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CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
61–70 of 91 posts
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#62OpenStreetMap is a great ecosystem - I'm a long term contributor. Some pointers: - CoMaps is a fork of Organic Maps, which forked long time ago from Maps.me - OsmAnd is similar. It has more features but is slower and clunkier - If you see errors/missing stuff on OpenStreetMap, fix them. You need a free account for this. There are various tools to help out, such as the editor on Osm.org. Beginner-friendly editors are…
Unfortunately (but logically I think) the OSM-ecosystem is very Android leaning - so missing out on a large % of street walking smartphone wielding would-be mappers.
Also, to get "basic non-tech regular people" involved in improving the maps, it's too complicated (i.e. even the simplest street or sidewalk has a lot of tags with arcane names, which need to be set to exact values according to very deeply buried and confusing documentation).
For street level small maintenance level enhancements, I would envision (and need) an app that would consist of:
- See the point/lines/area that make up the map at the place where I stand
- Add a new point/line/area or drag existing ones to change their shape
- Answer some simple questions about what you added or edited (i.e. for an area: "is this grass?" or "is this parking space?", for a line "is this paved?" or "can a car drive here?")
- Optionally, either directly publish the changes or add them to some review queue where an expert can asynchronously review and catch the most basic mistakes or abuse
Although I do need to say that despite this app not existing, OSM is often the most detailed and up to date map in my area. I think it heavily depends on if your neighborhood has an OSM enthusiast or not.
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#63as an alternative, I’ve used the Guru Maps (formerly Gaia) offline downloadable vector maps for years with great success.
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#64OpenStreetMap is a great ecosystem - I'm a long term contributor. Some pointers: - CoMaps is a fork of Organic Maps, which forked long time ago from Maps.me - OsmAnd is similar. It has more features but is slower and clunkier - If you see errors/missing stuff on OpenStreetMap, fix them. You need a free account for this. There are various tools to help out, such as the editor on Osm.org. Beginner-friendly editors are…
Unfortunately (but logically I think) the OSM-ecosystem is very Android leaning - so missing out on a large % of street walking smartphone wielding would-be mappers. Also, to get "basic non-tech regular people" involved in improving the maps, it's too complicated (i.e. even the simplest street or sidewalk has a lot of tags with arcane names, which need to be set to exact values according to very deeply buried and con…
StreetComplete is preparing release for Apple devices
GoMap!! also exists for Apple devices
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#65Even neater, I use CoMaps on my linux laptop, with a USB GPS receiver. It beats using IP based Geocoding.
I'm a little confused. You mean for getting your own location, I guess?
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an upload GPX track function on the website. You then draw your paths with the online editor, above those tracks. Edit: you do this because GPS is not clean enough and you need to choose which paths connects where. You will often forget the details if your GPX are old. E.g. was it really possible to use a bicycle on that path, did those two actually connect or was it me running 150m through the Forrest as a…
Thanks, that was so simple ! Just contributed my first missing path.
Which website did you use for that, in the end?
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It has more features but is slower and clunkier Just to clarify: OsmAnd has more features, CoMaps and Organic Maps are much faster. (Aside: I'm using CoMaps myself. The main missing features are tracking (I use OpenTracks for that) and public transportation (I use a website for that). End of aside.)
What website do you use for public transportation?
rome2rio.com works reasonably well to at least get an idea where to look up the exact prices and timetables
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, that was so simple ! Just contributed my first missing path.
Which website did you use for that, in the end?
http://osm.org is the site you use to edit.
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#69A potted history of mobile OSM-based mapping. First there was Osmand. AKA OSMAnd or officially OsmAnd. It was was powerful but complicated. Normies had never heard of it and preferred Maps.me, a user-friendly alternative with an opaque business model. Then something at Maps.me turned sour and the more privacy-minded normies turned to Organic Maps. Then something at Organic Maps turned sour and some of them moved to C…
We tell our users that OsmAnd is great if you want a mapping swiss army knife in your pocket: it does a little bit of everything, for power users. It has plugins and customizability. CoMaps' mission is to be an accessible usable privacy-first FOSS map app for the entire world (average people) and so we always have our eye on the typical expected user experience and what obstacles remain between them and uninstalling…
To illustrate this, look at OsmAnd's most recent blog post [1]. They've recently been looking at adding pretty extensive Astronomy features. Before that, they added a lot of nautical tooling [2]. This is all very cool if you use that, but if you don't, the laundry list of such features make it harder to find the features you do use.
I used OsmAnd for a long time, and it's a great app that I learned how to use well. And while I do miss some features (most notably the Wikivoyage integration for offline travel guides), ultimately the simplicity of CoMaps makes it much more pleasant to use for the thing I mostly use it for: getting around cities.
Re: CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela
#70Even neater, I use CoMaps on my linux laptop, with a USB GPS receiver. It beats using IP based Geocoding.
I'm a little confused. You mean for getting your own location, I guess?
Yes. Default location on your linux computer will use geoclue2, which will give you a location based on your IP address. My location is about 30 miles away since my IP is associated with Google Fiber.
https://github.com/deepin-community/geoclue-2.0/blob/master/...
Using a cheap USB GPS receiver you can get to meters level resolution, could use it mobile as a navigation device, and NTP timing too if you want.