Today I found out that it’s actually a lot easier to contribute to Open Street Map than I thought. There are some serious gaps in house addresses in my area and I was painstakingly using the built in browser editor in the browser.
But, you can use a FOSS app (available on fdroid) called StreetComplete that makes it a lot easier to help out filling in the gaps in your local map data.
It’s really fun - kind of like Pokémon Go but you are actually making an impact 😁
I’m addicted to Streetcomplete. I’m 20.000+ edits in. I make about 100 with ease on my commute to work.
You are a hero
I installed it. Judging by the mass of blank info, I guess I’m the only person around here using it lol. 😳
I became nr 10 or so in my country just by adding nearly everything SC can ask in … a 10 block radius around my house.😁
I am never getting lost in my own neighborhood again!! (Me irl)
It needs an iOS app
iOS apps generally require a $100 yearly fee to post to the app store and if they submitted a waiver as a nonprofit apple would probably take years to accept it.
Also apple has a tendency to quietly kill and/or stall small apps that pose a threat to features they incorporate into their os from what I’ve heard.
Ugh yeah the small 4-person worker cooperative I’m part of has been trying to get Apple to let us enroll in their developer program for literally weeks now. Every time we clear some other nonsense requirement, there’s a new one right behind it; and we haven’t even gotten to the “pay $100 for the privilege of undergoing this process” part yet.
I can’t believe Apple ever managed to build an application ecosystem around their products when they are so unfriendly to developers.
What? If you’re going to pay for it you just sign up and pay… If you don’t have your company registered before attempting that that’s on you. And if you’re really desperate you could just use a personal developer account which you can set up in like 1 minute. Not sure how this is an issue for you.
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vote and comment here https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/discussions/5230
Check out Go Map!!, it’s also open source and has a similar feature to StreetComplete with its quests, at least from what I’ve heard about how StreetComplete works.
once you complete every quest on your commute, what do you do?
parallel streets ✅
and then?
You change your job to another location :)
Not parallel streets.
that turns the commute into a promenade
That’s exactly what happened. Fortunately I have 4 different offices and I can work from ‘home’ anywhere so sometimes I go work at a friend’s place instead of working at my place.
Cool! Never seen this before. Just downloaded and signed up.
Just did around 150 contributions, looks fun so I might complete more quests tomorrow
Is there an open street map based map app that shows live traffic? I’m trying to get my grandfather to switch to open source, and he says it’s the one feature he needs.
MagicEarth has got a live traffic layer for you.
Magic earth is great
Unfortunately, it’s not open source though.
Indeed it isn’t. But is privacy focused and sort of the best next thing.
If it is free as in beer, but not as in freedom, and is developed by a company, then what is their business model?
This is what they’ve put on their FAQ
Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.
No, unfortunately not. Getting traffic data would mean users volunteering to share location data, would need a centralized system to process everything, and would need a critical mass of users sharing said data to be anywhere near useful. The other possibility would be to pay for data from a provider like Google under an enterprise license that doesn’t require sharing data back, but I don’t know if that is even an option.
For now, I use both on my phone. I use OSM when biking or walking, I use Google Maps when driving, and I use my local transit web app when taking transit. I plan to switch my Pixel phone to GrapheneOS and to sandbox Google services that I still need. That being said, the ultimate way around needing traffic information is to try to live in places and in such a way that driving is not very necessary, but I know that is a huge ask for a lot of people.
EDIT: To be clear, MagicEarth does have live traffic as @[email protected] pointed out and is based on OSM, but is not itself open source.
time for some kind of anonymizing location data sharing service, peer to peer or federated protocol? that might be interesting, or sketchy, not sure which.
There is OpenTraffic but it seems unfinished and not implemented anywhere as far as i can tell. Edit: just to clarify, ive only heard from others that it’s unfinished, havent checked myself :)
That’s a super interesting project. For anyone else, the project overview has some great system level diagrams:
https://github.com/opentraffic/otv2-platform
It looks really interesting - but unfortunately it seems it’s abandoned? Last time it was updated was 7 years ago…
OSMand has a feature where it can process other info as tiles on top of the base openstreetmap data it downloads, so what I did was pulling satellite and live traffic data from google and make them work as tiles and it works perfect (although it doesnt take traffic data into consideration when routing, it only shows it as a picture on top of the map, doesn’t bother me).
I use Organic maps, and it’s easy to add and edit places with.
MapComplete is more about tagging.
kind of like Pokémon Go but you are actually making an impact
I caught the whole first generation + my favorite Celebi. How’s that for an impact?
But are they IV 100? Mine are all IV 96 or better.
I bow before the king! I think I had some shitty <20 IV there as well, but my goal since the beginning was to catch the ones I’ve been watching in the anime as a kid, didn’t much care about other generations (well, I remember a little bit of gen 2 from my youth as well).
There is a “road” near my house in OSM that does not exist and OSM is always trying to route me though it, which is very annoying. Is there any way to mark them for removal? StreetComplete doesn’t seem to have that capability.
You can always long press on a problematic place and leave a freeform note. A more experienced mapper can then fix the issue.
I have a similar problem. Two entrances to my building got their numbers reversed.
If anybody knows if the app can fix it, i’l get it and make an account.
It should be possible using the address overlay in the app. Otherwise you could leave a note or use the web based editor on the OSM homepage.
You could use the editor on the website which although messy, would work fine for removing a road on mobile. Or you can use an app like Vespucci which is more advanced, but it also has a bit more of a learning curve. Or you can create a note like others have recommended but depending on the activity in the area might not be seen for a while.
Wow you’re right! I didn’t know they have an online editor. I thought the app is the only way to submit changes. I’m able to delete the section of the road that don’t actually exist in my area, let’s see if the changes will be accepted. Thanks!
Yep, StreetComplete is one of the many editors for OpenStreetMap! Just to name a few:
Mobile (Android & iOS Mixed):
- Vespucci.
- EveryDoor
- Go Map!!
Desktop:
- iD (the online editor on the website)
- RapiD
- JOSM
- Level0
And many more! There’s a list on the OpenStreetMap wiki.
Dude, this is fucking sweet.
Solid recommendation! “Contribute missing data” sounds like a chore, but this app is super fun
I didn´t realize editing OSM is so easy. I just logged in, did a short tutorial and fixed one intersection where a week ago the app told to do an illegal turn. Awesome!
I’ve was doing the same until yesterday, then I found StreetComplete. Since then, it’s so much easier to enter addresses. So much easier to add addresses while out walking than to carry a notepad or memorize numbers.
This is my pastime whenever I don’t have anything to do online. It’s fun to point something on OSM and remembering the establishments you’ve walkthrough.
StreetComplete is intended for local, on-the-ground surveying only. Editing remotely is not supported, and will result in problems.
(I’m not sure whether you’re editing remotely vs reminiscing during in-person visits, phrasing is slightly ambiguous.)
I don’t really know or use Open Street Map, so I wonder:
Can everyone just manipulate the map data? Is there some sort of control mechanism or is it easy to incorporate fake data?
I’m asking because this seems to be a really fallible concept, where people with malicious intents would have an easy way to disturb Open Street Map.
Yes, but similar to Wikipedia (where the same holds true) the forces fo good and honest seem to prevail.
I recently contributed a business change and got a message a few hours later that I had made a mistake and a small explanation on how to fix it.
This probably depends on the area, but at least changes in my area seem to be monitored by good people.
Very glad I saw this. I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with Google Maps. Their map in my area is full of annoying errors, such as routing you through roads that haven’t existed for a decade, or along private roads that are not open to the public. And no matter how many times I report them, nothing ever gets fixed. Going to give OSM a try and hopefully make the switch for good. Already saw that the map in my area is in much better shape than Google’s.
Personally I think a great combo is mapping stuff out with the phone where you can survey the place and have GPS, and then sending those changes to a computer to polish in JOSM if needed (e.g. when you’re building new ways and want to make their geometry nicer) which is a lot more powerful editor and more comfortable than doing it on a touchscreen.
But whichever editor you prefer, I concur that mapping is very fun and also useful. :)
(And a lot more straight forward than trying to make a change in Apple or especially Google Maps…)
