Useful Tool for Boaters

[magnetman]

Some basic gps units like garmin car jobbies require a postcode.

 

Googlemaps does already do it as I mentioned earlier and a lot of people use that for vehicle navigation but I think the older standalone gps units are still pretty popular.

 

Personally if I was visiting a boat by car I would like to have the exact location in lat/long format so I could check road access and access to the boat otherwise it invites things like "oh ****, they are the other side of the cut theres no bridge and they don't want to untie the boat in case someone else nabs the mooring"

[Jess--]

it's partly because of things like the postcode being on the wrong side of the cut etc that the map displays a second marker showing where the centre of the nearest postcode is.

 

if anyone has a dataset containing lat/long for water points, pump-out, fuel, marinas, chandlers, VM's etc I could quite easily add the options so that it can display the nearest of them or display a rolling map showing everything within a few miles radius.

 

Note that this and the other project that I am working will free for all to use, will contain no advertising and will never earn me a penny (just in case anyone assumes this is some way of gaining a large dataset for commercial purposes)

[DHutch]

Very nice.

[NigelMoore]

I suspect that your exact location is nearer to the centre of a neighbouring postcode than the centre of your own . . .

 

I checked that possibility out, and if google maps has the flag planted in the centre of whatever postcode you enter, then your explanation would be correct – I would be closer to the centre of the neighbouring postcode than to my own, which lies on the other side of the river.

[john6767]

Worked well for me at home, and gave the correct postcode

[Jess--]

Would a better option be for me to make it display the nearest 3 postcodes in a list and numbered on the map so people can choose the most sensible one for their needs?

[bassplayer]

Would a better option be for me to make it display the nearest 3 postcodes in a list and numbered on the map so people can choose the most sensible one for their needs?

How about displaying where the nearest pub is...

[Machpoint005]

Some means of correlating a postcode and a bridge number would be very helpful as a means of joining land-based and canal-based geography together. Or does nobody navigate by bridge numbers these days?

[Jess--]

if anyone can supply a dataset (Lat / Long / Bridge No / Canal Name) I should be able to put together a tool that can get the postcode for any bridge

[Ssscrudddy]

It wouldn't work for me. It said no gps (but I do have gps & it's turned on).

Perhaps you could add functionality to let you move the place marker manually.

Samsung note 4 running lollipop & using Firefox.

I was interested to see my home location, because the official postcode is in completely the wrong place (nothing to do with your program)

[Timx]

Yesterday it worked , today it say's no GPS. .

[AftApeth]

It's not an app on the phone, the dataset is too big for a phone to be able to search it in any sort of reasonable time, the lookup is actually being done on a server I run here (4 x quad core cpu's), the functionality will be added into another project I am currently working on (which will have an app and web based interface), that project will be announced on here when it is complete and fully usable.Nigel and Graham, I suspect that your exact location is nearer to the centre of a neighbouring postcode than the centre of your own, since I have no way of knowing the exact boundaries of each postcode (only the centre point) there is no way of narrowing it down further at the present

Just discovered this thread. Great stuff. Curious to know about the other project.

[Hawthorn]

if anyone can supply a dataset (Lat / Long / Bridge No / Canal Name) I should be able to put together a tool that can get the postcode for any bridge

Try lat.52.87 long 0.65 bridge 120 grand Union Canal

[colinwilks]

if anyone can supply a dataset (Lat / Long / Bridge No / Canal Name) I should be able to put together a tool that can get the postcode for any bridge

The well known and very useful canal planning program http://canalplan.org.uk/ provides latitude and longitude if you export a route as a csv file. Whether he would share his dataset or not is another matter of course.

Edited September 18, 2015 by colinwilks

[blackrose]

Nice try but Street Map et-al already does this. In isolated areas, even in the South of England, a Post-Code can be centered a few miles from your desired destination. Much better to enter the Lat/Long coordinates. Text your location coordinates to your visitors and they should be able to copy/paste into their navigation software.

No streetmap doesn't do quite the same thing. This comes up with the nearest postcode, not coordinates. If someone is using a basic satnav they may not be able to use coordinates. Jess' method is far simpler.

 

If you're using a smartphone with a navigation app then you can just send your location to a friend, but not on a basic satnav.

Edited September 18, 2015 by blackrose

[Peter X]

Just for the hell of it I tried the OP's link from my PC at home, with results which puzzled me at first. It comes up with a satellite image of Hyde Park and a marker in the middle of it, and a box at the bottom of the page asking me to let the application track my location. I click to agree to that, and the scene shifts to somewhere in Streatham, a few miles and several postcode areas away from me. Then I noticed that the marker is next to a few office buildings. I suspect that what the app is seeing is the location of the Virgin Media cable server I'm connected to, sitting in one of those buildings and allocating one of a whole lot of dynamic IP addresses to me? That's as much as Richard Branson is saying about my location.

 

Of course the app is designed for use on a mobile; my use of it seems rather pointless.

[Arthur Marshall]

Works for me, RCR will find it useful when I breakdown next.

[StephenA]

Of course if you access the canalplan home page and allow it to access your location it will tell you the neatest canalplan place to your reported co-ordinates (which may or may NOT be where you are - for example if I use a wired connection to access canalplan from home it reports me as being in Bolton, but if I access it via wireless then it reports my nearest canalplan location as Coombe Hill basin)