RaceBunny 1.0 -- Mobile TrailRunner GPS Companion

Pasted Graphic
After a long long wait Apple finally approved RaceBunny 1.0 for the app store. RaceBunny will let you send and receive tracks to and from your iPhone.
RaceBunny uses the new iPhone 3.0 build in maps and can record tracks. You can even send route courses to RaceBunny from within TrailRunner and follow the carrot symbol as it moves before your nose. Before you send a route course to RaceBunny, you can set a target speed.

Screens
Other than that, RaceBunny does not do much and but is free. Currently RaceBunny is the only application you can use to send GPS courses to your iPhone and follow them. So it might be an interesting use case to study for all other developers with great GPS solutions for the iPhone (hint, hint)

RaceBunny works best with the iPhone 3G and requires TrailRunner 2.1
To exchange data between TrailRunner and RaceBunny a domestic WiFi connection is being required.
RaceBunny uses the Build in iPhone OS 3.0 Maps requiring an internet connection to update the background map.

To use RaceBunny, follow these steps in a recent build of TrailRunner 2.1:
Go to Preferences > Synchronize and set RaceBunny as the iPhone partner application.
In the main document window, press the iPhone icon and select the send tab in the left pane. Start RaceBunny on the iPhone and press the send button in TrailRunner. The selected route should now be available in the list of routes within RaceBunny.
To receive tracks from RaceBunny, switch the iPhone tab in TrailRunner to Import.
Send a selected route in RaceBunny and TrailRunner should display it.

Download RaceBunny for free from the app store:
marketing_badge

|

Import and Export for Garmin Edge 705

One of the nice things with the Garmin Edge is that you can mount the device as a Harddrive on your mac. Then within the folder you see all workouts accomplised.

Pasted Graphic 3It’s pretty easy to open these in TrailRunner. Just select a bunch and drag them onto TrailRunner and you’ll see them there.

This week I implemented the other direction. TrailRunner can now write the native file format for the newer Garmin devices, with the .tcx file extension.
There are a few steps to follow and it’s very convenient after that:
> Right-click on the control bar
> Choose Cutomize Toolbar…
> Drag the Export as TCX icon into your toolbar.

Next, when you like to export a route course onto your Edge, just select the route, press the Export button and save the route into the courses folder of the edge.
That’s it.

Pasted Graphic 1

|

TrailRunner 1.8 - View your iPhone GPS Recordings

As developing a decent iPhone application is as much work as developing huge parts of TrailRunner I decided to not write my own iPhone app but to partner with one of the existing ones. This companion application you can buy in the App store is iTrail.
TrailRunner and iTrail require domestic Airport/Wifi network to transfer data from the iPhone onto your Mac.
This is how it works:

Buy iTrail
If you did not already, buy iTrail in the app store and make some route recordings.
> Website

Transfer Routes
Pasted Graphic
Start TrailRunner. You’ll notice a new icon in the toolbar if you are a first time user. Otherwise you can add this icon by control clicking the control bar and adding the new iPhone Icon.



An importer pane will open on the left hand side of the main window. Follow the steps described there.

Pasted Graphic

In the current version of iTrail (shown on the left), TrailRunner and iTrail Desktop are the same. This will change in the future to something like in the right screenshot (taken from a preview build of iTrail 1.7).

WifiExportNotConnected-fulliTrailConnectSreen



It is important to know that TrailRunner can not interpret the proprietary CSV file format of iTrail. The GPX file format is the one you should choose for the transfer.

Pasted Graphic 1

After the course was received in TrailRunner you’ll see the regular workout import pane you might already know. Choose any of the import options and probably add a diary entry for this recording.
|

TrailRunner 1.8 - Share your Routes

Completed the next level for the GPSies.com integration. After the download of routes from the GPSies community was recently introduced you now can share your routes with others in the GPSies community. Quick how to:

Open Route Sharing
You’ll find the new menu command under File > Share Routes.

Login
Get an account at GPSies.com and log in.
Bild 1

Choose Routes to Share
Select the routes you want to share by placing a check mark.
For each chosen route, enter your route description. If you’d like to reference to other websites for detail, TrailRunner will automatically detect hyperlinks.
Choose your descriptions wisely as they will help others follow the same course as you did (even with GPS devices this is still recommended)
Select a suitable activity for your suggestion and press upload.
Within the GPSies.com portal you can still refine your route descriptions at a later point. Have fun…

Bild 3

Download a Preview Build of TrailRunner with this feature
|

TrailRunner 1.6 - Export and Retrace

The next major release step will bring a highly requested and an intuitive new feature.

Pasted Graphic 2
The former is a new route export pane. It will appear on Send To GPS and Save as GPX, will let you select more than one route to be exported and has the following options:
Boundary route: The idea behind this is to get all crossings exported without exporting the whole track network. As a track network is not part of the conceptual background in GPX files, this "pseudo" route will act as a hull around the selected route. Unfortunately my Garmin ForeRunner is not able to display more than one course at a time but it might be useful in other cases.
Compression: If you export more than one route into a GPX file the amount of data might overrun your devices memory limits. Compression might help to reduce the amount. A visual preview of the selected track depicts what the compressed track looks like.

The latter new feature are track animations and a route slider. If you previously selected a checkpoint in the left hand table and used the arrow-down key to browse through the course of your route (what I do to memorize the course before I go out, even though you have electronical cheat sheets like NanoMaps and Send To GPS) TrailRunner will now retrace the course of the track segment up to the next checkpoint. Additionally, the new route slider at the bottom of the map lets you browse through the course of the route much the same way as coverflow in Leopard does with files.
Pasted Graphic 1

If you are a thrill seeker or would like to be a cheer leader, download a nightly build here:

> Download

Enjoy!
At this point I'd like to thank everybody who gave me feedback and motivation for the TrailRunner project in the past year. The project still satisfies me very much and we'll see many more updates in the future. All the best to everybody for 2008…
|