Cross post from the opengeodata.org blog post comment:
(http://opengeodata.org/project-of-the-week-turn-restrictions)

Why I don't tag turn restrictions in osm as often as I would like to: because they don't stay in memory. I experience them while driving, where I can't take notes. I don't remember them later when editing and there are cumbersome to note when on foot.

So here is my question: are there any tools to edit them live on the road on my android phone? Most editor for android are still basic and don't support relations. But I would actually go for a dedicated turn-restrictions-only editor which therefore is fast and very easy to use.

Comments and recommendations welcome!

Last time I went for a ride on my bike (that's the loud one, not the one with pedals) although I know the aera quite well I let my eTrex Legend do some routing.

I wanted to take some arbitrary scenic route, so I switched the 'avoid highways' (don't know if it is translated that way by garmin) option on in my routing settings.

Guess where it tries to direct me? Straight to the nearest Autobahn.

So does anybody know if this is
a) a mapping failure
b) something not yet possible with mkgmap
c) a bug in mkgmap
d) a bug in computerteddys map
c) a bug in garmins routing soft-/firmware

?

I know there are other places to ask this and get a more technical answer, but I just wanted to check for similar experiences first.

Owning an eTrex Legend HCx myself, I nevertheless recommented a Dakota 20 to a friend in search for a GPSd for osm and geocaching.

Can anyone confirm that the Dakota 20 works well with the standard downloadable osm maps for garmin (like the ones from Computerteddy or the AllInOne Garmin Map)?

I would also be happy about any other comments regarding the use of the Dakota 20.
Whats the real uptime on one battery charge for example?

Thanks anyway

Chaos

I've just returned from my trip to the birth country of OSM, the UK.

Lets first remark that my OSM powered eTrex guided me and my rental car along the way for the whole trip. I found every POI (pre-extracted from google) I wanted to go in decent time.

But I was not as impressed by the quality of the map as I anticipated to be.

Unlike my last trip to Denmark, where most minor roads were just missing in the area I visited, it wasn't missing roads in the UK.
While the roads were there, there lacked a lot of information vital to car routing (turn restrictions, oneway streets, beeing a dual carriageway or not) and POIs (Petrol Stations, Supermakets, ATM machines).

I won't hold this against osm. It's clear that osm always has insufficiencies and needs time to get better (and it certainly will).

I just start wondering why it is so much better in other areas? I had no problems in New Zealand, as well as in Scotland and here at home in Germany?
It can't be imports of official data: while NZ and SCO has them, GER has not and ENG has them too. It can't be because of the rural areas I normally travel to. SCO and NZ are just as rural as ENG (I went to Cornwall) and even the area around my hometown in GER is. So it must be mappers. But I suppouse there are more mappers in the UK than here in GER. And they started earlier. And what I get through the website is they are even better organised (a lot more mapping parties). Even the yahoo images are far better in the UK than in GER, where they can be only used as indicators for landuse or waterways. It leaves me puzzled.

… See full entry

Recently I reviewed my google earth models (or better: 3D warehouse models) and checked on the license that is bound to them.
My conclusion: google and anyone wo gets a license from google may do anything with may models, but I'm not allowed to use (= create derivative works and redistribute) other models than those I created myself.

While I have no problem with my models being used by others (even commercial), I have a problem with not giving everyone the same amount of fair access. I would really like to publish them under CC_by_SA or even Public Domain. I can actually do that, as the license granted to google is 'non-exclusive', I just can't do it in googles warehouse.

Wouldn't it be nice to publish them (at least geo-referenced models of real world buildings) through openstreetmap? Even if we don't display them yet, it would be a great place of storing them and making them available to everyone.

There are some slight discussions (mostly outdated) about that in the wiki, but I haven't found any definitive answer.
Is there somebody with insight into the server hard- and software who could tell if it's even possible to store 3D (Collada?) models on them? Maybe just 3D data without textures?

Or does someone know a wiki page or blog entry that deals with that matter?

Just returning from a short trip to danmark, guided by my reliable eTrex and a OSM map.

While I finally found my destination, I had to rely on coordinates extracted from google maps images. The level of detail of the OSM maps was rather bad. While there are lot of house numbers (an import?), there are no streets beside the primary and maybe secondary ones.

The lack of detail puzzels me a bit, as this is a popular holiday region and one would assume that at least some mappers are among the holiday makers too.

While I will off course add the tracks I recorded, much more work is needed in this region.

JOSM commit to new Mapnik render image on main site -> 2min. (I just didn't look earlier)

Wow

Letztens (das heißt im Verlauf der letzten 2 Monate) konnte ich zum ersten mal den Service von walking-papers testen. Hier eine kleine Beschreibung, die hoffentlich zu Nachahmern führt auch wenn sie in meiner Version vielleicht etwas abschreckend klingt.

1. Ausdrucken

Das Ausdrucken der Karte war nicht ganz einfach. Mir fehlte eine wichtige Zutat: der Drucker.
Nach dem Auswählen des Kartenabschnitts habe ich mir also das .pdf gespeichert und erstmal Vollbild auf einem Netbook anzeigen lassen. Dessen Display hat zufälligerweise die Breite eines DIN-A4 Blattes und ist von hinten beleuchtet. Somit ließ sich die Karte einfach abpausen (mit 2mal scrollen zwischendurch).

2. Neue Sachen Einzeichen

Ich habe mir einen kleinen Abschnitt des Zentrums von Meiningen herausgesucht um Häuserformen zu skizzieren und Namen von Geschäften aufzuschreiben. Letzteres klappte ohne Probleme. Bei den Häuserformen bemerkt man schnell, das man nur mit der Frontalansicht der Häuser nicht besonders weit kommt.

3. Einscannen

Die Bleistiftskizze zu scannen war einfach, jedoch enthielt sie keinen QR-Code (den hab ich nicht abgezeichnet.) Also habe ich die Bleistiftzeichnung erst einmal in Gimp über das Original-PDF gelegt und passend entzerrt. Das Ergebnis auf der Webseite dann hochgeladen und mittels JOSM Plugin erfolgreich wieder importiert.

4. Zur Karte hinzufügen

Das Eintragen der Informationen via JOSM war genau so kompliziert wie immer. Die Häuserformen wurden mangels Informationen über die Innenhöfe als Rechtecke aproximiert. Für einige Geschäfte war auch die Tag-Suche nicht einfach. Leider habe ich im Wiki keine best practise Beschreibung für Hausnummern bei einem Haus mit mehreren Eingängen gefunden. Ich habe daher die Hausnummern nicht an die Gebäudeform sondern an extra nodes getaggt. Leider sieht das im Renderer blöd aus.

… See full entry

Has anyone ever succeded in combining two garmin compatible gmapsupp.img maps into one, so the two can be selected as layers on the divice without the need of a PC to change/rename files on the SD card?

I like to use the raumbezug OSM map for Garmin for in car routing, but also the hiking maps for, well, hiking. It would be really cool (and should be technically possible) to change between the two on the fly.

So can anyone help? How to combine both into one gmapsupp.img?

On my last dairy entry about Protecting personal information in POIs I got great response.

The question was if to tag amenities like doctors with their full name if written on a sign outside. (The consensus was: yes)

But another question arised: What businesses to tag anyway?
I mean people tag manhole covers and street lamps so the obvious answer would be: all of them.

But really, what makes sense? OSM doesn't need to be a business register. It would be impossible to keep up to date anyway. Businesses with street offices is a reasonable constraint. Maybe in addition to those company buildings which are big landmarks or points of orientation.

But what about lawyers, engineers, agents etc. who don't normally have offices where the normal customer may walk in without an appointment. They would clutter the map in big cities with multi-story office buildings. But a map user would quite probably want to search for it with his in-car navigation device if he actually has an apointment, wouldn't he?

So is this a case of 'don't map for the renderer'? What would be legitimate sources of information, if signs on buildings are not present?

So please give me your opinion on this. I would be really happy if I could get as much response as from my last entry. Thanks in advance...

While mapping stores, shopes and other amenities in the city I came up with some question I would like to ask all of you:

What's your opinion on making personal information public by including them in poi data agains the will (or at least without knowlege of) their owners?

An example would be the full name of a dentist or doctor. Full name and address are without a doubt personal informations I wouldn't want to be made public without my knowledge.

But doctors are points of very much interest to a user auf the map. And they can't be (other than most shops) referenced without the name of the person itself.

This of course is a problem for any kind of amenity which name happens to include the full name of the owner.

Again the question: Whats your opinion? Map it cause they operate a business which they choose to do under their own name and which is adverticed on the building anyway. Or protect the personal information and map as nameless amenity?

I'm planing to do a longer holiday abroad and will take my GPS and
openstreetmap with me.

I will probably find a lot of new things to map, but I won't have an
internet connection at hand.
Does anybody have some advice on how to keep track of things to add?

I normally add points with notes directly on my GPS (eTrex), but that's
very time consuming, I can't do it while driving
and I only can add very short notes. I usually get frustrated with the
on-screen keyboard within 1 or 2 days and subsequently stop taking
notes.

Only mark numbered points would be faster and easier, but I would have to
keep notes on another medium (paper notebook, netbook).
Merging these two data heaps will be time consuming afterwards.

As I have a netbook with me which could run JOSM, I could edit live or at
least at the end of each day. This would keep the frustration level low.
But I don't know if I can savely merge the data back into the osm data on ther servers.

Does anybody have some advice? Or some info on how you map on holidays?

regards,

Chaos

I was just putting this on the discussion page for the restriction relation.
Thought mentioning it in the blog might produce even more answers:

== Progress ? ==

So is there any further progress here? The proposal is old, it sneaked into an established state by now. As far as I understand there is no voting/approval process for restrictions, so these things go merely unnoticed.
By now the restrictions are widely used and understood by renderers, format converters (Garmin) and routing tools.
Nevertheless turning restrictions are still one of the things most annoying when missing (wrong in-car routing) and a pain in the a** if you have to edit them. So they are missing in a lot of places, as they seem to be to complicated (annoying?) to most mappers. The proposed changes could have brought a bit of ease, but as there is no official approval process, they were never voted on or anything (and they are not noticed now cause they only reside somewhere in the middle of the english discussion page).

As I am no veteran here, I would like to make a simple question: Do you (all the osm activists and full time mappers) think it is still possible to change anything about this relation? Or are these to widely used by now?
Do you think a new 'proposal' would be more of use then new discussion about changing the old one? Or do you even think all is fine with the turn restrictions and all problems should be solved in the editing tools?
I was writing a long summary of problems and possible solution here, but momentarily I think it might be futile and a waste of time. Do you think otherwise?

I edited some ways around an hour ago, and they are already visible in the osmarender map.
Wow, that's fast. How did they do that?

Is there already a mechanism in place, which makes render request out of changesets?

Yeah, the new history tab is cool. I can see edits in my neighbourhood
and find people editing the same places.

But listing the edits is not quite of use by now.

All information you get is node/way/relation number and a bounding box. Which technically may be all you need, but for a human this data is useless. Mostly the bounding box is the only clue about what the person was edditing.

Would it be possible to highlight all eddited nodes/ways in the mini-map on the changeset page? To see what the edit was all about? Or, 'cause this is easier to implement, display the value of the name tag along with the node/way number (if present)?

This would really push this feature a lot.

I improved my mapping equipment quite a bit by now.

First off I'm maping by bike now. And I don't meen the ones with the pedals.
I build myself a mount for my GPS device which I can see and use while driving.
The GPS tracks come off fine.

I mapped some small roads in Steinbach, put the whole village of Langenhain on the map (there wasn' even a place node) and added about a third of all residential roads in Waltershausen.

This all went fine. But I still lack a method of recording names and details. I have to either buy a action cam to mount on my helmet (which is nice for snowboarding too, but looks a bit funny out on the streets)
or use a voice recorder. The downpoint of the voice recorder would be that it is of no further use for me except osm mapping and is not quite inexpensive if you need a digital one with an external mic.

Has anyone experience in mapping by motorbike?

Additionally I set up a wiki page for mapping my district (osm.wiki/Landkreis_Gotha).
It's not quite ready yet, as I so far only copied the template and filled in the towns and villages. I still need to look into the existing details and set the status accordingly.

I also found osm mapper (www.itoworld.com), a nice tool to create rss feeds for special regions, tags or users.

I hope I can find help from local mappers to add more details to the maps.

for the fast answers I get here just by posting diary entrys.

I got some answers within minutes by just barely hinting that I've got a problem.
What a wonderfull community.

Btw: Mapped two incoming and outgoing streets in the village of Steinbach in the forrests of Thuringia, Germany, where only a single node marked the village so far. No street names though.

Also mapped some footways in a park in Winterstein some kms north.

Edited this some 8h ago, allready visible in osmarender. wow

Just as a reminder to myself

1. get the date from OSM
curl -L "http://www.informationfreeway.org/api/
0.5/map?bbox=10.427293,50.856042,10.551697,50.927502" -o data.osm

The numbers beeing lower left and upper right corner

2. split up the file in case it is to big (the one I used isn't, but the programm generates a nice template option file for mkgmap too)

java -Xmx1000m -jar splitter.jar data.osm

3. process with mkgmap to produce .img file (and with this options an gmapsupp.img for USB upload to the Garmin)

java -Xmx512M -jar mkgmap.jar --latin1 -c template.args --gmapsupp

curl, splitter and mkgmap are linked somewhere in the wiki and are availiable for windows

Next: routing support (need to convert osm file into polish format, but didn't find a tool to do this)

cheers

After my first mapping tour with more than just one street, I encountered some problems while adding the data to OSM.

Just tracing the gpx track in JOSM was pretty easy and worked fine and very intuitive.

The headache started while searching through the wiki to find the most appropriate tags to describe the information gathered. There are a lot of inconsistencies between the language versions (english and german in my case) between sites (Map_Features und HowTo_Map_A) and between the main page and the stuff written in the discussion page.

What worries me most is, that I was not searching for some misterious, golden paved woodway only for green firetrucks turning left, but instead for some simple streets in a small german village.

What I'm missing is a page similiar to the HowTo_Map_A page, which already is a great improvement to the Map_Features page, but with some more detailed description on the mapping and tagging process itself. What to look for in the field? How to distinguish between some features? What's best practise for those everyday rural streets?

Some concrete Problems:

- How to distinguis between tertiary and unclassified roads (in germany)?
- How to correctly tag the physical features of a road? tracktype/surface/smootheness?
- Is tracktype=* allowed for highway=residential, or only for highway=track?
- If a road touches a parking area (I can drive from the road onto the parking area at any point) can the way be the boarder of the parking area and the road at the same time?
- Does the noexit=yes tag belong to the last node of a way, or to the whole way?

I just have to say again, that I found more than one solution to these problems on the wiki pages. They are mostly mutual exclusive.

It's not in the spirit of OSM to tell people HOW to map and tag. Just to give them a way of sharing there data, I know. But a little more guidance would be very much appreciated. At least by me.

Mein erster Versuch, mehr als nur eine Strasse zu korrigieren.

Das Oertchen Winterstein im thueringer Wald bestand bisher nur aus der durchgehenden Landstrasse und einem Ortsmittelpunkt. Jetzt sind so etwa 85% der Ortsstrassen vorhanden,

Jeweils mit Name und Bodenbeschaffenheit. Aufgrund der Witterung (Neuschnee), allzu misstrauischen Anwohnern und meiner Faulheit (ich war im PKW unterwegs) fehlen noch ein paar Strassen. Ensbesondere einige winzige Sackgassen, die nur Zufahrt zu einigen Haeusern sind.

Wird bei besserer Witterung nachgeholt. Versprochen.

Es bleibt uebrig die Frage, wie man Buswendeschleifen tagged....