{"id":408,"date":"2009-08-04T00:20:43","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T04:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/?p=408"},"modified":"2009-09-21T19:39:28","modified_gmt":"2009-09-21T23:39:28","slug":"offline-maps-on-a-midp-enable-cell-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/2009\/offline-maps-on-a-midp-enable-cell-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"Offline Maps on a MIDP enable Cell Phone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sure you can use google maps on your mobile<\/a> phone, but then you’re paying the potentially large data charges (especially if you live in Canada).\u00a0 If you’ve got an all you can use data plan, you’re probably holding a G1 or an iPhone and MIDP<\/a> isn’t interesting (or possible for that matter).\u00a0 However, if you happen to be like me – you’ve got a highly capable MIDP enabled phone, and no data plan.<\/p>\n

Inspired by m\"img_2410\"<\/a>y pending road trip to Kingston<\/a> to see Tool<\/a>, I figured I’d see what it would take to put offline maps on my phone.\u00a0 It turns out to be pretty easy thanks to OpenStreetMap<\/a>, JOSM<\/a>, and Osm2GpsMid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

OpenStreetMap<\/a> is sort of wikipedia for mapping data, if you haven’t taken a look at it – I’d encourage you to do so.\u00a0 Some areas haven’t been filled in yet, and that’s an opportunity for you to pitch in an help out.\u00a0 It is pretty impressive how complete the mapping data is.\u00a0 I see that there is an oMaps<\/a> application for the iPhone\/iTouch.\u00a0 I may have to get that the next time I’m travelling.\u00a0 For the Tool concert, I’m leaving the iTouch at home.<\/p>\n

The first step is to get some map data, and the easiest way to do that is to use JOSM – the Java based OpenStreetMap editor.\u00a0 Locate the area you want to download it will only let you grab a (small) city sized area to edit at a time.\u00a0 Since I was doing Kingston it fit nicely in the limitations of the editor.\u00a0 Then simply save the OSM to a file on disk.<\/p>\n

Now its time to convert that map data into a MIDP Midlet.\u00a0 This is done using Osm2GpsMid, excuse the somewhat funky pathing in the command it isn’t necessary if you simply put all the files in the same directory (I didn’t).<\/p>\n


\njava -Xmx1024M -jar ..\/Osm2GpsMid\/Osm2GpsMid-0.5.00.jar ..\/Maps\/kingston.osm
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

The result will be GpsMid-GpsMid-0.5.00.jad and GpsMid-GpsMid-0.5.00.jar.\u00a0 Install these on your MIDP enabled phone.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately my phone doesn’t have GPS\/location services – but the search function works well.\u00a0 The controls are well done: 1\/3 are zoom in\/out.\u00a0 Keys 4\/6\/8\/2 pan the map.\u00a0 Normal cursor key does fine scrolling.\u00a0\u00a0 Search is predictive text style, just start typing away and it will ‘guess’ the street you’re looking for (smart).\u00a0 More details on the GpsMid site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Certainly not as cool as the iPhone app(s) – but this is pretty slick for my current cell phone.\u00a0 Nice to know I’ll have a map in my pocket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sure you can use google maps on your mobile phone, but then you’re paying the potentially large data charges (especially if you live in Canada).\u00a0 If you’ve got an all you can use data plan, you’re probably holding a G1 or an iPhone and MIDP isn’t interesting (or possible for that matter).\u00a0 However, if you … Continue reading “Offline Maps on a MIDP enable Cell Phone”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}