interacting with Tomtom

  • Thread starter Thread starter Juan
  • Start date Start date
J

Juan

Hello :

I need to call some TomTom APIS from my c# program in a PDA. Anyone has done
this? I'm having a lot of troubles doing it.

Thanks.
Juan
 
Alot of people do..

TomTom has announced (a long time ago) that they will release a .NET
compatible version of their SDK this autumn, but how well they will live up
to that promise is hard to know...

You either have to write your own API using wrappers (see my post a few
minutes before yours) or use a 3rd party component. As far as I know there
is only one company that makes this and I won't give them any free
advertising here :D

/ Peter
 
I've just completed some work integrating TomTom into our app. The
TomTom api is c++ which requires a C# wrapper. You can either write
this or buy one of the third party wrappers already available, tho I
think there is only one worth looking at.

Guess I'd better support Peter here and not give any free advertising
other than to say they are Austrian.

Cheers

Chris
 
hehe..

I think TomTom has a EULA for their SDK that you are not allowed to release
any code that interacts with it (i.e. a C# wrapper) unless you have license
to do this. I wonder if the Austrian provider knows TomTom's CEO or
something similar, given they are the only 3rd party provider ;-)

Chris, did you write a C#-only wrapper? I've some real issues doing this
(considering all structs in the function calls), and I am not sure it's
worth the effort if (and that is a big IF) TomTom decides to release a .NET
SDK. A while ago I started integrating TomTom 3 SDK into our application, it
worked well since they exported all functions with plain variables (no
structs) as a special version of the functions. This is unfortunately not
available anymore, something I noticed when our company decided to go for
TomTom5 instead... :-(

cheers,

Peter
 
The TomTom v5 SDK includes a dll which acts as a shim and exposes SDK v3
functions but works with TT5, of course through this method you won't be
able to access new v5 features, but if you have SDK v3 code it should work
fine. I was working on releasing my TTN 3 wrapper, but then as v5 was
released I put it on hold and haven't had the time since to update it for v5
and document it for release.

Peter
 
That "update" is quite cumbersome I can tell you (atleast for me, but we are
playing in different leagues ;-) ), atleast if you want to expose the real
SDK 5 dll, and the documentation from TomTom is really poor.

Would you do the wrapper in plain managed code or use unmanaged code to
expose the functions in a more "managed- code-friendly" manner?

Thanks,

Peter
 
In reply to your question 'did we write a c# wrapper', only to wrap up
the third party c# wrapper from our Austrian friends so that it can be
swapped over to use something different without changing our main
application all over the place.

I had not read the EULA, and take the view that if we didn't choose to
integrate with TTN we would have used another product and our customers
would buy that one instead. It's _our_ decision to supply TTN not our
customers, so it comes down to, do TomTom want to sell TTN licences to
our customers or not. I can see there are a whole load of arguments
both ways on this, another could be that we are perceived as
'enhancing' our product by including TTN integration and therefore
potentially making more revenue so a share of that should go to TomTom,
sorry guys, not in my books. In our situation, the product is the same
price and TTN has never clinched a sales deal.

Cheers all!

Chris
 
Hello Chris!

You actually had to write a wrapper to wrap up the wrapper? :-)

Anyway, I just got a call from TomTom telling me they are not releasing
their promised .NET SDK. So I guess I'm really close making that call to
Austria *hehe*.

Perhaps I'll satisfy with the SDK3-functionality that Peter Foot mentioned
in an earlier message, it may actually be enough for us at this time. I
won't be able to use Asynchronous calls but as a test base that's not
necessary.

Cheers,

Peter
 
I was wrong about the EULA (and I didn't actually mean a EULA but more like
a developers license agreement)... you can write a wrapper for TomTom
Navigator 5 and distribute it however you desire (open source, freeware or
not). TTNCF doesn't have any special licence for this.

/ Peter
 
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