[MadDog_]

Originally Posted by DaveInVA

I am running version 0.4.2 of bbTracker on an AT&T 8310. The program works fine, but whenever it accesses data on the BB (for example to get an saved track) I get 3 consecutive warning dialogs with the following question "The application bbTracker has attempted to open local content. Would you like to allow this?" I answer Yes to each dialog and then continue.

I've read the entire thread and don't see anyone else with this problem, so I'm assuming my installation does not have the correct permissions read/write permissions. How do I change this?

I'm having the same issue on my 8310. I love the app and would like to get rid of this one detail. I tried setting all permissions to "Allow", or at least I thought I did.

I may have missed something, so is there a way to set the permissions so that the warning does not come up at all?

Thanks!

[pshute]

Originally Posted by saua

I've thought about several different ways to identify stand-still time, and each of them has their own set of problems (otherwise they would probably already be implemented inside the GPS unit).

I've simply got to implement a few of them and find out which ones work best.

Some ideas include:

• Ignoring Points below a certain distance from the last one
• Check for a minimum speed
• Check for speeds that are outside the "norm" of the last few points

Some thoughts on these:

• Only recording points a certain distance from the previous should be fairly foolproof, but only if you mean the distance from the previously recorded point. I guess rock climbers might hate this one though.
• With minimum speed, you really could have the situation where you're moving really slowly in the one direction. E.g. a traffic jam.
• Filtering out unusual speeds might have problems in the same situation.
• I guess you could include them all as options, and let us work out what works best, or choose one appropriate for each situation.

Originally Posted by saua

A similar problem exists with filtering the height values, by the way. I think I can get better results by some trick like this here as well.

The heights seem incredibly erratic - I guess this is just how things are with GPS. I wonder if rather than filtering, it might be better to smooth the elevation graph instead. If that's just too hard to do on a device like this, perhaps we ought to be doing it on our PC's with the dumped data. Maybe this applies to the stand-still filtering too.

[pshute]

Originally Posted by MadDog_

I'm having the same issue on my 8310. I love the app and would like to get rid of this one detail. I tried setting all permissions to "Allow", or at least I thought I did.

I can't really remember, but I thought when I first ran it I got these messages, but that there was a box to tick or something to "always allow". You don't get that?

[saua]

Originally Posted by pshute

Some thoughts on these:

• Only recording points a certain distance from the previous should be fairly foolproof, but only if you mean the distance from the previously recorded point. I guess rock climbers might hate this one though.
• With minimum speed, you really could have the situation where you're moving really slowly in the one direction. E.g. a traffic jam.
• Filtering out unusual speeds might have problems in the same situation.
• I guess you could include them all as options, and let us work out what works best, or choose one appropriate for each situation.

That's exactly the problems that I'm thinking about here ... I'm still trying to think about some way to realize if we currently are in some of those situations and how to work around those problems.

The heights seem incredibly erratic - I guess this is just how things are with GPS. I wonder if rather than filtering, it might be better to smooth the elevation graph instead. If that's just too hard to do on a device like this, perhaps we ought to be doing it on our PC's with the dumped data. Maybe this applies to the stand-still filtering too.

Smoothing is just a specialized case of filtering, in my opinion. I thought about producing a weighted average of the last few and the current height (and the next few, if calculating for some point in the middle of the track). This way the erratic jumps could be evened out, while real changes in elevation would still be visible.

The one about rock climbers is not too much of a problem, since (as you mention ) height is incredibly inaccurate and erratic on all GPS devices I've tested (granted, those are not many, but there are some basic problems with GPS & height) bbTracker isn't such a usefull tool to them right now anyway (I assume).

There are specialized tools that integrate a barometer in addition to the GPS unit, which give a much better height reading (those are also included in some GPS-enabled running watches). Those are probably much more used in those sports.

While there are tools that do a pretty good job with filtering and post-processing on the PC, I don't think that it has to be delegated to the PC entirely. Modern cell phones are quitepowerfull (compared to those that are a few years old) and can easily do the necessary calculations for this kind of work.

The only question is if someone wants to export the raw, unfiltered data to work with better tools and not get the pre-processed output.

All those features will have to wait for a later version, 'though. I'm currently working exclusively on getting Bluetooth-based GPS-pucks to work with bbTracker (that's also the reason why the next version will not probably not be called "0.5.0", but rather "0.4.9": it has not much new stuff for those who already use the internal GPS).

[saua]

Originally Posted by OneTrack

Hi Saua,

I have been using the software for a few days now on an 8800. Sometimes it stops recording. I guess this happens when the atmospheric conditions are not suited to receiving the signals from the GPS satellites for a certain period and to save battery life?

bbTracker will not knowingly disable GPS reception to save battery, so the cause is usually that you lost the connection.

Could you add a manual option to allow you to restart the GPS radio to continue tracking - or just to start looking again?

While I could rather easily add that option, I much prefer a solution that does not require user interaction. I usually put my BlackBerry away when running bbTracker and wouldn't even realize, that GPS reception failed. So I want bbTracker to react to that situation on its own and automatically reconnect.

There's already a mechanism that should do exactly that. If that doesn't work, then there's a bug in my code (or, unlikely, but possible, in the BlackBerry OS) that prevents that mechanism from working proberly. I will have to add some debug statements so that I can get some usefull information if that happens again. Please stand by for the next release of bbTracker.

Alternatively I will need to save the current (stopped) file and start a new one (at which point bbTracker immediately finds the satellites again).

This at least tells me that a software reset of the GPS unit should work as expected. This makes it even stranger that automatic reconnection doesn't work, but at least shows me that it's fixable. Which version of bbTracker do you run?

THANKS again for your GREAT software!!!

Thanks for the feedback.

[pshute]

Originally Posted by saua

That's exactly the problems that I'm thinking about here ... I'm still trying to think about some way to realize if we currently are in some of those situations and how to work around those problems.

I guess it should be trying to guess whether the unit really is still, or really is moving slowly. The possibility or vertical ascent complicates things. I wonder if it would be better, and easier, to just give us several recording modes so we can decide. Better to be automatic, but not if it guesses wrongly.

[pshute]

I was recently looking at a dumped track and comparing it to what bbTracker says is the speed for each point. One point was 1/2 a kilometre from the previous, and was recorded a minute later, yet it showed the speed as 70 kmph. It should have been about 30, but I know it's not usually out by that much.

Is it averaging the last 3 or something? If so, I guess you wouldn't notice unless you set the recording period to a minute like I did.

[saua]

Originally Posted by pshute

I was recently looking at a dumped track and comparing it to what bbTracker says is the speed for each point. One point was 1/2 a kilometre from the previous, and was recorded a minute later, yet it showed the speed as 70 kmph. It should have been about 30, but I know it's not usually out by that much.

Is it averaging the last 3 or something? If so, I guess you wouldn't notice unless you set the recording period to a minute like I did.

The GPS already provides me with a position, an orientation and a speed value. Currently I don't modify them in any way, but just record/display them as I get them. So any strangeness is comming from the GPS unit at the moment.

[MadDog_]

Originally Posted by pshute

I can't really remember, but I thought when I first ran it I got these messages, but that there was a box to tick or something to "always allow". You don't get that?

Yep, I remember seeing THAT box. I checked it, but am still getting multiple occurences of warnings.

[Iare Tosevite]

Originally Posted by saua

• Ignoring Points below a certain distance from the last one
• Check for a minimum speed
• Check for speeds that are outside the "norm" of the last few points

Hmm combining first with second is pretty much a requirement for second. If I traveled .1 mph for 10 miles, it would show that I haven't traveled at all. :(

How about averaging with bias for speed? that would be yet another option to be coded up, though.

[OneTrack]

Originally Posted by saua

Which version of bbTracker do you run?

Saua - I run 0.4.2
Currently the max number of readings I have is 16135 which IS alot, but I'm trying to scope out the capabilities of the unit.

If you set the phone to go to sleep at a certain time then should bbTracker restart tracking when the phone wakes up?

BTW - Waypoints would be VERY coooool if you get chance to code that.

Regards from the UK!

[Iare Tosevite]

Your link is kinda broken, to anyone who want to check it out, just remove )

[DaveInVA]

Originally Posted by pshute

I can't really remember, but I thought when I first ran it I got these messages, but that there was a box to tick or something to "always allow". You don't get that?

Originally Posted by MadDog_

Yep, I remember seeing THAT box. I checked it, but am still getting multiple occurences of warnings.

Since I started this topic I've done a little more poking around. I don't have a solution but I do have some more observations. i) When I want to look at my saved tracks the number of "allow" messages which popup up is one more than the number of tracks, which makes sense because there is presumably a directory access first. ii) I had selected my SD Card to save tracks so I thought to try the build-in memory. Browsing directories from the Options panel also results in the "allow" popups when navigating both the built-in memory and the SD Card.

Dave.

[richard371]

Id like to see it stay in what ever view I had the last time i used the program.

[saua]

I'm having a hard time testing my new code, since older BlackBerries (anything before OS 4.2) have rather big holes in the Java API and are missing some parts that I can't do without.

Specifically the 7290 that I wanted to use for testing the Bluetooth GPS puck doesn't provide the javax.bluetooth package wich is necessary for Bluetooth access from within Java programs. So it seems that I don't have any way to test the new code ... I will have to ask some of you to do the testing for me.

For this I will release a pre-0.5 version today with some code for accessing a Bluetooth GPS puck and will ask you to do some testing for me. I hope that I can produce some useable code this way.

[MadDog_]

Did the pre-0.5 make it out there today?

I just installed my microSD card today, and in trying to change the track directory from Device Memory to my card, I got the following everytime I click on the trackball:

"The application bbTracker has attempted to open local content. Would you like to allow this?"

Is 0.5 going to address this at all? It seems to be an 8310 issue and I don't see that anyone's posted anything about permission changes to make it go away.

I love the simplicity and power of the program, but really find the multiple prompts over and over to be a nuisance.

Thanks.

[pshute]

Originally Posted by DaveInVA

Since I started this topic I've done a little more poking around. I don't have a solution but I do have some more observations. i) When I want to look at my saved tracks the number of "allow" messages which popup up is one more than the number of tracks, which makes sense because there is presumably a directory access first. ii) I had selected my SD Card to save tracks so I thought to try the build-in memory. Browsing directories from the Options panel also results in the "allow" popups when navigating both the built-in memory and the SD Card.
Dave.

Is your phone on a BES server? If so, I wonder if your administrator has set some kind of policy that could cause this.

[saua]

Originally Posted by MadDog_

Did the pre-0.5 make it out there today?

Kind of ... I've got a pre-0.5 version out, but I noticed that there's a major bug that makes it unusable (it won't record any track points at all), so I didn't announce it. I'll post another one today.

I just installed my microSD card today, and in trying to change the track directory from Device Memory to my card, I got the following everytime I click on the trackball:

"The application bbTracker has attempted to open local content. Would you like to allow this?"

Is 0.5 going to address this at all? It seems to be an 8310 issue and I don't see that anyone's posted anything about permission changes to make it go away.

The problem is that I have no idea why some people are asked over and over again. At the moment it seems that only a very small percentage of people is seeing this problem and it might be some policy setting or something like this.

At least in once instance I've seen that deleting bbTracker and re-installing it worked (i.e. the next time the "remember this decision" checkbox was honored and no more popups appeared).

I could invest quite some time and reduce the number of file accesses (by storing the index of .bbt files in a record store), but that would not eliminate the queries (only reduce the number) and would be quite error-prone (I'd have to think about some synchronization mechanism).

I'm afraid that is not very high on my priority list.

One suitable work-around might approach in some post-0.5 version where I plan to allow online storage of tracks, which might or might not reduce the number of security questions.

[DaveInVA]

Originally Posted by pshute

Is your phone on a BES server? If so, I wonder if your administrator has set some kind of policy that could cause this.

My phone is a personal device and uses BIS - no corporate involvement I did try uninstalling and re-installing the program when I first noticed the problem but to no avail. I'll give 0.5 a go when it is available and let you know the results.

Dave.

[MadDog_]

Originally Posted by saua

The problem is that I have no idea why some people are asked over and over again. At the moment it seems that only a very small percentage of people is seeing this problem and it might be some policy setting or something like this.

At least in once instance I've seen that deleting bbTracker and re-installing it worked (i.e. the next time the "remember this decision" checkbox was honored and no more popups appeared).

It's not really a show stopper. It's a nuisance more than anything else. When 0.5 is out there, I'll delete and re-install to see if that makes a difference.

In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions or solutions to this, I'd LOVE to hear them.