Pocket Pocket Query: paperless geocaching for mobile phones

sentience · Post by **sentience** » 27 July 07 4:26 pm

Papa Bear_Left wrote:I still want a simple "magic arrow" app on the phone, pairing to my BT GPSr...

Request noted. Still not high on my priority list, as I do not have access to a Bluetooth GPSr (or even a phone that would support one), but you never know...

sentience · Post by **sentience** » 04 August 07 4:04 pm

I've just released PPQuery 0.1.4!

Changes:

Improved look and feel (still lots of work to do here, though)
Cache count displayed at startup

Enjoy!

Facitman · Post by **Facitman** » 04 August 07 7:11 pm

Just tried the new version (having tried out one of the early ones too)

Worked nicely on my Nokia 6233.

A couple of cosmetics.

After selecting a cache, if you move across to another tab eg Desc., the left arrow that appears covers much of the "Info" tab.
If I hit the hangup button the app checks that you want to exit, this appears over the options presented by PPQ at the bottom of the screen, not sure if you have control over this but it's hard to read the No option as you have the word Back under neither it

It's now added to by paperless caching armoury

Thanks
Peter

sentience · Post by **sentience** » 04 August 07 7:27 pm

Facitman wrote:Worked nicely on my Nokia 6233.

Thanks for letting me know! I've added this device to the list of officially-supported devices on the download page.

After selecting a cache, if you move across to another tab eg Desc., the left arrow that appears covers much of the "Info" tab.

Agreed, this is unfortunate. It's a cosmetic issue with the tabbed navigation component I'm using. I've already got a couple of other beefs with it, so I'll look into rewriting it to fix these issues.

If I hit the hangup button the app checks that you want to exit, this appears over the options presented by PPQ at the bottom of the screen, not sure if you have control over this but it's hard to read the No option as you have the word Back under neither it

Thanks for letting me know. Unfortunately, the prompt you describe is produced entirely by your phone and there isn't anything I can do about its appearance. That said, I may be able to design the menu bar at the bottom of the screen to provide a more appropriate backdrop for it.

embi · Post by **embi** » 04 August 07 7:39 pm

I've downloaded it but unfortunately left my cable at work so I'll have to wait to see the update...but thanks for your work in advance

Facitman · Post by **Facitman** » 04 August 07 7:54 pm

sentience wrote: Thanks for letting me know. Unfortunately, the prompt you describe is produced entirely by your phone and there isn't anything I can do about its appearance. That said, I may be able to design the menu bar at the bottom of the screen to provide a more appropriate backdrop for it.

Thought as much, thanks for the speedy response.

My "complaints" are soooooo petty I wouldn't worry about the exit issue, it's small potatoes.

The app is a nice elegant solution and makes good use of a multi-functioned 3G phone that has ALL data capabilities disabled

While work is happy to pay for my voice calls they don't seem to keen to pay Telstra's data rates!

Thanks again.
Peter

wasptor · Post by **wasptor** » 05 August 07 12:23 pm

Dude, this is so impressive!

I've been using the iPod for paperless caching for a while, and the options in your program are awesome.

I have a Sony Ericsson K750i and had a test run with the download for the K800i. It wasn't exactly right, but got to see the features and they look great!!

Testing Spec - I uploaded a 346 cache zipped GPX file to your server (1.07MB zipped/2.89MB uncompressed) and it sent back 744KB in the jar/jad. After starting the application, loading the caches takes 3 seconds, and after that everything is lightning fast. There must be a few differences between the K800i and the K750i as it thinks I have a bigger screen than I do, as the display runs off the side.

Other feedback - Would be cool if the 'Recently viewed' list could be stored away between loading the applications. Been a while since I've done any J2ME programming, so I can't remember the issues about writing data to the memory card.
And, I loaded the longest description for a cache I could remember (one the iPod gives up on) and it worked like a bought one.

However, when scrolling down I had to keep tapping down the whole time, would be nice to be able to hold the button down and it just keeps scrolling. It was a very, very long description, 26 WPs in all.

If you get a chance to tweak it for the K750i, I'll pull out my bluetooth GPSr and give it a run through with that too. Was intending on getting rid of it this week, but will keep around for a bit longer for test purposes if it will help.

sentience · Post by **sentience** » 05 August 07 2:32 pm

wasptor wrote:I have a Sony Ericsson K750i and had a test run with the download for the K800i.

Thanks for the in-depth testing feedback, wasptor! I've added a version specifically for the K750i for you to try out.

Other feedback - Would be cool if the 'Recently viewed' list could be stored away between loading the applications.

That's on the to-do list and is easy enough to implement.

when scrolling down I had to keep tapping down the whole time, would be nice to be able to hold the button down and it just keeps scrolling. It was a very, very long description, 26 WPs in all.

Good call. I'll see if this is possible.

If you get a chance to tweak it for the K750i, I'll pull out my bluetooth GPSr and give it a run through with that too. Was intending on getting rid of it this week, but will keep around for a bit longer for test purposes if it will help.

Support for Bluetooth GPSrs is a ways off, even if I do have access to the necessary hardware. There are simply too many other things I want to get working in the program first.

That said, if you're getting rid of the GPSr anyway, feel free to send it my way...

wasptor · Post by **wasptor** » 05 August 07 6:43 pm

Just as we were walking out the door to go caching I noticed your reply above.

So we hung around for a couple of extra minutes until your application was uploaded, and used it out in the field today. And thanks for doing that so quickly! The display is right on the money now.

I made the wife drive so that I could play with the application on the way to the first cache.

Found a small bug. For the cache GCVA7B the application displays it as difficulty 1.5 and terrain 1.5, however my GPS said otherwise. And when we got back home I checked and it is indeed a 3 difficulty.

Another thing (don't know if it's just on Sony Ericssons) can be viewed using the cache GCVN7C. There's a '-' next to the the word 'NOTE' and that '-' appears as a black square. I'm assuming it maybe a special dash that's outside of the usual 127 ascii characters, or maybe the software is trying to do something special with it. And also the above D/T bug also applies to that cache.

They were they only things I could find after using it for the afternoon. So all in all, it went over pretty well!

Give me a yell if you need any further info.

- Steve

homedg · Post by **homedg** » 05 August 07 8:39 pm

awwww, stop bragging all.

I'm still yet to find a paperless application for my Blackberry!

sentience · Post by **sentience** » 06 August 07 10:35 am

wasptor wrote:Found a small bug. For the cache GCVA7B the application displays it as difficulty 1.5 and terrain 1.5, however my GPS said otherwise. And when we got back home I checked and it is indeed a 3 difficulty.

Thanks! This has been fixed in preparation for the upcoming 0.2.0 release.

Another thing (don't know if it's just on Sony Ericssons) can be viewed using the cache GCVN7C. There's a '-' next to the the word 'NOTE' and that '-' appears as a black square.

As you suspected, this is caused by the fact that the dash is actually either an em dash or an en dash, both of which are not supported by many devices. You'll also occasionally note the same problem with curly quotation marks.

The problem here is that there is no standard for which characters are supported by devices, and which ones aren't. Some devices will display those dashes just fine, while others won't, and there is no documentation I can consult for this information.

I'll have to implement some filters that replace problematic characters with safer alternatives.

sentience · Post by **sentience** » 08 August 07 10:54 pm

I've just released PPQuery 0.2.0 beta!

This is a pretty major update. You can now set up a list of locations from which you plan to go caching. You can then get a list of the caches in your pocket query based on their distance from any of those locations.

Also in this release:

Fixed the difficulty/terrain display bug.
Various minor UI tweaks.

herca · Post by **herca** » 09 August 07 11:56 pm

My phone is displaying the app in the left hand 2/3rds of the screen and not the full width, for some reason. Possible user error (mine) or is this a known issue for the Motorola RAZR v3??

BTW - thanks a lot for all the effort you've already invested. This is a very good, practical & handy application.

sentience · Post by **sentience** » 10 August 07 8:30 am

herca,

That's the exact same phone I use, and the program works perfectly.

Is it possible that your phone is not actually a RAZR V3 but one of the newer variations? The RAZR V3x, for example, has a 240x320 screen, while the V3 only has a 176x220 screen.

herca · Post by **herca** » 10 August 07 12:48 pm

You're probably spot on. But then Motorola don't exactly label their stuff with the latest additional "x" or whatever...

Ah...pulling out the battery I can see marked RAZR V3x - correct weight!

Geocaching Australia

Pocket Pocket Query: paperless geocaching for mobile phones

PPQuery 0.1.4 released

Sony Ericsson K750i

Re: Sony Ericsson K750i

Pocket Pocket Query 0.2.0 beta released!

Motorola RAZR v3

Well labelled versions