Chaeron Corporation
Enterprise System Solutions

 

GPS(Global Positioning System) Solutions

Chaeron Corporation has extensive expertise in location-enabled applications. We offer many services to clients looking for location and GPS-enabled solutions, including consulting, design, custom development and more, on platforms that span consumer devices (eg. PDA's, mobile phones), desktops (PC/Mac/Linux in C/C++ or Java) and servers (unix, linux and mainframes).

This page includes some of our free resouces, including:

Mobile GPS Demonstration Platform

MGDP Project Description:

The purpose of the Mobile GPS Demonstration Platform (MGDP) project is to demonstrate a proof of concept for the integration of a number of emerging technologies including: Embedded/Realtime Java, Mobile, position-based applications, GPS (Global Position System) technologies, Wireless/Mobile connectivity, Web Services (XML, SOAP, WSDL, JAX-RPC, etc.), and server-side J2EE (including EJB and DBMS persistence). The MGDP has been constructed using commonly available, inexpensive hardware and software (including open source software) to illustrate that applications of this nature are very feasible using existing tools and technologies. It is hoped that the MGDP project inspires others to push the threshold of what can be done with position-based computing and the Java platform.

A detailed description of the MGDP project, architecture and technologies is available in the MGDP Project Description white paper:

MGDP_ProjectDescription.pdf    884K                            - MGDP Project Description white paper v1.5 (PDF format)

 

Recent MGDP Presentations/Demos:

The MGDP project has been recently presented and demonstrated at the following venues:

  • JavaOne 2002 (click on the link for pictures of the MGDP JavaOne demo)
  • General Motors
  • AMI-C (Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration)
  • more coming soon (contact us to arrange for a custom presentation/demo)
GPS Standards

GPS/Location Markup Language (GPSml):

There is a growing requirement for a standard way of sharing GPS location information between disparate systems, devices and users. For example, to transmit location data from a GPS-enabled client application (possibly running on a handheld device) to a central server running location-aware Web Services. Another example would be to enable users to share waypoints, routes and/or track logs more easily, regardless of their GPS device or application.

Currently, there is no standard, comprehensive and functional markup language (XML specification, ie XMLSchema or DTD) that can express and encode the full gamut of data generated by GPS devices. The Geography Markup Language (OpenGIS) specification is more appropriate to mapping applications, describing geographic "features" rather than location information.. The Navigation Markup Language specification (from W3C) has not been updated since mid-1999 and is woefully incomplete as regards GPS-generated location data. There is a Simple Waypoint Markup Language (from Iseran) but it only deals with waypoints and has not been updated for a year. Finally, there is GPX (from a Yahoo Group GPSXML) that can encode waypoints, routes and tracks, but does not take into account the encoding of real-time position (and other) GPS information, and has other design issues.

Chaeron is actively involved in the specification and development of a comprehensive XMLSchema GPS/Location markup language (GPSml) to address this evolving requirement. The XML output from the Chaeron GPS Java Access library (see below) adheres to this specification and can be validated against the GPSml Schema. Chaeron will submit the GPSml specification to the W3C for adoption as a standard once it stabilizes and is released in a final version.

GPSml Design Goals:

      • Be an XML format for all GPS-generated data, both real-time position related data and collections (such as waypoints, tracks, routes)
      • Be easy to generate in software, even apps without XML understanding.
      • Be easy for modern XML parsers to parse and feed in to applications.
      • Let a single file contain real-time position information and arbitrary collections (such as waypoints, tracks, routes)
      • Scale gracefully to handle both simple and complex requirements
      • Be flexible and extensible since the GPS arena is evolving rapidly
      • Follow current XMLSchema best practices (where known)

GPSml is being released to the public domain. We can also create custom versions (for specialty GPS hardware support, custom elements, etc.) to suit specific requirements.

Please see the readme file for current release notes and more information.

GPSml_V05.zip      153K                            - GPSml XMLSchema, version 0.5 beta

GPS Software

Chaeron GPS (Global Positioning System) Library:

This library (and sample programs) provides a high level Java interface to GPS units. It will run unchanged on PC's or on Palm PDA's (it should also run on other platforms such as Linux, WinCE or Mac) and on the Systronix / aJile Embedded Java platform. Support for Bluetooth-enabled GPS units (like the Emtac) from a Palm PDA are now supported in the included demo program. It provides an event-driven, listener model that is simple to use (relative to doing your own serial I/O and packet parsing for different GPS protocols) and abstracts the events and values that are passed back to be independent of the GPS protocol being used (so far NMEA and Garmin protocols). It comes complete with a ready-to-run, pre-compiled GUI-based demo program (GPSDemo) with Waypoint, Route and Track Log download and save (in XML format, compatible with GPSml) capability.

This library is being released as Open Source under the GPL license (other license terms are available for commercial use, please Contact Chaeron if you are interested in commercial use of this library). We can also create custom versions (for specialty GPS hardware support, custom/reduced API, etc.) to suit specific requirements. We are also able to offer a priority development services for the Chaeron GPS Library. If there is a feature or customization that you urgently require to have incorporated in the Chaeron GPS Library, Chaeron can be engaged to make such changes on a fixed-rate, daily basis under the following terms:

- source code will be released to you under the terms of the GNU GPL (the Chaeron GPS Library);
- copyright in the source code will be retained by Chaeron Corporation.
- fixed price quotes can be given for short or very well specified projects.

Contact us for rates and availability.

Please see the readme and version history files for current release notes and more information.

ChaeronGPS_102.zip        1221K                            - GPS Java Access Library, version 1.02

You will also need the following Waba Extras Library, since it seems to have vanished off the net.

wextras130.zip                  92K                               - Waba Extras Library, v1.30

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Last modified on May 3, 2006

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