"Dude Where's My Car" for WinMo 3-12-09

The other day I was at a football game where I had to park on a golf course far from the stadium and ended up wandering around for 20 minutes trying to locate the car afterward.

I knew that the iPhone had an app called "Dude, Where's My Car?" which let someone use GPS to tag a specific location and then later use Google Maps to guide them back to the GPS mark, but when I did some searching I couldn't find a WinMo version. So I made one.

This version isn't as sexy as the iPhone app, but it's free, and you can store up to 3 different locations and even name them if you'd like. When you want to locate one, you just click the respective Find button and you will be provided an arrow or compass direction (N, NW, S, SW, E, SE, W, NE) and approximate distance to your destination which will change as you continue to move.

I did some testing and got rid of whatever bugs I could find and everything seems to work. Since I find it useful to have, I wanted to pass it on to the community in case they might be interested as well.

If you find any problems with it, let me know, otherwise enjoy.

UPDATE 3

I finally got around to adding arrow guidance to accompany compass directions for finding a destination. The arrows are a bit finicky, but its partially due to the quality of the gps fix and the amount of fluctuation in the coordinates it gets. I find that the best way to work with it is to travel in one direction for a short distance steadily until a steady arrow appears. Once that happens, turn in the direction of the arrow and keep walking in the direction it had indicated until it changes to reflect the direction you turned. I.e. if you are walking straight and right arrow appears, turn right and keep walking straight until the right arrow changes to an up arrow.

I also updated the source code package for anyone interested in modifying the code. As before, I just ask that you keep its open nature going (GNU style) and if you post a new version of the software with arrows, or a better GPS interface (that uses triangulation as an option), etc. that you link the new software back to this thread and you let me know about it so I can check it out

UPDATE 2

As requested, I have attached the source code for the project developed with Visual Studio 08. It's not super clean since I put it together kind of rapidly, but it is decently commented. Anyone is welcome to modify this code and use it for your own personal development. Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions.

UPDATE

Attached a screenshot from my visual studio emulator. It should look the same as on the phone but with longer decimal values for the GPS coords.

Also attached the .cab files for the .NET framework that people were having issues with. I don't know if those will resolve the problems or not, but I developed the phone using the 3.5 compact framework. If you have that, a GPS chip on your phone, and WinMo 6 it should work for you.

Thanks for pointing me to nuePark. I wish I had located it when I first did my searching, but then I wouldn't have created this. It looks like I unintentionally covered some peoples' requests for naming and multiple locations. Good times.

The WM Mini GPS looks pretty cool. Google maps is ok, but only if you save it as a favorite. Not very good for temp stuff, and I'm not sure you can add a mark based on your current location (vs an address, which I know you can). I guess this app fuses the functionality and adds flexibility with naming and multiple spots. Thanks for pointing out both options.

That's really strange. It definitely didn't do that for me and I had to install/uninstall several times during the testing process. The installer is a generic project type based on the directions I got from MSDN. You might have some conflicting settings or something. Anyone else experience this?

scotcha12345 said:

Tried it yesterday and it worked great!

Any way to get an arrow / graphic that works similar to a compass would, or is it just easier to have the words: SW / S...etc.

Thanks again!

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I thought about using an arrow that rotates around, but because the phone's orientation can change relative to the compass direction I thought it might be kind of confusing (I.e. it points left so you turn left and start walking but it keeps pointing left because it wants you to travel West and you have rotated the phone).

It would be possible for me to track the direction that someone is traveling and adjust the arrow accordingly, but again, phone orientation could vary and it's just more complicated to deal with. The compass directions are fixed so it keeps things simple and generic no matter what way you are pointing your phone.

fredcatsmommy said:

I got the following error message once I tried to run it:

GParkS.exe
Exception

at Microsoft.AGL.Common.MISC.HandleAr()
at System.Windows.Forms.TextBoxBase._SetInfo()
at _System.Windows.Forms.TextBoxBase.set_MaxLength()
at GParkS.GParkS.InitializeComponent()
at GParkS.GParkS..ctor()
at GParkS.Program.Main()


I am running a custom wm6.1 rom with netcf 3.5

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I haven't seen this before either so I did a little research and dug up this thread http://xdaforums.com/archive/index.php/t-405749.html which then links here http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=2430410&postcount=390 I am not sure if this corresponds with my app or not, but you could check your registry setting and see if your problem matches the one described in the thread.