• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

GPS: Developing Location based Services

 
Rancher
Posts: 1369
1
Android Eclipse IDE Java
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I plan to write mobile phone apps that can provide location based services using in-built GPS receivers(of cell phones). I browsed Nokia's site and found that there are Java(J2ME) APIs that can aid in development. My concern however is w.r.t to hardware:

1.Do i need to buy GPS enabled, expensive cell phones to test these apps?

2.Are there any cheap alternatives like GPS simulators that i can use?
[ December 23, 2008: Message edited by: Monu Tripathi ]
 
Saloon Keeper
Posts: 27752
196
Android Eclipse IDE Tomcat Server Redhat Java Linux
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Nokia is apparently committed to eventually provide GPS standard in all their smart phones. I don't know about anyone else.

One of the great things about the GPS JSR is that it supports multiple GPS data sources in a device-independent way. For example, using cell phone tower trilateration (low power, low accuracy) and builtin chips (higher power drain, better accuracy). That also includes external Bluetooth GPS modules.

So, if you have a phone that includes the GPS JSR component and Bluetooth, chances are that you can pair a GPS Bluetooth device to the phone and use it with the Java GPS API.
 
Monu Tripathi
Rancher
Posts: 1369
1
Android Eclipse IDE Java
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Tim, thanks for your reply..

I did a google on "GPS Simulator" and found links to a few GPS Simulators: Skylabs, lowrance, and a few on sourceforge...
I understand that these simulations wouldn't be able to emulate the actual deployment envt (cell phone); but they are cheap.

Are they even worth considering?
 
Tim Holloway
Saloon Keeper
Posts: 27752
196
Android Eclipse IDE Tomcat Server Redhat Java Linux
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I believe the simulators have another use entirely.

In Java, I'd do the usual code partitioning so that the actual device-dependent stuff was separate from the application code and simply use JUnit to test it.

Testing the actual GPS code itself is harder - you really need something that can act as a backend to the JSR API, but since the API is fairly staightforward, mostly you'd just want that to get comfortable with the concept.

I think there may actually be a JSR GPS simulator in the Sun J2ME SDK. Also, a lot of the phone service providers allow developer remote access to a lab with live devices in them. Although commonly the GPS interaction is fairly limited, since they don't move around - just stay in the building.
 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 65
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Like Tim said you can use GPS emulator in Sun's, Sony Ericsson's, NOKIA's... SDK... I use that emulator to test if it works and then test on real devices... Not only Nokia will have all smartphones with GPS... Today Sony Ericsson has Xperia X1 Windows smartphone with JME implementation and GPS but also other cheaper phones like W760 or C902... have GPS. It is also possible to buy plugable GPS device to phones that don't have built in GPS...

But as far as I know Nokia will not support JME on S60 but only on S40 so it won't help you much if they have GPS devices on all S60 phones... There is still C++ there or maybe plain Java but we'll see...
 
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic