Hubrisware

Some unexpected problems cropped up on Droid and possibly other Android 2.0 phones after I released 1.0.8 last week.   Basically the screen layout became bad on these higher resolution phones even though I did nothing that should have affected this other than updating the Android SDK against which RideTrac is built.

I only own an original G1 phone so I was unaware of this problem until some helpful users alerted me to the situation.   In this new version I had to rewrite the screen layout code so that it adjusts properly to different resolution screens.  I have tested it directly on G1 and Droid phones as well as in the Android emulator at different screen sizes and as far as I can tell it is working nicely now.  There are, however,  a lot of different phones out there now and I simply can’t test them all directly.   If you are still having problems on your phone contact me at support@hubrisware.com so I can continue to make this better.  Thanks.

dave Biking, RideTrac

Its been quite a while, but the new 1.0.8 version is released today.   This version fixes all known problems that were caused by the Google API changes introduced in Android 1.5.  Other small improvements were made as well, such as improved GPS location filtering to remove spurious bad locations, but the big new feature added is support for marker collection.  This has been the most popular new feature request for RIdeTrac and I finally found time to add it.

• Markers are special locations that you can save and give a title, description, and optionally an image.
  • Markers will show on the map as a special icon ().
  • Clicking on the icon will bring up a small window giving you a thumbnail image and the name of the marker.
• To create a marker you need to have the GPS On and a location fix acquired.
  • Click the Menu button, then select Markers.. -> Create MarkerEnter a title and description.
  • Optionally take a picture by clicking the camera icon.
  • If you create a marker during track recording, the markers will be associated with that track and exported as placemarks in KML (so they willshow up in Google Earth or Google Maps).

I’ll update this post with more information and update the Users Manual soon.

Enjoy.

dave Biking, RideTrac, Uncategorized

Just a quick note to say that over the past few weeks, I’ve discovered that the cupcake update (Android 1.5) was not so nice to RideTrac, even though on the surface it seemed fine.  The following problems have been uncovered and fixes are in progress.  Some new feaures are also in the works, but progress on them is on hold until I get these problems corrected:

• Settings no longer take effect immediately.  You need to exit RideTrac and restart.  This is due to a change in the way Android now handles preference changes from previous versions.  Fix is in.
• RideTrac exits when any application is started while running.  This has always been a possibility but in previous versions of Android it happened very rarely.  Now it seems to happen frequently.  I beleive this is a change in the Android handling of lifecycle events.  Under investigation as far as how to fix this.
• Random force closes.  I have not seen this myself, but reading the blogs I see its happening.  If anyone out there has seen this contact me at support@hubrisware.com if you’d like to help me debug this.

Thanks for your patience.

Dave

dave RideTrac

This is a minor release which improves export to Google Maps and fixes two bugs.

Thanks to a diligent user I was able to find and fix a small bug in the KML export logic which was causing the tracks to not be drawn when imported into Google Maps, even though they worked correctly in Google Earth.  In correcting this and playing with Google Maps a bit, I found that Maps has known limitations with large KML files.  When the number of vertices reaches a certain point, it will automatically paginate the display of the KML into multiple pages.  For a long ride with all the GPS points loaded in the KML, this makes it impossible to view anything but a short ride in Google Maps without loading different map pages.  To deal with this situation I added a new Filtered KML export option.  What filtering does is try to remove extraneous GPS points from the KML.  The algorithm to remove the extra points is based on distance and bearing and greatly reduces the size of the KML file.  In my example, a 3+ hour ride with unfiltered data was 192K and was broken into 3 pages on Google Maps.  With filtered output it was 64K and displayed on a single page.

There are some downsides to filtering.  There is a loss of data so the result is less accurate than when unfiltered.  In my experiment I tried a lot of different distance/bearing settings before settling on the one now in place.  For the examples I have tested against, the display difference between filtered and unfiltered is small, but I cant guarantee that will be true for all cases.  Future versions of RideTrac will likely do more with filtering (attempt to filter noise, improved algorithms, provide user settable parameters, etc).  If you have problems with this version of filtering let me know and I’ll try to make improvements.

The other bug fixed is a crash that would happen if you selected a track drawing mode other than OFF or SOLID before loading a track.  This has been corrected in this version.

dave RideTrac

Version 1.0.6 is a maintenance release that fixes a long standing problem certain users (all in the UK to my knowledge) have had when exporting to KML.  Some users implied that this was an issue when exporting “long” tracks.   As with the problem that surfaced in version 1.0.2, however, this turned out to be related to the strange way Android behaves when translating dates formatted for specific locales to and/from strings.   Thanks to Rob in the UK for helping me track this nasty one down.

If you are one of the majority of users that can export to KML correctly with earlier versions, this version will add no new functionality.

dave RideTrac

1.0.5 is a major new release featuring new capabilities based on the most frequent user requests:

• Exported files can now be explicitly named.  Previous versions automatically named exports based on the date/time.  This is still the default.
• GPX files from RideTrac or other programs can now be imported into your database for use in RideTrac.  Files must be in the normal ridetrac directory and have the .gpx extension.
• Loaded tracks can now be custom colored by various range coloring algorithms for ride analysis:
  1. color by absolute elevation (i.e. GPS reported altitude)
  2. color by relative elevation (i.e. measured from track starting point)
  3. color by gradient percentage (i.e. steepness)
  4. color by speed
• New preferences for range coloring algorithms to set both colors and range values allows for customization to your typical riding conditions
• New Color Chooser dialog replaces textual color input for all color-related preferences

In addition:

• Context menu activated from statistics display controls track drawing modes
• Track drawing can now de disabled
• Better error handling in export to help debug occasional problems certain users have had with exporting longer tracks to KML

What’s not new:

Still haven’t changed the icons, even though some people think they’re kindergarden, fuzzy, etc.  The reason they are fuzzy is that:

1. I’m a software developer and a bike rider, but not much of an artist
2. I spent too much times on the original icons but they were kind of small, so rather than redo them I just zoomed them - hence the fuzzy kindergarden-ness

I’ll get around to that eventually, but I’ve concentrated on feaures over looks so far.  If there are any users out there who’d like to speed this up and contribute cleaner icons please contact me at support@hubrisware.com.

dave RideTrac

Version 1.0.4 adds customized exports in the form of CSV (comma separated value) files.  These can be easily imported into spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel.  Once in a spreadsheet you can perform custom calculations, graphing, etc.

You need to create a custom export format first before using one:

• Select Settings->Custom Exports
• Select New to create a new export format
• Enter a name for the export
• Select fields to include from the drop-downs
• Select + to add a new field after this one
• Select - to remove this field
• When you have the fields you want for your custom export, select Save
• Your custom export is now in the database.
• Select OK to go back to RideTrac

You can create additional custom exports as well as view/edit/delete existing ones by selecting them drop the drop-down menu.

If you have one or more custom exports defined, they will appear as additional Export options along with GPX and KML.

Exported files will have a .csv extension.

This version also adds a progress indicator that displays during export so you know whats going on during a long export.  It also adds release notes under Help->Release Notes.

dave RideTrac

1.0.3 is a maintenance release that fixes a problem experienced by some users with non-English locale G1 phones where RideTrac 1.0.2 would crash on start-up.  There are no new features in 1.0.3 other than this fix.

By coincidence I received the new RC33 OTA update for my G1 today in the middle of debugging this problem and I can verify that RideTrac runs fine with it.

Sorry for any inconvienence this bug caused non-US users.

Note: In releasing this emergency fix I inadvertantly put a version out there for a bit that was titled RideTrac 1.0.3 (beta).  This was a mistake so as soon as I saw the problem I replaced it with one titled RideTrac 1.0.3.  If you happened to update during the time the one with the beta word was out there you may have received an extra update notification in the My Downloads part of the Market (if you have RC33 installed).  Sorry for the double update, all the second one does is fix the title.

dave RideTrac

Some users have reported problems with version 1.0.2 crashing on start-up.  We are working on a fix for this now, but if you wish to revert back to version 1.0.1 until a permanent fix is available you can download it by right clicking here, saving the file to your computer, and re-installing it with ApkInstaller (available from the Android Market).

Sorry for the inconvenience.   We hope to have a new version ready shortly which corrects this issue.

Note: Do not revert back to 1.0.1 if your 1.0.2 version is working correctly! For most users version 1.0.2 is working well.

dave RideTrac

Version 1.0.2 adds a few new capabilities and fixes two known problems.   All of these have been requested by RideTrac users:

• New setting to keep map centered on your location when GPS is on
• Better checking of sdcard availability
• More informative error messages
• Adds explicit English localization for Android Market
• Corrects export problem for phones using to non-US time localization
• Corrects inconsistent, wildly inaccurate statistics reporting when both GPS and Network location are enabled

Explanation of New “Keep Map Centered” Setting in 1.0.2

This new setting forces the currently reported location to always stay at the center of the screen whenever GPS is turned on (whether you are tracking or not).  A consequence of turning this setting on is that you will be unable to roam off of the current location (for example to look ahead on the map) for very long while GPS is on.  Whenever a new fix is received the map will jump back to keep you at the center.

The default behavior is the same as in previous RideTrac versions:

The location marker moves on a fixed map until its about to move off-screen and then re-centers the map about your current location.  It does this unless you have manually moved the marker off-screen yourself, in which case you can hit the re-center button to get your location back on-screen.

Explanation of Export Problem Corrected in 1.0.2

Some users (all in Europe) were reporting that track export would fail and RideTrac displayed a message stating that the sdcard was unavailable.  It did this even though sdcard access was actually fine.   This problem was tracked down to an issue in converting date strings that used the GMT+01:00 type notation for the time zone into the name of the exported file.  Thanks to two of our users in Europe for helping me pinpoint the actual problem here.

Explanation of Inaccuracy Problem Corrected in 1.0.2

Some users were reporting wildly inaccurate statistics displayed in RideTrac (see A Note on Accuracy). These problems were tracked down to phones that had both GPS and Network Location turned on at the same time.  RideTrac would receive location fixes from both providers and not distinguish between them.  GPS is generally much more accurate than cell tower triangulation, so if two fixes came in sequence, one from GPS and one from the network, if the two locations were far from each other RideTrac could think you were moving at light-speed type rates and report bad statistics.  This has been fixed so RideTrac now only utilizes the most accurate provider available at any given time and ignores all others.

dave RideTrac