Today, I can proudly present you Luc LeBlanc, the man behind Auriga(aka the cave tool for Palm OS). Stick with us to find out what a Palm does in a cave, what Luc thinks of the Meazura and how the platform will fare in the future!
Could you please tell us a bit more about yourself? How did you get into programming, what was your first handheld,…
I’m a software designer by trade, and a cave explorer by nature. In 1982, after receiving a B.Sc in Computer Science from McGill University in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), I got a job offer in Paris, France. I worked there for 5 years, but love brought me back home. In 1990 I ended up working for the local power utility, where I eventually headed a team of 20 developing a monitoring system for hydroelectric generators.
The client side was written in C++ under OS/2 (!) with DB2 as the storage database while the acquisition side was written in C and PL/M running on a 12-MHz Intel Multibus hardware. The latter, which performed Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) on the fly to reduce the volume of signal data, gave me a feel for what a limited CPU can do when driven by a lean OS…
In 2001, I got my first PDA, a m100, that I bought to organize myself and to get rid of all the PostIt stickers I had around. Alas, the device was plagued by the “capacitor bug” and I had to replace it, this time by a Sony Clié S-360. it was still monochrome, but the screen and backlight were better, and I especially enjoyed the JogDial. In 2004, I was the only freeware writer attending the PalmSource Conference in California, and I took advantage of the 50% rebate to get a Tungsten T3. I would now like to get a TX, but since Palm is not releasing any new PDA model, their price is not going down 
Many of my readers are not aware of what Auriga does. Could you please explain it to us in “laymen’s terms”?
Auriga is a cave survey freeware that replaces the traditional paper notebook. Caves are surveyed by measuring a “line plot” or skeleton of the passages, around which a sketch is drawn to represent walls and other features (water, deposits, stalactites, etc.) The line plot is measured with a tape or laser distancemeter, a compass (yes, a compass works underground) and an inclinometer (to measure slopes). The sketch is drawn with stations marked in it.
In the traditional way, the numeric data was jotted into a paper notebook as columns of digits. With a Palm running Auriga, the data is input via a form implementing all relevant validations; after that the line plot can be viewed in graphical form, with closure errors and orphan stations spotted in red, thus allowing surveyors to fix errors right away, instead of discovering them only once back home, when it’s too late.
Why did you choose Palm OS devices for this application?
Quite simply because I already had one. The Quebec Speleological Society holds an annual caving expedition in the Mexican jungle [http://www.mexpe.org] , far from any power outlet. In order to process the survey data in the field, we had started bringing a PC, along with a solar panel and lead-acid batteries. Alas, the PC would drain 7 hours of sunshine in less than 2 hours. I started seeking a Palm OS cave survey software that could run for days on a pair of AAA batteries. In April 2002, just before leaving, a German caver told me about Auriga, a piece of software he had written to test his electronic compass-clinometer prototype. He had stopped working on the electronics, and he gave me the Auriga source code. Since then, the code has grown ten-fold with additions such as a specialized keypad, unit conversions, loop detection, beaming, new graphical rendering, printing, etc. The software is now published in 3 languages (French, English and Spanish) and has conduits for 2 PC cave survey programs, with others on their way. Most of this is done during the night, where I can cut on sleep to get extra spare time.
Which handhelds are used the most? Which do you consider best-suited(WristPDA, Meazura,??)
Given that they have to take their handheld underground enclosed in a waterproof case, few users get expensive high-end devices for using Auriga. The most popular devices seem to be the Palm IIIxe from eBay or the Zire 22. Depending on the duration of the underground trip – I myself used a IIIxe during a week-long underground camp in New Mexico’s Lechuguilla – surveyors may prefer models with replaceable batteries, a disappearing species nowadays. However, thanks to the ability to connect Auriga with Bluetooth-enabled measuring devices such as the Leica Disto laser distancemeter, several users are now turning towards the Palm Tungsten E2 or the TX. As for the Fossil wrist PDA, its screen is way too small to be useful.
Thinking about caves, I immediately think about the Aceeca Meazura. Do you think that the Meazura is a great platform for Auriga; given that it is almost completely invulnerable to water and dropping?
A Spanish caver purchased a 400$-Meazura for Auriga even before trying the software- that’s what you call an early adopter! – but he now prefers his Zire 22 after he cracked his Meazura screen underground. When Acceca introduced the Meazura, I had asked them to get one to try it in caves, but they said they had already done plenty of testing and simply offered me a rebate; well, I guess they never took their device on a caving trip! And quite frankly, the Meazura is too much money for a rugged IIIxe.
Until Auriga implements on-screen sketching, surveyors still need a paper notebook for that part. So far, the best setup to carry both the PDA and the paper consists of a flexible waterproof case screwed into the cover of a regular survey binder. The PDA is kept on one side, while loose sheets of waterproof sketching paper are kept on the other. Placing the case closure at the bottom even allows for beaming without exposing the PDA. Surveyors are used to carry their survey binder on their belly inside their coverall between survey stations, and this enhanced binder still allows for that. If you were to use a Meazura, the binder would become too thick, or you’d have to carry it separately.
Looking at the current state of Palm, do you think that the platform will still be around for a long time?
I think the platform will be around for a while, if only for the large number of available applications, but it may be as a compatibility layer running under another OS. If Palm executives hadn’t been busy going around in circles selling, re-buying and selling again their OS, they might have found some time to actively support their OS and make it evolve and the future would be brighter, or at least less uncertain. I personally see a need for good and small PDAs, but the trend is now on multi-function smartphones, which seem adequate for nothing. I could already feel that trend at PalmSource 2004, where the hype was on mobile apps, at the expense of everything else. I never leave home without my PDA, yet I don’t have (nor want) a cell phone. I can always find a phone, but I can’t say as much for all my personal data, notes, driving directions, birthdays, gift lists, shopping lists, etc.
Do you plan to port Auriga to another platform?
Given the big price difference between low-end Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices, I get very little demand for this platform. Even those owning a Pocket PC decide they prefer to go caving with a cheap Palm OS device from eBay than risk a nifty handheld underground. And even then, Auriga runs fine under StyleTap, a 50$-emulator that executes Palm OS apps under Windows Mobile. As a matter of fact, I recently tested Auriga under StyleTap on a colleague’s HP, and StyleTap’s most recent release fixes beam-related issues I reported. So why should I bother writing for that platform? As for other mobile platforms, they mostly run on smartphones, which are irrelevant to Auriga.
What was the biggest cave mapped with Auriga?
To be honest, I don’t know, since cavers don’t send me the caves they surveyed, unless they hit a bug, which seems to happen very seldom. Last year in Mexico we mapped 10 km of new cave passages, half of them with Auriga. And folks surveying in Lechuguilla, the “world’s most beautiful cave” in New Mexico are now starting to use it for new passages; in order to view the rest of the known 185 km, they simply use the conduit to upload the data from PC to Auriga.
The world’s largest cave system is Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave; at 587 km, computing its 80 000 survey shots would currently exceed Auriga’s limit of 65 535 (a round number to programmers 
but an upcoming version should push this limit to about 150 000, i.e. what the available heap memory can hold.
Looking at technology, what part of Auriga are you proudest of?
In Mexico, when exploration teams come back to camp at night, even before they’re done changing and emptying their gear bags, they pull out their PDA and beam the survey work they just did to the “Camp” Auriga handheld, where all caves get displayed simultaneously, properly geo-located. We immediately see the daily growth of the discovered cave system, and decide where we’ll be heading the next day. Never before had we had an immediate view of our work and upcoming connections!
Anything you would like to add?
I recently became a .NET programmer, but looking at my younger colleagues whose background is in VB or Java, I’m glad I previously learned assembler and C. It has taught me to care for limited resources and to write tight and efficient code, well-suited for small devices.
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