Comments on: First steps on the WikiReader

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 04:45:03 +0000

Yeah python is great. language I just started teaching myself to program using this great python book

By: michaelh

michaelh — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:49:29 +0000

I had a quick play with OSM and it’s really good. Need to figure out how to show more place names when over New Zealand though – my main use is a interactive travel map for the kids.

And it has a good AGG rendering library with Python bindings…

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:19:29 +0000

If you don’t known about open street maps, it”s a awesome project. Think wikipedia but maps.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:07:31 +0000

You should check it out, it’s one bad ass project. Think wikipeida of the map world.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

(interview with the creator) http://twit.tv/floss81

By: michaelh

michaelh — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:21:43 +0000

Not sure on OpenStreetMap. I had a look last night at Google’s static map API (http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/) and it’s quite good.

I got playing with automatically calibrating the latitude/longitude (hurray for convolution) and stitching the fragments together. It worked quite well but may not fit their TOS.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:34:09 +0000

Could we use the OpenStreetMap datadump for something like this (after a lot manipulation of course).

By: michaelh

michaelh — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:18:49 +0000

I expect that a tile based approach similar to what Google Maps does will work well. Store the tiles on the SD card and set the filename to the zoom level and tile number.

The chip has enough internal RAM to run the screen in four level greyscale if you sacrifice a few vertical lines. Should make the map look much better.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:29:48 +0000

Could you link part of a picture to other pictures ? If that would be possible a map of the world wouldn’t be far behind that on the wikireader.

By: michaelh

michaelh — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:54:52 +0000

Thanks Will. I’ve cracked it open to get better access to the debug connector since then:

http://wiki.seabright.co.nz/wiki/WikiReader.html

Next step is a simple serial loader so that I can load grifo applications without swapping the SD card.

By: William Lai

William Lai — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:51:14 +0000

Awesome work!
I’ve always wanted to see the WikiReader turn into a simple learning tool for children. A game of letters matching images could be really fun for a learning child.