Forum: General Topics

Hi Jared,

I must admit I'm actually surprised that TMJ has even installed on the Touch - I've not had many good reports of it running on Windows Mobile phones at all recently, and their support for J2ME seems to vary.

I'm not sure how the GID thing works, but on Windows Mobile devices that have worked in the past the only way to connect to the GPS has been via a COM port, ie Menu/GPS/Enter Manual Connection URL/comm:COM5, etc. Do any of the GPS utilities mention the COM ports at all (are these J2ME programs, by the way?), or are there any options in the phones settings that allow a com port to be set?

I'd also suggest trying the Generic 'Without Bluetooth' version from the download page, as the Internal GPS and Bluetooth API versions can sometimes prevent it working properly on phones that don't support these APIs.

Sorry to not offer much assistance - I don't have access to any recent Windows Mobile phones so troubleshooting is an almost impossible job :-(

Cheers,
Stephen

UPDATE:

Ok... have been experimenting and have discovered the following:

Using JBlend JVM - Was preinstalled on device

Standard: Installs OK. However cannot access submenu's properly... can bring up main menu, but when selecting 'Enter Manual Connection URL', no input box is displayed.

With JSR-179 Internal GPS: Installs OK, but cannot connect to GPS device.

Without JSR-82 Bluetooth API: Installs OK, can enter connection URL, but program still fails to find GPS device (Main Menu/About lists Com Ports as 'null')


Using IBM J9 JVM

Same results as above but application hangs on Exit (Exiting TMJ-Mobile, Saving Position, Please wait...) and looking at Main Menu/About there is no 'Com Port' section.

I have configured the system to use COM1, so I tried entering comm:COM1... the JVM then popped up saying "Do you want TMJ-Mobile to have access to communication port yadda yadda"... so I select yes. Unfortunately, still no luck :(

The event log has a whole lot of:

Starting BT;
Stopping BT;
Starting BT;
Stopping BT;
Starting BT;
Stopping BT;
Starting BT;
Stopping BT;
....

and at the very bottom:

Starting BT;
Stopping BT;
195026.399Err: java.io.IOException: Parity error @ HGE-100:2;
Starting SE HGE-100;
Starting BT;
CP1252;
Wpts:0;

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for your effort but, unfortunately, still no luck... Although the IO exception is no longer evident in the log:

CP1252;
Wpts:0;
Waypoints Descriptions: true;
UTF-8 encoding on;

But then I just get the BT Stopping/BT Starting stuff again. The application still hangs on exit when 'Saving Position' too.

If only I was UK based... I'd be happy to give you my phone to play with for a week or 2! :) Might have to bust out my java skills and get all developer-like on my phone :P

cheers,
Jared

Ok... a new error:

Stopping BT;
223001.451Err: java.io.IOException: Error reading data; error code=1359, (1359) The security account database contains an internal inconsistency. @ BT Error 6;
Starting BT;
Stopping BT;
222949.961Err: java.io.IOException: Error reading data; error code=1359, (1359) The security account database contains an internal inconsistency. @ BT Error 6;
Starting BT;
CP1252;
Wpts:0;
Waypoints Descriptions: true;
UTF-8 encoding on;

Hi Jared,

Oh dear, I'm now not too sure what to suggest! :-(

I don't know what the 'security account database' error means, but its probably the key to the problem. It sounds like the phone is preventing the JVM from accessing the COM port. (Do any other J2ME apps work properly in the same JVM? I know you mentioned that Google Maps and other utilities worked, but are these J2ME based or native-code/Window .NET applications?)

Its very annoying - I've had a number of others trying to use HTC or Windows Mobile phones, seemingly all without success. I can't find any developer resources from HTC either, which makes developing so difficult. As a comparison, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and BlackBerry (I guess my main target devices), all offer masses of development resources on their websites, which makes all the difference...

Maybe one day I'll invest in a new Windows Mobile phone, certainly be good to get TMJ working on more platforms...

Best regards,
Stephen

Aha, thats interesting! Looking at the GPSTrack code it appears to work exactly the same way as TMJ - I wonder, have you tried adding the baudrate parameter into the TMJ connection URL? TMJ uses the exact same connector code, ie:

where url is the entire value entered into the Connection URL box, so just enter it as comm:COM1;baudrate=4800 etc.

Incidentally, there is further information on the url parameter format here.

Fingers crossed!!

A minor victory!

I downloaded and installed 'phoneME Feature - MIDP rev17059' from here:

http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~davy/phoneme/?q=node/10

And it has successfully connected to the GPS! I can see some NMEA sentences on the GPS/WEB screen...



Now for the bad news... it is a little slow... and I have discovered that with a touchscreen device like mine, it is somewhat difficult to press '*' when the 'keypad' gets locked!! Which, unfortunately, is very easy to do when the menu->display->lock keypad sequence is 3 taps on the screen :P

I think the NMEA sentences were blank because the GPS had not locked onto anything... once it found a satellite or three it started spitting out sentences filled with all sorts of interesting looking numbers and characters :)

And yes, the slowness is annoying... it really is quite bad... and unfortunately it would appear that, as you say, it is a product of the JVM as the program is actually quite crisp under other JVM's like J9, JBlend etc...

Thanks for the tips on the screen mapping, that works perfectly... the reason I hadn't noticed it before, was that it was just taking so long to respond to the inputs (like 4 or 5 seconds!)... so I just was not being patient enough for it to come up with the 2nd 'Press [menu] to unlock' prompt and was busy pushing other parts of the screen and/or buttons etc... whoops!

And no, no luck with the baudrate parameter in J9... just 2 of those weird "java.io.IOException: Error reading data; error code=1359, (1359) The security account database contains an internal inconsistency" errors, followed by all the "java.io.IOException: Parity Error" ones (one for each time it tries to connect to the GPS).


So basically I am left with the following results from the various JVMs:

JBlend (Default JVM on device) - Application runs fast but does not seem to be able to use COM ports, so cannot connect to GPS
IBM J9 - Application runs fast but seems to have issues when trying to read from COM ports and/or local file system (it hangs on exit when trying to write out settings etc.)
Esmertec Jbed - Nice and fast, but cannot access COM Ports (javax.microedition.io.ConnectionNotFoundException), reads and writes from/to file system OK tho.
Esmertec 'normal' - Says "a MIDlet thread threw an uncaught exception. Kill the MIDlet?" on startup when trying to read preferences. Suspect it is having issues reading from the filesystem
Intent Midlet Manager - Speed seems OK, but again cannot access COM Ports (javax.microedition.io.ConnectionNotFoundException), File system access seems fine as it can read/write preferences OK.
Mysaifu JVM - throws a java.lang.Exception "No Main-Class attribute in tmj-mobilenobt.jar". I suspect this JVM is not MIDP capable.
phoneME 'Feature' - Connects to GPS, File System access is OK... but the application runs diabolically slow and does not seem to display my raster maps :(


So I either have a nice snappy application that does nothing but looks nice... or I have an application that will actually connect to the GPS but is basically unusable :(

My next step is to see if I can source a different version of the J9 JVM and see if that works any better.

I must say, it is quite weird how it 'just ran' on the crappy little Nokia 6275i... and is causing me so much grief on the 'more capable' Okta (HTC) Touch...

I'll blame microsoft for not putting a decent JVM in Windows Mobile 6.1 :P

Ok... well I discovered that IBM J9 apparently does not have JSR179 support! Or Local File support either... which kind of explains some of my issues :)

Anyway, I found this implementation of JSR179 for WEME (aka IBM J9) at GoogleCode: http://code.google.com/p/location-source/

I installed it, but not sure if it is working OK... as the TMJ-mobile with JSR179 support has some issues.

Firstly, it seems to load correctly (at least the first time), but when I select 'Connect to Int-GPS' it crashes... If I load TMJ and then quit (and it writes out preferences etc.), the next time I try to load TMJ it just hangs at 'Loading preferences'...

I tried MGMaps... and it says that there is no internal GPS available... so I am thinking that the JSR179 addon is not working as it should. It does however seem to find the GPS OK on COM4... arrrggghhhh

Also, TMJ JSR179 does not seem to want to display some of the menu's... when I select: Settings -> Other Settings, I dont get the settings dialog... the menus close and I just end up back at whatever screen was displayed prior to bringing up the main menu???

The event log is empty except for:




Getting close to abandoning all hope :(

Hello,
do I conclude right in stating that TMJ does not run correctly on Windows Mobile 6.1 up to now, even with several Java programs?

It would be a pitty, but just say YES, when its a fact.

Meinalf
(having to look for an alternative for my wifes handy MDA IV / HTC touch diamond, desperately)

Unfortunately, the news is not good :(

It would appear that Android, while based on various Java techs, does not actually run Java apps.

It comes up with a "Content is not compatible with this phone" error if you try to download the JAD or JAR files :(

Oh well, back to the drawing board...