[OSM-talk] Nokia Mobile Phone - GPS

[Kai Krueger]

Hi Peter,

as Chris has mentioned, there are quite a few apps by now that support 
OSM on the mobile phone. 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software/Mobilephones gives a good 
list of these and what feature each one supports.

As far as I know, there are less on the other hand that support editing, 
so having new developers helping out in that area would be great.

I have started adding some editing features to GpsMid, which as a J2Me 
app runs by now on quite a large collection of phones including the 6220 
classic. I am hoping to add more in the future but it would be great if 
other people would join in too and we would be happy about any patches.

Currently GpsMid supports editing tags of ways only. It is however 
possible to select a way, then download the raw XML for that way and 
add, delete and change tags of that way and reupload to the OSM 
database. So for previously mapped areas, a certain amount of 
maintenance in the field is already possible. So for example one could 
add name tags, or set the one way flag or add maxspeed tags. GpsMid also 
allows to directly upload GPX traces from the phone without having to 
copy them over to your PC.

Not that much in the form of editing yet, but I have found it a useful 
start and I am hoping to at least extend this support soon to handle 
POIs. It would also be nice, if this POI editing would work offline too 
for those that don't have affordable internet on the phone (still the 
majority?). More advanced editing feature such as relations and in 
particular geometry of ways, is probably not feasible at the moment due 
to the UI limitations of the tiny screen and the missing pointer device 
that GpsMid is designed towards, but who knows what people can come up with.

So in case anyone wants to help out extending the editing support (or 
any other feature) of GpsMid, I would be happy to help people out with 
getting started on the code. The source code is freely available (GPLv2) 
at sourceforge ( http://gpsmid.sourceforge.net/ )

I would suspect that with the map becoming more and more complete in 
many areas, the way of contributing to OSM will shift from proper 
mapping sessions to noticing a missing feature while on the way to X, 
which probably needs some new tools for the casual mapping.

Kai



Peter Childs wrote:
> I've just got a new Nokia 6220 Classic Mobile Phone. Its got a built
> in GPS which means I've been able to get out and get a bit more
> mapping done.... (Since I did not have a GPS this has been difficult)
> 
> I've got the Sport Tracker software installed, which seams to be
> relatively good at getting tracks, But the Maps on the Nokia by
> default are hmm expensive and obviously Not OSM.
> 
> Since I'm a software developer.... I'm speculating how easy it would
> be to write something in Java ME, C++ or Python for the phone, and
> 
> a> Display OSM Maps, either a> From Raw OSM data (probably not the
> whole thing due to space), or from Tiles pre-downloaded, or possibly
> fetched as needed in the field using 3G..
> 
> b> Field Tag, so you can stand next to the feature and tag it, or
> stand at one end of the road start way, walk to other end way and tag,
> then either direct upload as you go or clean up (removing excessive
> point in ways for example) and upload once you get home.
> 
> c> Route and anything else one can dream of doing with Maps.
> 
> I'm thinking such a piece of software would be relatively platform
> independent, and therefore usefully to anyone with a mobile or PDA
> that can run Java ME, (Which I think but I'm not sure should be most
> 3rd Generation Mobiles not just S60s)
> 
> Never having developed Mobile Apps before, it just looks like an
> interesting idea, and this is more of a proof of concept than anything
> else at this stage.
> 
> Peter.
> PS Does anything more exist that will run on the phone, The Wiki does
> not seam to say so currently. I might add to the wiki....
> 
>