Turn by Turn alternative GPS app in Mobian

[livanti21]

I was wondering if there is a turn by turn GPS navigation app available in Mobian. Gnome Maps doesn't have that function as far as I can tell.

Just curious as I have not been able to locate any as of yet.

Thanks.

[wibble]

Navit can do it, at least in theory. In practice I'm still trying to get it to work, and the interface is like an old car navigation unit which may not be what you're after. You need a custom config file to at least use fullscreen by default, and to tell it which map file(s) to use. It seems unable to parse the map data I've downloaded either directly or copied from a working instance on an android phone. Desktop ubuntu fails the same way, so it may be an issue with the debian package. It also requires gpsd which needs manual intervention on Mobian.

Pure Maps looks promising, but isn't packaged for debian yet. I've tried the flatpak version on my desktop and it's much more like what you'd expect to fine on a phone. It's mostly for online maps, but with a companion app (OSMScoutServer IIRC) it can do maps offline - I'm not sure about navigation. I don't know whether it uses gpsd, ModemManager's location, GeoClue or what, so I don't know if manual intervention will be needed.
https://flathub.org/apps/details/io.gith...s.PureMaps

Marble might work, but I've not used it that way before.

Or get Anbox working and use Osmand.

Also worth knowing is that the GPS can take a long time to get a fix. This should improve once AGPS data download makes its way into distros.

[livanti21]

Navit can do it, at least in theory. In practice I'm still trying to get it to work, and the interface is like an old car navigation unit which may not be what you're after. You need a custom config file to at least use fullscreen by default, and to tell it which map file(s) to use. It seems unable to parse the map data I've downloaded either directly or copied from a working instance on an android phone. Desktop ubuntu fails the same way, so it may be an issue with the debian package. It also requires gpsd which needs manual intervention on Mobian.

Pure Maps looks promising, but isn't packaged for debian yet. I've tried the flatpak version on my desktop and it's much more like what you'd expect to fine on a phone. It's mostly for online maps, but with a companion app (OSMScoutServer IIRC) it can do maps offline - I'm not sure about navigation. I don't know whether it uses gpsd, ModemManager's location, GeoClue or what, so I don't know if manual intervention will be needed.
https://flathub.org/apps/details/io.gith...s.PureMaps

Marble might work, but I've not used it that way before.

Or get Anbox working and use Osmand.

Also worth knowing is that the GPS can take a long time to get a fix. This should improve once AGPS data download makes its way into distros.

Thank you so much for the info! That is very helpful. It's not a huge deal as I have a TomTom that I use normally anyway but I had an Ubuntu phone back in the day(Meizu Pro 5) and Unav worked pretty well for me back then. GPS doesn't really work on UB Ports yet. I have manually enabled but it won't pick up my GPSsignal while driving. But hey, it's early days for Linux mobile and I'm excited to see the progress that is going on! Thanks again.

[arturo2bodegas]

I have tried navit (doesn't scale properly - there is a way to scale apps now, but I haven't had time or energy to really check it out), the bundled maps app, and I just installed the flatpak puremaps...puremaps looks pretty slick, but I'd have to really try to use it for navigation to give you a good answer. the gps location is hundreds of metres off...but a little blue dot does, indeed, appear on the map.

[wibble]

I have tried navit (doesn't scale properly - there is a way to scale apps now, but I haven't had time or energy to really check it out), the bundled maps app, and I just installed the flatpak puremaps...puremaps looks pretty slick, but I'd have to really try to use it for navigation to give you a good answer. the gps location is hundreds of metres off...but a little blue dot does, indeed, appear on the map.

The workaround for scaling is to set it to use fullscreen in the custom config - you need to edit the config to enable the maps you want anyway. I've not bothered writing a howto as I haven't sorted the map parsing problem yet. Then there's the gpsd issue...

Good to hear the flatpak works - I've not tried it on the phone yet. The working location suggests it's using Geoclue, and it's probably off because it's only got cell and wifi locations to go on as the GPS doesn't have a fix.

[arturo2bodegas]

ok, I'm going to show what a noob I am here...when you say custom config, are you talking about modifying the config file before compiling from source, or a custom config for a package that is already installed on the system? I'd like to get navit and vlc to fit on the screen properly, but I'm still a bit confused
thanks!

[devrtz]

That would be the configuration files of Navit (in ~/.navit/) for setting the mapsets, layout etc, see here

Disclaimer: I only tried Navit once some time ago and didn't really get it working.

[wibble]

@devrtz has got it. I used navit a fair bit ~10yrs ago, but not a lot since. I only ever tried the OSM-based maps which sometimes led to navigation oddities (ways not joined so they look fine when rendered, but can't be used as a route) but OSM data has improved a lot since then. Navit doesn't seem to have moved on much in the intervening years, but it's still highly configurable IF you're fine editing raw XML configs.

Copy /etc/navit/navit.xml into ~/.navit/ to get a custom config to edit. You'll be editing the raw XML file - I think there was once a 3rd party editor gui for navit configs but i never tried it. The first thing to edit is in the gui section so the display is a sensible size. I've used the fullscreen option, but it's also possible to define the window size. It should look like:

<gui type="internal" enabled="yes" fullscreen="1">

That will hide the top and bottom bars from phosh, but if you touch at the top or bottom of the screen they'll reappear so you can switch apps or whatever. You won't have any map to display yet, so you'll just see a sandy coloured background in the map view. Touch anywhere to get the controls (black background with an icon grid) if you want to experiment.

Next you need to define the maps to use, and download the map data. This is where I hit problems. You'll need a section of config something like:

<mapset enabled="yes">
<map type="binfile" enabled="yes" data="/home/mobian/.navit/maps/osm_england_midlands_20200702.bin"/>
</mapset>

See https://navit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/maps.html for details, including where to get the map data. The problem I've had is that it fails to read the map data, both on Mobian and an Ubuntu desktop. I've tried data both from the online extractor and copied from a working instance of Navit from f-droid, running on an android phone. If you want to chase the problem further you'll need to increase the debug level in the config. It gave a warning about 'eocl wrong' for the map file, which I think is a check on the zip file before extracting the data.

If you get the maps working please let us know how. Beyond that their wiki has examples for things like changing the rendering to look like the usual OSM one, night modes, changing what's on screen and used in the underlying calculations for different navigation profiles (car, cycle, pedestrian etc.) and more. I haven't checked yet whether I still have my old config archived.

[Baggypants]

I have maps working on Navit. This issue is because the Debian packages don't contain the layout xml files needed to display the maps.

You need to grab a layout file like car_android_shipped.xml and edit the navit.xml line that has the NAVIT_SHARDIR variable at the bottom to point to the dir with the layouts in. e.g.

Code:

<xi:include href="/home/mobian/Documents/navit.maps/layouts/navit_layout_*.xml"/>

To make it look extra cool you can set up the font and icon sizes. This is the line I'm using

Code:

<gui type="internal" font_size="300" fullscreen="1" icon_l="128" enabled="yes">

Also set up a custom osd description. I used This Layout as a test and it worked pretty well.



Now we can talk about getting gps in to it. Everyone seems focussed on Navit allows gpsd, but it also works with serial devices https://navit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/c...x.html#gps Maybe a named pipe from mmcli, or some other stupid idea!


Edit: have put in a GeoClue integration request with navit https://github.com/navit-gps/navit/issues/1032

Edit2: Upstream packaging bug https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepor...bug=967960

[Baggypants]

Getting GPS data was easy as eating pancakes.

Turn on location as in the wiki with mmcli and find out which /dev/ttyUSBx device is outputting nmea data with cat. For me it was /dev/ttyUSB1

Edit the navit.xml line <vehicle name"Local GPS" and change source="file:///dev/ttyUSB1"

There was a gpsd_query stanza after that I removed.

Sorted. Navit will find you eventually.

If you have issues where the wrong button seems to get pressed start navit from the CLI rather than the icon.