[talk-au] Intro and Rural town tagging

David Murn davey at incanberra.com.au
Thu Jul 26 08:24:08 BST 2007


On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 16:30 +1000, David Murn wrote:

Hello all

I think Im among the last to introduce myself to the list, partly
because Im probably among the newest to join the group.  I live in South
Canberra (Tuggeranong area) and discovered this project through mentions
on our LUG list.

I have been using GPS on laptop navigation for many years, since early
2000 when we simply had oziexplorer and scans of countour maps which we
used when we used to go 4x4 driving in the bush.

I have a basic GPS unit (Fortuna GPSmart purchased from Supercheap Auto
for $99 during the post-xmas sales).  I have setup a mini PC in my car,
running Linux which is hooked up through wireless keyboard and in-dash
monitor.  The machine runs Linux and is hooked up through a power
inverter, so it is only on when I choose to power it up.

I was looking for suitable GPS street navigation software and found very
little that worked well when I was looking, so I decided to write my
own.  The app I have so far, is very simple, basically almost a
front-end to google maps and my GPS, so when Im driving I have a
moving-map display on my in-dash screen.  This was what got my interest
in OSM, being able to use OSM data integrated into my app, to work with
the existing code already in-place.

As yet I havent published my software anywhere, although a few people
have had a play with it and given positive responses.  The main problem
that I had with software previously was that it seemed to be very
US-centric, and didnt seem to scale well to Australia, hence why I wrote
my own which didnt have that limitation.

I travel often to Sydney and Melbourne, and Im thinking I could quite
easily take a detours on my trips to explore the towns along the way, to
build up some basic streets in the areas.  I have been working lately on
a way to generate OSM-compatible data from my application, so it will be
easier to upload to the system.

This project is of interest to me, as Im a big fan of free-source and
GPS software.  I was converted to Linux in 1995 and was part of the
local LUG for many years, even meeting Richard Stallman when he visited,
and have always believed as he taught, that freedom of data is a way of
life, without the restrictions of people who seek to restrict the
publics right to it.

Anyway, thats my 2 cents worth, no doubt Ill pop up on the list again
from time to time, but I havent been part of an active list project for
many years, so Ill probably find Ill be more of a lurker on the list
itself, but still active in the project.

David

> On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 14:28 +1000, Franc Carter wrote:
> > 
> > It would be nice to see the major roads to each town, so that it can
> > be used for finding a way there.
> > However I'm not sure how doable this is - are the yahoo maps good
> > enough outside the major cities
> > to get the general location of the roads ? 
> > 
> > cheers
> > 
> > On 7/25/07, Brent Easton <b.easton at exemail.com.au> wrote:
> >         Looks like I'm the only rural folk! What would you big city
> >         types like to see in the way of tagging in Rural towns? It
> >         would be nice to have a minimun standard to at least try and
> >         reach for each town - we could include this in the tagging
> >         scheme page on the wiki. 
> >         
> >         I'm trying to cover the following in my local area:
> >         
> >         - Petrol Stations
> >         - ATM's
> >         - Public Toilets
> >         - Boat Ramps
> >         - Parks
> >         - Playgrounds
> >         - Picnic Areas
> >         
> >         Cheers,
> >         Brent.
> >         ____________________________________________________________
> >         Brent Easton
> >         Analyst/Programmer
> >         University of Western Sydney
> >         Email: b.easton at uws.edu.au
> >         
> >         
> >         _______________________________________________ 
> >         Talk-au mailing list
> >         Talk-au at openstreetmap.org
> >         http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk-au
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Franc 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Talk-au mailing list
> > Talk-au at openstreetmap.org
> > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk-au





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