FOSS4G2006 Mobile GIS BOF Minutes

IMPORTANT NOTE

''This is only the first part of Mobile GIS BOF minutes. The second part was written down by Tim Bowden. He will publish it in a couple of weeks, when he is back home after his journey.''

Where, When and Who?

 * Place: FOSS4G 2006 conference, Lausanne, Switzerland
 * Starting date: 13-Sep-2006, 18:00
 * Duration: 02h00'
 * Presenters:
 * Mrs. REIMER, Silke
 * Mr. BOWDEN, Tim
 * Mr. LOSKOT, Mateusz

Mobile GIS BOF Attendees
NOTE: Please, add yourself if you're not on the list or fix your name if it's incorrectly spelled below.


 * Brent Fraser
 * David Villalon
 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Frederic Pouget
 * Jan-Oliver Wagner
 * Just van den Broecke
 * Ludovic LESTRAT
 * Mateusz Loskot
 * Silke Reimer
 * Till
 * Tim Bowden
 * Tyler Mitchell

Why you are here?
NOTE: Please, add your notes below if anything is missing.

Silke

 * It's possible there is an opportunity to found some work on Open Source mobile
 * Contribution of project management, infrastructure, place for meetings, marketing stuff, may be founds.

Just

 * On-line services.
 * Apps for mobile phones.
 * Multimedia features.
 * Tracking platform for mobile devices.
 * Contribute multimedia features, Java development.

Tim

 * Collecting data in a field.
 * Consume data in a field
 * Synchronize data on mobile devices against servers.
 * Provide building blocks, not end user application.
 * Contribute use cases, testing and ideas.

Till

 * Collecting data infrastructure features in a field
 * Identify object in a field
 * The idea was/is to develop a client that provides data and identification tool,
 * POI, ROI, Routing tool.
 * The idea is to connect central database with mobile client.
 * Contribute: experience about Java Script (->Web based) on mobile devices, ideas, testing.
 * Looking for: well-designed and developed platform.

Brent

 * Data collection in a field and server upload capabilities.
 * Use mobile device as an input device, not only for output/data provider.
 * Good accuracy level.
 * Collect control points to rectify satellite image.
 * Precise navigation and locating capabilities.
 * Mobile device -> iPAQ

Frederic

 * Interested in mobile solutions.
 * Works for private sector, not Open Source company.
 * LBS for mobile platform.

Ludovic

 * Works with ArcPad based solutions.
 * Inventory of features in field.
 * Contribute: testing

Tyler

 * Need outdoor mobile platform for environmental assessment, etc.
 * Particularly interested in applying Augmented Reality concepts to GIS data.
 * Provide advanced features of visualization, 3D, etc.
 * Tablet PC platform would be good, plus cameras and multiple sensors (digital compass, gps, accelerometers)
 * Frustrated with current windows options

???

 * iPod-based solution

Mateusz

 * Interested in development of mobile GIS framework, a set of libraries and components usable in other projects, end-user solutions.
 * Provide foundations for mobile GIS development.
 * GUI independent.

Project output
We can see three different applications for mobile devices: a) End-user application, a kind of viewer or editor b) Data collecting solution, with GPS, editing and automation features c) The third one, is a kind of LSB solution for mobile phones or other small devices with GPS/GSM capabilities.

a) and b) are main lines of development proposal. c) is very different application to a) and b)

Development platform
a) Langauge: - C/C++ - it seems to be our language of choice - Java - mainly used on mobile phones - Python - who has worked with Python on mobile devices?

b) Operating platform - Windows Mobile >= 5.0 - the main OS on the mobile devices market at the moment; target platform of the first prototype - Linux - most of us would prefer to develop for Linux, but it's not very popular yet, no commercial support for Linux-based mobile devices, etc.

b) Tools: - Visual Studio 2005 - a commercial toolset, the only option for Windows Mobile development :-( - gcc-based toolset for cross-compilation, but there is no debugger

Type of application
- standalone application (most of participants likes this one) - thin client (a web-based solution) - strong client (standalone application or a combination)

Data
Data sources localization we want to support:
 * local
 * remote

Main data types we want to support:
 * vector
 * raster

Various data sources and formats possible to use:
 * vectors:
 * local files (ie. shapefiles, mapinfo)
 * GML and WFS
 * database (ie. SQLite)
 * rasters:
 * tile server for rasters
 * WMS

Available libraries to access and operate spatial data:
 * GDAL/OGR for Windows CE
 * Shapelib

What GIS components we have ready to use?

 * Windows Mobile
 * OGR
 * PROJ.4 and PROJ.4 port for Windows CE
 * SQLite


 * Linux
 * most of currently available portable libraries are runnable on Linux on mobiles

GPS
All Mobile GIS BOF participants agree that we need a GPS support.

Windows Mobile
from serial/... port in a separate thread (no TCP/IP server/listener required)
 * GPS API and GPS Intermediate Driver (GPSID) - see short overview
 * gpsd does not officially run on Windows-based systems, what about porting it?
 * There is always an option to develop our own portable library for reading and parsing NMEA sentences

Linux

 * gpsd works very well on Linux