tangoGPS

Note: the video in the screenshots section offers a quick intro into tangoGPS.

Keyboard Shortcuts

For convenient use on a Laptop or eeePC tangoGPS offers several keyboard shortcuts:

1,2,3,4: switch maps
Page Up / Page Down and mouse scroll wheel: zoom
i,o: zoom in and zoom out
Space: toggle fullscreen mode
a: activate autocenter mode

The Main Screen

1. Your Current Speed. The speed is only shown when more than "2" (but alway visible in the bottom status bar)
   
   
2. Autocenter: pressing this button will let the map automatically follow your GPS position. For your convenience this stops when you manually move the map with the mouse (or respectively with the stylus on a touchscreen).
   
   
3. Zoom level indicator, here zoom level 9. Each zoom level is twice the scale of the preceeding. Use the slider to quickly zoom several zoom levels in or out. On the desktop or eeePC you can use the mouse scroll wheel for zooming, too.
   
   
4. GPS position marker. The blue handle points in the direction of your heading, the brown handle points towards your destination (waypoint).
   
   
5. The yellow star indicates a POI (Point of Interest)  and the blue flags marks it as your current waypoint.
   
   
6. When you have a waypoint set, the upper value indicates the distance (here: 17.628NM) and the bottom value indicates the bearing (here258.9°). 
   
   
7. The Status Bar gives you constantly the most important information. From the left to the right:

• D7: this tells you the number of currently running parallel tile downloads
• 168: if you are downloading tiles for offline use, this value tells you the number of remaining tiles in the queue
• 5.0kn: your current speed. Can be indicated in mph, km/h or knots at your choice.
• 48°: your current heading
• a:105ft = altitude. You can set it to either feet or meters.
• t:0.173NM = tripmeter. Again, either imperial, metrical or nautical units. The tripmeter is very handy when on a bike or when walking, doing sports or just leisurely moving around...
• 8/8/1.0: satellites in view (here: eight), satellites used (here: eight), HDOP=horizontal dilusion of precision (here: 1.0). The lower the HDOP value, the better the position data. Everything below 3.0 should be usable for openstreetmap.org mapping purposes.

Map Context Menu

this point:

shows information about this point: latitude and longitude plus distance from your current gps location. If you have set your position manually, then the distance to this location is calculated, overriding your gps position. You can use this for measuring distances: for example set your position to "Paris" and the click on "Berlin" and choose 'this' from the context menu. Just try it!

show friends

connects to friend server and displays icons with positions of friends. You can then click on the icons for more information.

show POIs

displays points of interest (=POI).

show photos

displays icons for geo-coded photos. There is an article in the Documentation section about geocoding photos.

my position

here you can set your location. do this if you have no GPS or if you want to override the loaction of the GPS. Together with the first menu entry "this point" you can use your position for measuring distances - see above.

waypoints

lets you set a waypoint. The distance and bearing will be shown in the lower right corner.

map download

lets you download maps for offline use. 

POIs

lets you add points of interest and lets you choose which ones to display. The POI database is in ~/.tangogps/poi.db and can be edited directly by either an application named "sqlitebrowser" or by a firefox plugin named "SQLite Manager".

Clicking on the "GPS" button will insert your current location. Otherwise the point you clicked onto is choosen. However, you can insert any value you wish. Accepted input formats: 

• decimal: 49.8765432
• minutes: 49°12.12345
• minutes and seconds: 49°12'34.567"

Trip Meter

Detailed information about your trip.

Friend

Connect to a friendserver and get the positions of others.

Config

Configure tangoGPS

• auto download of map tiles
• map repositories
• units
• gpsd