). Have you head of the eSpeak synthesizer (http://espeak.sourceforge.net/)? I’m pretty sure it comes in a default installation of Ubuntu and is pretty good. I haven’t heard flite, and it may well be much better, but if you want fewer package requirements there’s one off the list for Ubuntu people. Plus it does male and female voices and you can change the pitch and speed, etc. It even tries its best at other languages, although you obviously will have to add translations to the program, too…
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Don’t know if anyone’s posted on this idea yet, but it’d be pretty cool to skip the whole Linux thing, and just get a microcontroller to operate the GPS and do the speaking thing. You’d be able to reduce the size and power tremendously.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
@Alex: flite is not better; it’s designed for minimal hardware, and is about as pathetic as can be… OTOH, that makes it a great choice for low-performance, hence compact, hardware. ARM handhelds, for example.
@Allen: It’d be cool, I suppose, but you’ve gotta ask which is cheaper: the days of effort in that project, or about $200 for an N800 and a BT GPS? You probably won’t reduce the size and power below that level on your first attempt, anyway; and you do get benefits from using a pocket computer, namely, you wind up with a computer in your pocket, for all the things you might need one for…
June 7th, 2008 at 3:28 am
We enjoy the convenience of attention should be paid to science and technology brought about by the
June 9th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Oooh…
If you could create a small gps device to connect to an ipod with firewire, then ran something like this on iPod linux, that’d be AMAZING!
Cool.
I should look into gps for my laptop… i’m installing Ubuntu next week!
June 10th, 2008 at 11:04 am
A rip off of this has already gone into production:
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/06/robot-teddybear-car-navigation-system/
June 11th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Actually, this would make you a cyborg (more of a cyborg than you already are, that is).
June 12th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I wanted my GPS to do this, but the stupid thing insists on following the roads.
Of course it would be great to connect it to other people’s GPS devices. Good way to find your friends at the mall, or in the forest, or whatever.
It would also be kind of cool to use speakers instead of headphones. See how people around you reacted to “TARGET ACQUIRED, DISTANCE SIX HUNDRED METERS, INTERCEPT IN TEN MINUTES”.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
thanks..
June 14th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
heh, python nerd fight with references to the style guide, wow. Sorry Robin, but not even those improvements will make python code look less like cat vomit.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Very nice, I agree with DrZiro with the having speakers, mayby mounted to your bag? Also being a nerd it would be awesome if you could have GLADOS’s voice from portal telling you the directions and occasionally insulting you…
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Blind people would truly appreciate something like this!
This advancement, together with a nice exoskeleton that could allow paraplexic people to walk, are great promises of a not-so-far future.
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I’ve been using the GPS option on my cellphone. Sometimes it gets a little confused in needlessly complex cities like DC, but overall its very useful, and I’ve really cut down on the amount of time I spend lost.
July 5th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I was just wondering, I wanted to do something like this with an arduino (carrying around a laptop seems a bit much to me, but a small device like an arduino wouldn’t be bad), I know how to hook a gps up to it (at the very least I can use the GPS Logger shield), but I’m wondering about ideas for outputing the result to the user, the only idea I have so far is a led matrix, though I suppose, I have a smartphone with python maybe I could work something with that…
July 6th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
In a few days I’ll be getting a smartphone with Windows Mobile OS 5, and I was wondering if somehow a GPS script could be written for Windows and put on a smartphone like that, so I was going to toy around with it for a little while. All these new phones have headphone jacks so a small phone with the GPS script could easily fit in your pocket unobtrusively and still give you directions. (Of course, the phone has its own GPS, but I won’t use that for two reasons here. 1.) That, of course, would be MUCH too easy. You can’t let the phone win. It’s like the comic “Duty Calls”. 2.) I’m cheap. I don’t want to pay for that service.) I’m gonna begin working on a python script for this for windows, because on the chance that I can’t put in on that phone an ASUS PC is definitely small enough to work that
July 13th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
[...] as you probably know, I am a fan of the webcomic XKCD. Back in May, Randall posted a comic and a blag article about his idea of a dead reckoning type navigation system, which every couple of seconds it speaks [...]
July 16th, 2008 at 8:19 am
AFAIK java runs on windows mobile and there is a possibility to access GPS devices (internal and external via bluetooth etc) with the java mobile API.
Speech may be done with some generated speech files (think this works somehow with espeak, else speak them yourself) and an algorithm to put them together…
Think I’m going to try this out :D
July 18th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
This would be an awesome app for the Pandora ( http://www.openpandora.org/ ), especially since the Dev-Team made sure the battery is very long-lasting (:
July 31st, 2008 at 12:56 pm
With Python for S60, it wouldn’t be at all hard to send the GPS data as SMS messages, or if you like over cellular IP.
Think about it: to start the game, we form two teams. Each player is assigned a partner in the other, at random. We create a hash based on each player’s details and print out a big QR code of it. Everyone wears their QR codes. As you move around, every few seconds, your GPS location is sent to your partner. Jane uses this as the target, until you get within X metres with the target in your field of view, when she says “TARGET BEARING X, RANGE X; RELEASE TO LOCAL CONTROL…” and goes quiet for 30 seconds, in which time you have to snap a cameraphone image of the target’s QR code.
Each player has a list of the hashes, encrypted with their partner’s phone number, and each player is assigned another player as referee. The QR is sent to the ref, who decrypts it with your phone number and compares the hash with your target. If it matches, the ref sends everyone the “X IS DEAD!!!” message; if not, you lose a point. Too many down and you’re dead.
The winner is the team with the most players left standing at the agreed finish. I’d call it Urban Gorilla and have one team dress as gorillas, and the others as something…urban. Refinement: at the agreed finish, you start getting directions to the agreed pub.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:46 am
thank you for the Ender reference :D