Mapillary for Android was updated and I’ve been meaning to write about it here.

Blog entry by developer of the app

The app now has a big green hot-button, which is very practical to go into picture making mode quickly.

The app now allows automatic shooting of pictures every 2 seconds even when standing still (or walking/cycling, the intended usage). The way to make it pause is to point it downwards. It’s not perfect at detecting this though, so I end up with quite a few pictures of my feet… It also stops shooting when you shake the phone too much. Maybe I should try that instead to pause it :-)

Oh, it’s possible to pause manually as well, of course, but that has the side effect of starting a new sequence. Sometimes that’s what you want, but not always.

It’s possible to let the app upload as soon as it’s in range of Wifi. That’s practical, but I disabled that option in the mean time. I prefer to browse through my pictures on the larger screen of the portable, as it allows to weed out the bad ones more easily. The way to review pictures on the phone was improved, but it still feels like a lot a lot of finger movement and my phone doesn’t seem to understand the ‘long click’ very well. I also lose track of which sequences I already reviewed and how far into them I had gotten, before having to context switch to irl.

Using the PC also has the advantage of the keyboard. On top of that, I can work with the pictures in the usual way of working with images in JOSM. Just load whatever GPX file, then use right mouse button on its name in the layer list to load pictures from the Mapillary folder on your phone’s memory card. This works, because they are already geotagged. I do that while it’s connected over the USB cable.

The advantage is that it’s possible to review the pictures once more and you don’t have to wait for the pictures to be processed.

After all that reviewing, I then release the pictures to Mapillary by enabling wifi and going into review mode.

Since I’m “multimodal”, walking quite often, but also on the bicycle, I needed a way to secure the smartphone. I’m glad I finally found a use for 2 of those lanyards and a rubberband bracelet I’ve been receiving at conferences. I really should make a picture of that ‘construct’.

The rubberband around the middle gets in the way when typing, so the next phone I get should come with a proper silicone protection jacket around it.

My findings are that pictures taken while cycling, while holding the phone in one hand, can be OK, but only with enough sunlight coming from behind. With the sun in front the pictures become dark and with insufficient light the shutter remains open longer, resulting in unsharp pictures.

The same is true to a lesser extent while walking. The sharpest pictures are those taken when standing still.

I’m not sure it they’re very happy at Mapillary with my pictures, as I’m turning around a lot and focusing on those details that matter for adding details to Openstreetmap. I don’t like switching back and forth to Panorama mode though. That new autoshooting walking mode is so convenient!

I’m sure glad Mapillary is around now, as it becomes possible to add context to the pictures of those details I’m interested in, by also making pictures of the surroundings and how one got there. At the end of the day, that’s a lot of pictures though… but it opens possibilities we didn’t have before. Like enabling other people to add the details to OSM that happen to be important to them.