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Supervisor: Dr. Stephen Brewster, University of Glasgow
jGPS is a Java based application which allows users with a commercial GPS receiver connected to the serial port of a PC to:
- determine his or her current position,
- present the position information in text format (latitude/longitude, British Grid co-ordinates);
- view the location on a scalable, orientable map;
- share location information with other users collaborating over a network;
- visualise all users' positions in 3D;
- use positional (3D) sound to localise other users in a non-visual environment;
- display maps downloaded from www.multimap.com, controlled by the user's location.
The application was written as part of my work towards an M.Sc. in Information Technology at the University of Glasgow, and was submitted in September 2001.
In addition to the core Java J2SE1.3 classes, programming for this project used the following:
- Java Communications (javax.comm) for serial port connection and reading of data from GPS receiver;
- Swing/JFC for GUI development;
- Java2D for graphical display and manipulation, particularly for display on map background;
- Serializable interface for storing positional information from each device;
- Java Messaging Service (JMS) for sharing of information between devices.
- Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) to provide a server for holding JMS topics.
- Java3D for 3D display and experimenting with 3D sound.