toms1
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Posts posted by toms1
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3 hours ago, Jim Riley said:
Perhaps it's ironic that now you have made the map you can't travel to anywhere but the Hebden sani Station. Shame you don't have the power to delete the stoppages from the map, then you, and I, wouldn't be stuck on the Rochdale. We await the next upgrade with anticipation.
Haha - I can't even get to the sanitary station at the moment - locks are all padlocked...
It's quite peaceful without the hire boats though...
Just added the "Advice" info too. Going to try adding the opening times - hoping it doesn't make the map too crowded.
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On 03/08/2018 at 20:13, Horace42 said:
Sorry to say it, but CRT don't have to bother when people like Toms1 #1 do it for them.
The map is made possible by CRT's recording and release of Open Data plus the stoppage information published by CRT - true their maps are a bit shite - hence I made this. BW never had any map on their website - just looking at the positives rather than complaining about signs... sigh...
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Just added CRT Stoppages to Open Canal Map - they are automatically imported daily at 9:30am and published at 10:30am. They include all stoppages and restrictions valid over the next 30 days.
crt stoppages map is updated daily at 1030am
Live Canal and River Trust Stoppages Map for iPhone and Android
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Stephen Doyle has put together a iPhone version of Open canal map - more about it here https://opencanalmap.uk/2018/05/31/download-the-iphone-ipad-version-of-open-canal-map/
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16 minutes ago, Michael Donning said:
might be very important to let the user tell the app if it is mooring (filling up water, eating, etc.) or just standing by for a lock becoming available.
I think that is the stumbling block. How does it know when your boating and not walking the dog etc...
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2 hours ago, StephenA said:
Nick and I were looking at adding "average" timings to canalplan so basically we'd set an average time for each bit of the canal based on actual timings and use those, along with a planners "personal" averages to work out how long bits of canal would take to navigate. I did some work based on tracks I'd recorded but it needs a lot more data... Tom's app, if it recorded that information and allowed people to upload it would give us that base data.... It would also allow us to identify "hot spots" where timings can go out of the window (such at Wheaton Aston Lock)
Interesting idea. Would need to think about privacy of the data - could give location away if done badly. For me knowing the number of locks, movable bridges and miles to destination would give me more of an idea than the time. We're quite slow so a canal plan 5 hour day usually takes us 7 hours - I think of canal plan as the fastest possible time. Maybe the app can learn your dividing factor for time - in this case mine would be about 0.7 - but can change depending on how many crew / sharing the locks with another boat etc... That factor could feed into canal plan perhaps.
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3 hours ago, reg said:
Have to agree with that.
Just a thought on an alternative approach to consider bearing in mind that canal plan has already done the 'tedious' work over many years. Canal plan has a route export function. Would it not be simpler to plan the route in canal plan, export it and then have an import function in opencanal to overlay the route in android. Possibly much simpler to implement as the grunt work is being done in canal plan which is designed to do that work. Opencanal then only needs to provide an import function for canal plan exported routes.
Simple implementation
Opencanal Android remains lean.
Just a thought
ETA
Just had an additional thought that if the canal plan exports were in kml I could also import them into locus maps as a route.
Yep - that's what I've done...
https://opencanalmap.uk/2018/01/22/loading-canal-plan-ac-files/
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29 minutes ago, Michael Donning said:
I've seen in their forum that CanalPlan can also deliver JSON-Files. But basically, that makes no difference.
I still don't see the point of the moving camera. Either you are using the map while on the canal then the camera might just follow the GPS. Or you are mooring/at home then you can manually scroll the map on which the route is displayed.
Route planning is tedious to implement. So it is a good idea to query CanalPlan for that as long as you keep the last route stored. Just have an interface to add the waypoints for the route query (from/to maybe stopovers like: From "here" (=GPS) to "winding hole" to "home marina").
The queried data will be sufficient to display nice lists with distances and travel times (with a filter for mooring/winding holes/locks/junctions etc.).
Yep - the camera was just to do something simple with the data.
Trouble with it is that it will end up showing a countdown of locks to your destination - which could be quite depressing...
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1 minute ago, reg said:
That's what I wanted to hear, fully agree with that view.
Will give it a test soon.
Not in beta yet I'm afraid - just a video preview. Needs a bit of work to get it ready to release.
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On 20/01/2018 at 21:13, Michael Donning said:
The journey time in my little tool is based on the CanalPlan journey time intervals included in their CSV export. Just added up. (People can customize these on the CanalPlan site AFAIR).
I've made a import function for Canal Plan AC csv files - it just follows the route with the camera at the moment but could display the journey times too. No point putting a route planner in the app when CP can do that.
https://opencanalmap.uk/2018/01/22/loading-canal-plan-ac-files/
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5 hours ago, StephenA said:
You'd need to talk to Nick about that - if you want to do that then its probably worth starting a thread on the little forum we have on Canalplan for discussing things..... I do think that if we're not careful we're going to end up with multiple incompatible data sets which are all out of date....
We did have this "feature request"
https://canalplan.eu/bugtrack/view.php?id=31
Ok - I've registered on your site - but can't post - maybe needs approval.. Yea I didn't really research what data was out there when I started this. I just came across the CRT open data then CanalMap.net contacted me on here and now I'm using his data too. A central repository for the data might be an idea. Michael who posted about his project earlier in this thread has sent me a rather impressive bit of javascript that uses canal plan data to calculate journey time on the fly. This can easily be incorporated into the app if you and Nick were happy for that to happen. I'll check in the canal plan forum tomorrow and see if I can start a discussion about it there. Cheers.
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11 hours ago, Michael Donning said:
I hacked together a little route planner for our journey last year. It was basically a web site which ran locally on android (within the firefox browser).
It used downloaded CSV data from CanalPlanAC (converted to JSON). The "logic" was done in Javascript using the "Leaflet" library and some previoisly downloaded map tiles.
If it is of any use I can pack the thing together and provide it to the developer. (in its current form it was basically limited to the GU and some "sidearms")
Nice.. yes please. You can email me Tom@opencanalmap.uk . I had some idea about animating the camera so it traces the route of the canal. This sounds like it could provide the data to do that as well. Cheers.
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7 minutes ago, IanD said:
Nothing is less useful than a map/guide with out-of-date information. If you're going to add more information to the maps (e.g. via clickable links) it would probably be far better to make this open up the Google Maps app with the same zoom area and location as the Android one and use this to get the information -- otherwise you'll end up on an endless treadmill of trying to keep all the info up to date. Then people can use the Android app (which doesn't consume a lot of data) for navigation and planning, and bring up the Google app only when needed to access information.
Don't know if this is possible or you have any plan to do it, but a travel time/distance addition (from current location or a set point) would be *very* handy -- then you could look ahead along the map and see elapsed time (or even arrival time?) to a given place from where you currently are (e.g. you will arrive at Skipton at 6:35pm). There's need to be an assumption about travel speed and time through locks, but even a rough one (or one that can be changed, like canalplan) would be helpful.
Good idea about getting the google map to open in the same place - just figured out how to do that - I'll include that in the next update to the app - cheers
There is a API to connect to CanalPlan I believe - don't know if they would mind me adding that - primary focus is on building tools to let users update the maps first off though.
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36 minutes ago, IanD said:
Maybe an obvious (and a fundamental difference) but the Android app only shows what has been entered (e.g. a pub) but unlike the Google Maps version there's no information behind this -- it's not a clickable link. Other things like some boatyards are also not in the Android app but are in the Google Maps one.
So the Android one is useful for canal navigation (distances, lock, bridges etc) and doesn't need a lot of downloaded data, but not so useful for finding out what is near the canal and what facilities they have (pubs, shops, restaurants, boatyards, attractions etc.).
Yep - there is a load of info missing because they're not clickable yet. To make it work that way they need to be stored separately as a table in the app - so that is the next thing to work on. This will then lead into the function to add and edit the markers.
There is a way to query Google to find nearby places - I'll look into that at some point too - but then again I'll never be able to duplicate all the functionality of Google Maps - so maybe not worth doing.
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15 hours ago, reg said:
Afraid they don't for me in offline mode, show a lower resolution but disappear when zoomed in.
Did a complete delete and reinstall before testing
Eta
Seem to work on my second download but not my first
Don't work on Hillmorton, Buckby, Braunstone area
Do work on other download Atherstone area
Might just be a time lag kind of thing - when I update in Mapbox it takes a while for the changes to appear on my phone - like maybe an hour or so....
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3 hours ago, reg said:
That makes sense as app itself is only smallish its the data storage that is the problem, might be useful to be able to set storage location but appreciate it is not an easy problem to solve at the moment. I know this is a particular problem where apps and data are separate I've got duplicate very large files in Locus SDcard and main renaming either version trashes locus so I just leave it as is. Looking at Google I don't think anyone fully understands all of the Android File machinations.
Just to note that late time I reinstalled I lost all of my previous maps I suspected that this was due to your changes so not an issue in beta but obviously would not want to lose the data when live.
Tom any indication what the database name is and where it resides would be useful for tracking data usage? thanks.
Eta
Just a question is it safe to assume that the app will as a matter of policy now remain in main and the database storage will be looked at at a later date? If so will you need to change the app back and if you do can you let me know when to reinstall, thanks.
Yea - I think the last update where the storage path was changed will of broken some downloads. Previous updates seemed to retain the downloads but that one changed the "OfflineManager" code - I'll leave the core of that stuff alone from now.
I'll try and figure out where the data is - I don't know where it puts it - bit of a black box
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On 14/01/2018 at 12:59, Dr Bob said:
Ditto. Not sure there is anything on the downloaded map that would cause a marker collision. The key issue is the missing locks on the downloaded map and the effect is different for Reg, Arthur and myself who are all seeing different things.
I've done a couple of updates to the map:
1. Locks now show at any zoom level - collisions are ignored for the icon but not the text.
2. The double / triple line of the canal / waterway has been styled out - these paths are now used only in lower zoom levels (zoom out) but the open street map canal route is used when you approach high zoom levels.
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11 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:
Not on my tablet, I'm afraid. Android 6 allows you to amalgamate the internal and external memory into one lump for most purposes, but it does let you move programs specifically to the external storage in some cases. It's still not giving me the option here, stores everything on the internal memory still.
If the memory is amalgamated then there is probably no need for it to save to SD. I've tested on android 5 and it did as intended. I don't think there is a way to get it to store the application itself on external. All I've been able to set is external storage as a preferred location for data. Might mean it needs a reinstall to start using that as the place since it can't store data in both internal and external storage at the same time. So if you already had data it would carry on using the internal storage. Just to clarify 'move to SD card' option should be disabled but the app should save cache and downloads to external store if it can. Fallback is internal storage for data. Best it lets me do for now I'm afraid unless I can find out otherwise.
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On 14/01/2018 at 20:23, reg said:
Have to concur with your view, would be happy to see Lock icon on map, under these circumstances , even if description wasn't available at the time.
Yes - the intention was to have locks as the highest priority, swing bridges should probably be second, followed by the taps and then moorings etc. - I'll alter the zoom settings on the other features a bit more to hide them on the medium zoom levels your referring to. There is a lot of control over how things are displayed - but therefore also a lot of settings to mess about with to get it right.
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Just release another Beta - this one should save data to your external storage (SD card) - took a few attempts to get it working but seems OK now.
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14 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:
Yes, Tom, let us know when the changes are made.
Just published an update to the map - no need to update the app - some areas might be cached in your device - either just wait or you can clear the data in Settings -> Apps -> Open Canal Map -> Clear data - but that will remove any downloaded maps you've created.
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1 minute ago, Dr Bob said:
Ditto. Not sure there is anything on the downloaded map that would cause a marker collision. The key issue is the missing locks on the downloaded map and the effect is different for Reg, Arthur and myself who are all seeing different things.
I had some transparent space around the lock icon - removing that and scaling the icon down with the stylesheet seems to reduce the number of collisions.
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Ok, this sounds like it's just marker collision. The Mapbox library hides markers when they overlap. I just tried adjusting the SVG icon and changing the font size based on zoom. Have managed to get the 3 locks to appear where they would not before. I'll tidy it up and update the main map.
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If you can give me steps that recreate an error consistently then I can try and debug it and see if I can fix or at least submit an issue on the github mapbox repo.
Thanks for all the feedback. I'll be looking into the storage stuff next.
It's quite peaceful without the hire boats though...
Open Canal Map
in General Boating
Posted
Getting there - here's a mock up of the new app - interface will change - trying to get my head round material design using Flutter and Dart. Got something running on the emulators now.
https://explore.opencanalmap.uk