HUD as an OsmAnd plugin ?

[breversa]

Hello @woju,

Have you ever thought of making HUD an OsmAnd plugin (http://osmand.net and https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand) ?

OsmAnd would take care of all the location and navigation stuff, while HUD would simply take care of reversing the display.

This way, anyone with a phablet/small tablet on the dashboard could have the equivalent of a luxury car HUD with many times less the cost ! :-) It would still be most useable at night, but it's a start anyway.

[woju]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2015 at 07:06:19AM -0700, breversa wrote:

Have you ever thought of making HUD an OsmAnd plugin (http://osmand.net and https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand) ?

Yes, I contemplated that. In fact the recent move to github was geared towards connecting it with Osmand. However I'm not familiar with Osmand source code and I don't really have time to invest in reading it.

My idea was to someday (when I had more time) ask developers of Osmand to send intent broadcast while navigating in background to update information about next turn, which this app will pick up. I heard rumours that Google Maps does exactly that, but it's not documented.

[breversa]

Hi @woju

Thanks for your fast reply. :-)

Though my development years date back to years before Android even existed, I understand what you mean about the intent reading.

However, you seem to think of using HUD to display OsmAnd's direction, while I thought of just mirroring the whole OsmAnd display. Would that be easier ?

Here's how I see things :

• start OsmAnd (display is normal)
• activate your HUD plugin : display is mirrored/flipped
• put your device on your dashboard and drive with HUD displayed on your windscreen ("like a boss" ^^)
• stop driving
• deactivate your plugin : display gets back to normal a I believe a required feature is to switch back to normal display if the user leaves the app (by pressing the home button, for instance). As such, mirror display should ONLY work when in OsmAnd.

(Does any of this make sense ? :-) )

[woju]

On Wed, Sep 09, 2015 at 07:05:52AM -0700, breversa wrote:

However, you seem to think of using HUD to display OsmAnd's direction, while I thought of just mirroring the whole OsmAnd display. Would that be easier ?

That's an wrong idea, because HUDs should not display any details, not to distract the driver. Just three digits, maybe one arrow, for bigger displays (ie. tablets) even set of arrows to show lanes. Nothing else. Almost no colours, and if used, whole display turns to that colour. Black background is a must.

HUD is not supposed to be stared at, it should remain out of focus and be still readable with side vision. The whole point is, user should not divert the view from the road to the speedometer. Giving the user a possibility to distract him/herself while lying to her/himself that "s/he is still watching the road" (because really s/he is not) is contrary to that.

In fact, the idea to write this app came to me when I'd thrown the phone (with Osmand still running) on the dashboard, because light changed to green and I should have started rolling. After some time I realised that I can see the map through the windshield. The map was barely legible, so I began to stare at it and then I nearly struck something. So before I even started writing, I developed some strong opinion about simplicity of the UI. Pre-release version had some additional features like speed unit and info about GPS engine status displayed alongside the speed, but I dropped even that.

However I'm open to the idea of navigation indicators, like one arrow and distance to the turn. I doubt such interface will fit into Osmand.

Sorry for the coredump, but in the future I may have to create a FAQ and I'll just point to this post.

[breversa]

Thanks a lot for your comprehensive reply ! :-) I now understand why my idea was most probably a bad one (true : looking at the windscreen is NOT looking at the road), and why yours is much more sensible.

Adding your explanation in a FAQ would be a very good idea IMO.

I could write a feature request on OsmAnd's github on your behalf, but I'm afraid I'd be too vague and/or technically not precise enough. Do you want me to do it nonetheless ?

Off-scope : However, though a mirror display is a bad idea for the driver, it would still be awesome(-looking) (and much less dangerous) for the "navigator" person sitting beside the driver. :-P The black/dark background prerequisite would limit its use to night only. And, of course, "awesome-looking" might just not be worth the effort of developing it…