IT depends what you need from the mobile GIS application,I am
currently poking around with android, Qgis and MapServer for forrestry
mapping.
I used Qgis to develop a forest map for my forest enterprise, with
PostGis as backend.
Recently Ive bought my first Android smartphone with GPS integrated
and in consequence there came up the wish to display my forest map in
GoogleMaps (with the satellite image as background) and the ability to
mark points or areas by GPS and upload them into the GIS.
So I typed 'gis' and 'map' and similar terms into Android Market
(=AppStore in the Android world) and found nothing useful except apps
for geocaching, hiking, mountainbiking and the like, but
nothing that would fit my needs.
As a consequence I started experimenting with the Android SDK and
found out that it is not too much work to use the MapView shipping
with the SDK to display stuff on top of the google satellite image.
With the help of JTS (a java library for geo stuff, http://www.vividsolutions.com/jts/jtshome.htm)
it was less than 100 lines of code to display polygon layers as
overlay into the MapView. Most of the work was to get initially
familiar with Android SDK and its philosophy, and with its integration
to eclipse it seems quite handy to me.
The next Problem is how to get my maps from Qgis/Postgis to my phone,
there I decided for an online solution with MapServer as backend. QGis
has MapServerExport as plugin, so its no big deal to export a QGIS
project to MapServer. Then I wrote an xmlrpc server (around 150 lines
of python code including coordinate transformation) which deploys the
layer features in the WKT format, that I parse on my handheld with the
help of JTS library and the module mentioned above displays it on my
MapView.
I also wrote some code to capture coordinates (points and areas) with
GPS and are currently working on uploading them into the GIS server.
My software can even mark remote points using the handheld's camera
and the device's internal compass for the direction. I then just have
to manually enter the distance read from a laser distance meter and
have my point location.
All that is by far not production ready but serves for me as a proof
of concept that I can display my map online from my server on my
android phone and be able to digitize features with GPS.
If anybody is working on such a beast please let me know if you are
interested in doing some work together....
regards
Philipp
Am 19.04.2010 um 12:20 schrieb Nicklas Avén:
Yes, I really agree that a Lite version would be great.
How big screen is needed I think is mostly depending on what you are
going to do and if the computor is the only tool you are carrying or
it it is desirable to instead always have it in the pocket.
From using Arcpad I think that the functionality of importance is
* easy map pan and zoom with one hand
* Digitizing where both stylus and gps can be used. The GPS both
for tracking and single vertexpoints.
*Support for SpatialLite, shapefiles, wms, wfs, and wfs-t would be
great.
I think it is important to early get a picture about what
functionality should be there because every unnecessary
functionality will be more of irritation, both because the user
interface will be messed up, and because the system resources will
go to things you don't want.
Of course some easy customization is great, but to keep it down all
over I think is prio one.
I really hope for QGIS here. I guess (am I right?) that QGIS gives
better possibilities to build a real slimmed application than the
java-alternatives.
Regards
Nicklas
2010-04-19 Noli Sicad wrote:
Meego is another candidate platform for mobile gis.
>
>Asus T91mt and T101mt have resistive touch screens. The mt stands for
>multi touch. These two devices will run Meego as well. We have to
wait
>unitl, end of May to see the real "Meego 1.0" with Maemo 6 i.e.
>Marmattan UI framework. Right now, nothing is showing up about UI in
>meego dev mailinglist.
>
>In my opinion 3.5 screen of N900 is not probably quite good for gis
>editing but will do.
>
>But I really think that qgis should develop a qgis lite version for
>the tablets and mobile phones.
>
>Noli
>
>On 4/19/10, Nicklas Avén wrote:
>> Hallo
>>
>> How about Maemo/Meegoo has anyone tried compiling QGIS on Nokia
900.
>>
>> One impotant thing to think about when discussing Mobile GIS is
what display
>> technique is used on different devices. We have tryied to run
ArcPad on
>> devices with capasitive displayes and that is good for looking at
data, but
>> you can never digitize on the screen. Then you will need a
resisitive screen
>> and a stylus. I don't know about Android devices but many windows
devices
>> are now using the capasitive technique because it is smoother
when just
>> looking in your calender and so on. I think tkis makes Nokia 900
with Maemo
>> 5 very interesting because it has a resistive touchscreen among
many other
>> features. I think the hardware lso supports multi touch.
>> I am myself a happy N900 user, but one of the reasons I bought it
was to get
>> a potent GIS software into it :-)
>> /Nicklas
>>
>> 2010-04-19 Noli Sicad wrote:
>>
>> One can start building QGIS Lite (Mobile GIS) for Android using:
>>>
>>>1. Qt for Android - Android Lighthouse
>>>http://qt.gitorious.org/~taipan/qt/android-lighthouse/trees/android-4.7/demos
>>>
>>>2. Android x86 in Asus T91mt and Aus T101mt (Convertable Netbooks)
>>>http://www.android-x86.org/
>>>
>>>We don't need to wait for Android tablets to be released.
>>>
>>>1+ for me.
>>>
>>>Noli
>>>
>>>On 4/19/10, paolo wrote:
>>>> +1 for me. I'm available for help on Android.
>>>>
>>>> Paolo Cavallini http://www.faunalia.it/pc
>>>>
>>>> ----- Reply message -----
>>>> Da: "Miguel Montesinos"
>>>> Data: lun, apr 19, 2010 02:14
>>>> Oggetto: [Qgis-user] Mobile GIS
>>>> A:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Qgis-user mailing list
>>>Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org
>>>http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
>>>
>>>
>
>
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