[Talk-GB] Quarterly Project "All things delivery-related" - an update

Craig Wallace craigw84 at fastmail.fm
Wed May 6 20:28:21 UTC 2015


On 2015-05-06 19:47, Rob Nickerson wrote:
> That's interesting. Have just tried the app out. It gives you the
> postboxes in OpenStreetMap but not the ones that are missing (as shown
> by blue markers on Robert's comparison tool:
> http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/postboxes/
>
> I really do feel like we are missing a trick here. As the map becomes
> more and more "complete" it becomes harder and harder to find something
> to map (example: I spend more time trying to find missing footpaths that
> I can map on a circular walk now than 2-3 years ago).
>
> An app that helps people find what's missing whilst out surveying could
> really help. I only wish I had the skills and time to do this.

The Post Hoc map has the option of exporting a GPX file. That will 
include any missing boxes, or boxes with missing refs etc.
So you could download that GPX, then load it onto a Garmin, or on a 
phone app etc. For Android, you could try OSMAnd, it can load GPX files. 
Or maybe Maps.Me, if you convert it to a KML file.

Then you can go out and survey them. Note the Royal Mail locations can 
be very inaccurate, some of them are on completely the wrong street, or 
hundreds of metres away. So it can be difficult to actually find the 
postbox. And there are a few on the Royal Mail list that have now been 
removed, or where the number on the box doesn't match the list.

Craig



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