I am a new participant in the OSM project. The idea appeals to me a lot, and I am wondering what is the best way to contribute.
Are there any everyday activities (not a mapping party of 1) that are helpful?
More importantly, what are the best practices for such activities?
I will appreciate general answers to these questions, as well as detailed tips relevant to my equipment and time I can devote to the project.
I have a Mio P350 device, installed OSMTracker on it. A few issues immediately came up:
What is the easiest way to add tiles to the tracker, so I can see a map on it? No WiFi connectivity on my P350…
Does it help if I just upload my everyday tracks, even if I keep driving through the same streets?
Which editor do you recommend using to add details on top of my tracks?
Anything else to bring me up to speed on this project as a whole?
There isn’t an easy way to add offline-tiles to OSMtracker. In the wiki page you can find JtileDownloader that should download all the tiles you need, but i never succeded to use it…
your tracks are usefull even if you drive the same way all the days
As main editor i use JOSM, it’s a bit hard to start but it’s far better then others (IMHO).
sometimes i move to Potlach but just if i need to add just a couple of pois
I my experience, the easyest way to collect information is to sincronize a compact camera to the gps time and to take photo of everything you consider interesting. At home you can sincronize your photos to the gpx track and so you have all the information in the right spot of the map.
I’m living in Netanya, if you are near and you want to meet just tell me. ('till april 12th i’m in Italy)
Nice to have a new poster here as it got quite around OSM in Israel in last month
As Edom said its the best to use OSMtracker in combination of Jtitle Downloader to work with your Mio.
You can just download all titles in your areas in the zoom you need and than just start driving or walking around and record your routes.
Just make sure to activate your recording of your track just after several minutes your device has a GPS fix (signal). If you start recording right after you got your signal working its probably not useful and your gps lines will move across the screen
I personally just use the OSM internal Potlach for editing. Its enough for my needs and not as complicated as Josm.
I also agree with Edom that all tracks will help to improve the map. No matter if you drive the same way 100 times.
I personally didn’t like the work with the camera. It was taking to much time in compare of just having special tags in OSMTracker.
Very useful are tags like “street crossing left” or “street crossing right” or “street crossing both sides” and “red light”
its easy to add with just one click and very useful for the later editing.
Bust stops and car parking are also very useful for the editing.
Can you be more specific about JTitle? I was not able to make it work properly.
I actually found myself correcting a few ways according to my GPS signal - sharper curves, etc. Will see if that was just a glitch of the GPS accuracy, or a needed fix.
What happens to the tracks I upload? I draw roads along them, but how else are they useful?
I currently live in Givat Shmuel, and will be moving to Modi’in in a few months. Modi’in is hardly mapped at all, so I will have some work to do there. Once settled, I’ll give a shot at arranging a mapping party there.
last time I visited this board I wrote you a how to for Jdownloader. But it seems that I didn’t submit it.
But I saw that you have managed to get it working. (http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=7132)
If you upload tracks they are visible in openstreetmaps. If you decide that this track if not against your privacy you should make this track fully visible for other users : Identifiable (shown in trace list and as identifiable, ordered points with timestamps).
Just don’t use it for the way to your second girlfriend. It would be able to find out when you drove this way
Specially if you look at the gps lines on the highway, you will see that one or two lines are not exact enough. If you have there 20 lines it showing you very detailed the size of this way. Then you can place the road in the middle and everybody is happy.
