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Introduction - xPositioning - xGui - xInput - xFramework - Documentation - Trial - Purchase - License
Introducing the xPosition Toolkit
The xPosition Toolkit has been designed for all situations that require easy all-purpose positioning within a .NET Compact Framework application. The toolkit is designed in such a way to allow developers to take full advantage of the GPS Intermediate Driver and the Google Gears GeoLocation function. Combined together these two give both exact and approximate positioning information. Both have advantages and both have disadvantages. The GPS Intermediate driver for example requires GPS hardware available but returns quite an exact position, but consumes lots of power when in use. Google Gears GeoLocation on the other hand consumes far less power, but requires an internet connection and is far from exact.
The xPosition Toolkit enables developers to use these two positioning methods seemingless and next to each other. This combination ensures positioning has never been this powerfull.
To make the best of it, the xPosition Toolkit allows developers to choose how the positioning should take place.
For this to work the Exact (GPS Intermediate Driver based) and Approximate (Google Gears GeoLocation based) position providers can be tuned according to the following options:
Exact positioning:
- Active usage of the GPS hardware.
- Passive usage of the GPS hardware (only when other applications have activated the GPS hardware).
- Disabled.
- Always try to approximate the position. Even when this requires connecting to the Internet.
- Only try to approximate the position when connected. Even when the device is roaming.
- Only try to approximate the position when connected and not roaming.
- Disabled.
If a situation requires positioning in realtime, the Locator can be instructed to use Active GPS usage.
The GPS Intermediate Driver comes bundled with Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6 powered devices, but the Google Gears GeoLocation is only available on devices that have the Google Gears Framework (which can be download here) installed.
Features
The xPosition Toolkit features:
- Ease-of-use when compared to lowlevel drivers and such.
- Determination of the location enhanced by the combined powers of both exact and approximate positioning.
- Runtime toggling between the different positioning configurations.
- Exact positioning using the GPS Intermediate Driver architecture.
- Approximate positioning using the Google Gears GeoLocation function.
- Clean Object Oriented design that allows the toolkit to be extended with custom positioning providers (both exact and approximate).
- Assemblies available in the Visual Studio Add References dialog.
Technical
The core of the xPositioning Toolkit is the Locator class.
Out of the box this class can used with both the GPS Intermediate driver and the Google Gears GeoLocation function.
The class has only the required properties and events public, which make it easy to use and to incorporate In existing applications.
When other positioning methods are required the system can easily be extended by inheriting from the Locator class and redesigning the
factory methods that create both the exact and approximate PositionProviders.
Pricing
A demo version of the The xPosition Toolkit can be downloaded freely here.
However, it has a time limit of three weeks. After the trial period the toolkit starts throwing licensing exceptions whenever it is used.
A version without the time limit can be purchased by donating through PayPal.
Please send an with your name and donation information and the version you have just bought.
The purchased version will be send to the corresponding email address as soon as possible.
Send an for more information or to get an update when a release is published.
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