After finding myself running Visual Studio .Net 2003 on my desktop and PocketPC 2002 on my iPaq5450 I wondered what to do next.

I tried to figure out a way to replace the RadioTimes on your PDA app, but the XMLTV feeds are too flaky at the moment.

Then I tripped over tpegML on the BBC. It seemed that they had got something together so it would be a good test for the .Net Compact Framework.

So I duly popped open a new "Smart Device Application" project and coded away. The main problem was with the cut-down XML support as I haven't found out how to XPath sensibly yet.

The result of all this is a very simple "alpha" application that is a "rich-client" that displays travel information from the beta TPEG feeds available from the BBC.

In this screenshot the "road traffic" information is loaded (running on a desktop PC)

screenshot of travel info

I've been encouraged by Timothy Hilgenberg to push this a bit further as he has a similar hardware setup to me apprently (oh, and he works on this stuff for a living!).

So my current plan is to keep pushing ahead with the .Net CF (as it also runs on Windows). I'd like to make it easier to filter the information shown so I might end up doing that using co-ordinates for starters. The next step would be to find a way to talk to TomTom Navigator to give it the co-ordinates of the "avoid" areas. I think this is too optimistic at the moment so the transfer will have to be manual.

Usage instructions

  1. There is no warranty whatsoever with this - I'm still too new at this to be sure what is going on. This software is provided as-is and for experimentation only
  2. Install the .Net Compact Framework
  3. Get the Travel Info_PPC 0.0.0.2.ARM.CAB file
  4. Put the CAB on your ARM / XScale PocketPC and run it to install the "Travel Info.exe"
  5. Use PocketPC File Explorer to go "\Program Files\MyForest\Travel Info" and run "Travel Info"
  6. How did it go?
    1. If it gets stuck it may log to "\Program Files\MyForest\Travel Info\log.txt" or just blow up
    2. If it works then it should load up with a list view and a menu. You should also notice there's now a "\Program Files\MyForest\Travel Info\config.xml" file - this has been created using the defaults. You can change them, but it may not like your suggestions
  7. The program runs against local XML files that can be downloaded (so it will work offline). As a nice feature you can perform the download from within the app itself.
  8. The entity files you need are included, but you can download updates if you wish
  9. You need to have the "Road" or "Public" files available and then the "Show" menu gets enabled. It is blisteringly fast on my dual 733MHz and bearable on the iPaq5450, YMMV
  10. That's about it for now. If you have problems then mail me, but be sure to include any config.xml and log.txt files (plus others if you can see them) - don't worry about sending too much, I have ADSL