Hey all! The navigation update is out, BUT I’ve released it under a different name in the Mind Apps store. It will now be called “CalmMaps (Beta)” to drive home the idea that this is more of a mapping app. Please test this in your local area before relying on it for long navigation. There will certainly be bugs so please report any you find.
I’ll be leaving CalmDirectory in the store for now through the transition as it will be more stable and some user may prefer not having the navigation built-in.
@davidray Thanks for your continous effort. Do you have a link where your apps can be downloaded? I see you writing about a store but I see only a link to a Github Repo in the first post by Urszula. What’s the best place to download the most recent version of your Calm series of apps? (I haven’t read all of the 141 posts in this thread, sorry if it’s in there).
One of the reasons I couldn’t go full dumbphone is because I do rely regularly on up-to-date POI information (toilets, gas stations, restaurants, stores) on the go, as well as traffic information. As a dad of 4 with a busy family life, I do not have every day planned out beforehand, especially not during outings.
For now I’ve used HERE maps and Gmaps WV on the Kompakt.
But you can find my full suite of apps (as well as a few other curated apps) in the Mind Apps store which was created by another community member. It’s available for download here: Releases · lamdanAmiti/Mind-Apps · GitHub
My updates and releases will always be available on that store or via GitHub.
Went on a quick walk to have a play around with this and I love it! It’s definitely going to be my default navigation app on this going forward. The relatively low refresh rate of the navigation works perfectly with the display.
Thanks so much for taking the time to work on this.
I’m not sure how much further you plan to take it, but I have a few suggestions on improvements:
Unless I’m missing something, it seems like the app doesn’t bypass the phone’s screen time out setting, so unless you have it set to the maximum 30 mins, the screen will time out after a couple of minutes during navigation - particularly annoying during cycling/driving!
Only tested with cycling navigation (while walking) and not driving, but it would be nice to be able to adjust how far zoomed in the map is during navigation.
It’d be nice to be able to browse a map, and select a point on the map to navigate to.
It does not currently bypass the timeout and that’s totally on me. I have this on my list and forgot to implement it before the initial test. This is a critical piece to navigation apps.
Zooming will probably come in a near future update if no other big issues arise.
I’ve gone back and forth about this. I’m not sure yet if this opens a door for a less “mindful” experience. The e-ink screen should discourage mindless surfing on the map but I’m still debating it.
The [Get Directions] pushbutton at the bottom got “fade-obscured” by the Android navigation bar. This problem occurs both with my deGoogled smartphone’s default Trebuchet launcher (which comes with the iodéOS operating system) and with the inkOS launcher from @gezimos. Perhaps the issue does not occur with the default launcher on the Mudita Kompakt, but I wonder whether you may want to account for users of other launchers and may want to have CalmMap look good on other AOSP-based cellphones.
The distance at the top of the screen – 1381.7 miles – should be less than one mile from the “Default Location” that I saved in the Settings of CalmMap – with “Use device location” disabled – but seems to be the driving distance from my current location in Texas (confirmed when I tapped the [Get Directions] pushbutton and then pinch-zoomed into the starting location on the map). Perhaps I misunderstand what “Default Location” is supposed to do when “Use device location” is disabled!
Questions:
Will CalmMap one day allow someone to specify a starting location other than “Current location” above a navigation map?
What is the purpose of “Quick Locations” in Settings > Maps?
Again, thank you for giving us an E Ink-friendly alternative to HERE WeGo, which has been my favorite on deGoogled smartphones.
All of my apps will currently have that navigation bar issue because the kompakt hides it. I’ll be updating them to respect it when present.
The navigation currently always uses the device location (anonymously with Mapbox). That’s on me. I should have been more clear about that in the release notes. It’s on my priority list to respect the location setting from the settings page (default or device location).
Questions:
This is on my short list but not priority over bugs
Quick locations is used where the “+” button is on the home screen towards the top. You can add locations like “Home”, “Work”, “Mom & Dad”, etc… for quick access. Adding from the settings page seems to be broken at the moment but clicking the “+” on the home screen let’s you search and select a location to save. It will then prompt you to name it. This will create chips for each location that you can click to jump directly to the map view for it.
Downloading CalmMaps! Thank you for your hard work. I’ll see how it goes! Your apps are truly a lifesaver on the Kompakt. Would you consider making a simple to-do app at all?
re the map screen and mindless surfing - I suppose that makes sense. I can’t think of too many situations where I’d use it. The only thing would be, say you wanted to meet someone in (for example) an area of Central Park in NYC - it’d be near impossible to select a destination to navigate to without being able to browse a map and drop a pin.
Thank you! CalmMaps has been great so far. The map in the app is so much clearer and easier to see and navigate than the Mudita one. I love the shortcuts as well. Thank you so much!
Hello, I have downloaded CalmMaps and it’s pretty great. Thank you so much for making this available for free. It’s already better than the native app, but here are a few things I wanted to say:
Don’t know if this is normal, but I need LTE/ wifi to find a location even though it’s in an offline map I downloaded (after starting navigation I can remove LTE and it works fine).
When I exit the app in navigation and “delete“ the widget by moving it to the bottom of the screen, then reopen the app, the map is all black and I have to exit the navigation to turn it back to normal.
Whenever I go back to the main menu there’s the “set a default location“ pop-up that flashes in my screen then disappears. I don’t think I have set a default location yet as I didn’t find it in the settings.
Are you planning on implementing speed limits in the future?
A quick update: I’ve had no issues with CalmMaps. It’s much better than the native one. A couple of suggestions:
There are several categories I don’t use, such as gas stations and hotels. Can we get an option to hide them?
Would it be difficult to implement transit as a directions option? I use transit exclusively, and having bus/metro route times would be useful. (I live in a huge U.S. city without giving too much away.)
Thank you again for such great apps! Your hard work is appreciated and is making the Kompakt a lot more useable.
This is because the POI data comes from HERE Maps while the mapping data is coming from Mapbox. I’ll be looking into the best practice for either moving to a single service or having a more robust download option that can work for both instances. As is, you’re only downloading the mapping data so your route stays up-to-date without service.
This should be fixed in the next release
This is a bug. Once the app is restarted, either manually or by the system, it should go away. You either have to set a default location or choose to share the device location to get data but the app is checking for that out of order so it flashes the message before it realizes you already shared it.
I researched this initially but Mapbox doesn’t currently offer a transit api so any implementation will have to be at least a small workaround. HERE maps does offer one but as I’ve learned, US transit systems are a bit hit or miss on support. I’ll keep looking into it though.
@davidray, I found today what seem to be two bugs in CalmMaps (Beta):
If I tap (+) beneath “CalmMaps” and above the stack of types of points of interest (Gas Stations, Restaurants, etc.), then I CAN ADD a Quick Location to CalmMaps.
-vs-
If I tap Settings > Maps > [Add Quick Location], then I CANNOT ADD a Quick Location to CalmMaps.
-AND-
If I tap “x” to the right of an item beneath Settings > Maps > Quick Locations, then I CANNOT DELETE a Quick Location.
