OpenStreetMap
I want to share my experience since October 2008 on how to make the better job.
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At first, I had a USB GPS unit connected to a laptop and I was travelling mainly by bicycle. The backpack was a little heavy...
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Then, I thought invest a little in good material wouldn't be bad. I bought an i-Blue 747 pocket standalone gps recorder, with 2 MB internal memory, and which could work as logger or navigation mode (Bluetooth).
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It's easy to use, full customisable, has an extra long battery life (you can use it an entire week if you want!). It's very thin and light. The packaging is excellent, it comes with a USB cable, a driver-CD, a software, a car jack (Zigarettenanzünder/allume-cigares) charger. What would you ask more?
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About how to travel, let's begin with nothing, this means: on foot. In fact, I never tried it a lot, because I think it's good only for city mapping.
Most people survey roads, but only some persons take time to look at services, buildings, crossings, footways. The best way to survey this kind of things is on foot. You can add a camera and a sheet of paper in your backpack to help you.
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If you want to survey residential streets in a city, and also some important POI like bus stops, post boxes, or just because you like "free air", the bicycle is your friend. The big advantage is that you can easily stop at any place, and that you have enough time to see things, because you're less focused on traffic. It's perfect to log paths in the forest for example. You can do it faster than on foot, and it's fun!
The camera is another good friend here. Don't use any reflex or bridge. Compact camera is a lot more useful. Throw it in your pocket. Take it when you need it, Point and Shoot. That's it.
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Without talking about motorcycle and animals (horses), the last way I see is by car.
I can already see some remarks about it: fuel consumption, cost, etc.
It's also a very bad solution to map anything in a city. Not so useful with cycleways, footways, ...
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Of course you can make all what I'll say by bicycle, but it will take a lot more time. If you live in the countryside (like me), and you want to map tertiary/unclassified roads, roads climbing up to mountains peaks, etc. the old good car appears to be perfect for this.
However there are some problems: you can't stop, you loose concentration on traffic (if there is any ;-) ), you CAN'T do anything with your hands. They've to jump either on the steering wheel, or on the gear lever. Even driving an automatic you can't use a camera properly.
Another problem is that it's quite impossible to notice everything. If bus stops are easy to see, post boxes, telephone cabins, benches, restaurants, crossings and all this kind of things are too small and too usual to be noticed.
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The BEST FRIEND here is a dictaphone. I'm using the corresponding function on my mobile phone and it works very good. You can hold the steering wheel, you don't have to bother with devices because it requires no manipulation. As soon as you see something you can say it and then use the recording with JOSM.
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I think the best solution is a mix of the three. Car for fast and long roads, bicycle for streets in the city and important POI. Foot for footways, and all details we usually don't get by car.
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Nice mapping!
Discussion
Comment from arturormk on 7 April 2009 at 14:50
As a GPS for surveying we've found the Geonaute Keymaze 500 from Decathlon to be unbeatable. In fact, we carry two of them to get better definition.
For on-foot surveying, and to some extent for in-car, we use a Nikon D40 camera. It's light and takes pictures VERY fast (no need to stop, focus, snap, wait for picture to save, you just point and shoot while you walk). Once home, we use the gpscorrelate program to geotag the photos.
For in-car surveying we've had some limited success recording video with a Canon IXUS 80IS camera. Recording is high quality at about 100 Mbytes/minute, so you can only record about 80 minutes in an 8 Gb memory card, but with good daylight lighting you can read the passing roadsigns and record voice comments.
Comment from 42429 on 7 April 2009 at 20:03
After having collected some tracks, I would also like to share my experience:
i-Blue 747 is a cheap and good GPS receiver which can be carried in a rucksack.
Cycling creates the best tracks because you are sitting smoothly on the saddle. If you don't want to get tired by cycling up to the hill, a scooter would probably create the same track quality.
Walking creates less good tracks because every time you turn around, the GPS receiver jumps 20 meters away.
Within a bus, the GPS tracks are usually 20 metres away from the real site. However, there might be some places (e.g. driver's seat) where the signal is better.
Driving a car produces better results on WIDE roads, but you might get stuck in a NARROW road when two tractors want to pass your car. I have sometimes mapped narrow streets where I was able to pass ONLY with a bicycle.
Yours, FK270673
Comment from POHB on 8 April 2009 at 15:13
> i-Blue 747 is a cheap and good GPS receiver which can be carried in a rucksack.
> every time you turn around, the GPS receiver jumps 20 meters away.
and you still reckon it is a good receiver ?
Comment from 42429 on 8 April 2009 at 20:59
Track quality is far more depending on personal behavior than on technical devices. In narrow city streets, you get the best tracks when walking on the middle of the road. If a car forces you to jump onto the sidewalk, your whole track becomes weird. Are there any receivers who recognize such moves? Is there any receiver who logs all your moves, e.g. when playing soccer? If you know such a receiver, please let me know.
Yours, FK270673