Interactive PDA Street Maps (Free too!)

[EnergySaverMember]

I succeed in finding some cool (and free) Street Map software for Palms and other PDAs … it’s called “EarthComber” … you can get it at http://www.earthcomber.com

You basically setup a free account on the website; download the interface software to your desktop computer; select the Counties you want maps for from the website; run the interface; and sync you PDA.

You can zoom in/out on the maps, click on street names, pan the maps sideways (with your stylus), find locations by entering the address (seems like only businesses), etc, etc.

A couple tips if you use it …

(1) When you create your account on the website, you can also create “Look Lists” (points of interest such as restaurants, parks, etc.) to be included on the PDA. Keep these to a minimum (I choose parks, lakes, etc. but left off restaurants and other buildings). You will actually need to delete the ones you DON’T want, because when you setup your account, it will default to giving you a ton of “Look Lists”. The “Look Lists” add to the download and sync time, take more PDA memory and the little icons get in the way on the PDA screen when you have too many of them turned on.

(2) The sync-ing of the maps puts them in the main PDA memory, BUT there is a “Utilities” screen on the software to move maps in/out of your Memory Card. So you can keep your main memory somewhat freed up, by only have the county maps you want “active” at any given time. It moves them pretty quickly (ie. Milwaukee County moved in about 30 seconds on my Zire 31). ALSO, since I have a fair amount of other stuff in my main memory, I found I could simply download 3 or 4 counties at a time, move them to the card memory, then repeat the process; I currently have most of SE Wisconsin on my card (128meg), with plenty of room to spare.

(3) You need to do a fair amount of drawing on screen with the stylus (ie. drawing a square if you want to zoom to a specific area, to mark points of interest for finding later, etc.); so it seems to work better if you turn OFF “full screen grafiti” mode, to avoid your PDA thinking your trying to write something. However, if you leave it turned on, it still works, you just need to pause a second before it figures out what your really trying to do.

[Disclaimer: I created a new topic for this, even though in the past I asked others if they new where I could get software to put map IMAGES on a PDA … while this subject is similar but not the same (ie actual interactive software vs. just get plain old map photos on); I ALSO could not for the life of me finding the original posting I made asking the question, I just am not seeing that title on the forums.)]

[This message has been edited by EnergySaver (edited 05-04-2005).]

[GrouseTalesParticipant]

Very cool Ron. Thanks for sharing the link and instructions. I wonder how it will show up on my B&W pdq screen? I guess I’ll find out

[EnergySaverMember]

quote:

---

Originally posted by GrouseTales:
I wonder how it will show up on my B&W pdq screen? B]

---

Once you setup an account, there’s an [Equipment] link on the left, it shows what PDAs are compatiable. If it loads ok, I think it will work fine … while it makes use of color, it doesn’t seem to throw anything at you that would not work in a B/W world.

[Author]

Posts