Mapping parties?

hopefully I would not be on the miluim…

I’m in.
I’ll come with two feet and a gps logger (no screen).

Ok with me, if weather condition is ok.
If its going to be very cloudy its not worth it driving around, as the GPS will run only with 80 % accuracy.

  • Can do only street mapping (with a car)
  • No streetnames or Hebrew POI

Maybe someone can ride with you and take photos of the street signs.

I could also make photos of the street signs if this helps.
As far as I know my phone saves images with GPS data.

That solves the problem completely. I’ll be happy to add street names later, using those pictures.

The problem is not solved. My phones flash is not heavy enough to make pics in the night :frowning:
So we need a camera with a normal flash. I have one, but no gps in camera.

Is the date fixed ???

We should organize it somehow before ?

Flash is not good enough to take a pic of a street sign from a moving car.
Another possibility is to record yourself talking and reading out loud the names from the signs. Many mobile phones have a voice recorder.
Note the time and name of the street, and that could be easily matched with the GPX.

Since you’ll be with a car, you could record just the streets.
Some angel could add street names later.
I’m sure many people who live in Ramat HaSharon could simply add names to existing nameless ways at any later date.

I would hope so.
I guess most beginnings are modest, and if this will prove to have a good outcome,
maybe more people would come to future parties?

I got some offline questions, and I’d like to add some links here.
This will not be a Mapping Party, as it’s not a whole weekend event.
This is going to be a Micro Mapping Party

I’ve compiled a list of POIs (schools, libraries, pharmacies, synagogues, cafes, restaurants, etc.) and their addresses, and will handout to mappers, so they could take note where they are.

Near the meeting place there’s a Cafe Cafe cafe (excuse the pun :slight_smile: ) with free Wi-Fi, so theoretically, if someone brings a laptop, we could upload the various GPX files and see all the added ways.

talkat.

So just to make sure, anyone’s coming tomorrow?
My answer is yes, unless I’m the only one…

I plan to be there.

talkat.

My sum up:

We were 3: Mr_Israel, talba, and myself.

Each was in charge of a different area.

Mr_Israel was in a car and he did most of Morasha.
talba was on foot and he did Alon.
I was on a bike and I did most of Kiryat Yearim.

We met after about 90 minutes, and uploaded the tracks to OSM.

Some of my notes:

*) Car is good for far away places, and main roads.
Car is not good for small roads and dead end living_streets.

*) Foot is not good for long streets.
Foot is probably good at “off road” (e.g. alleys, gardens, parks, etc.) and POIs and house numbers.

*) Bike is good at covering all non major streets.

*) A gps logger is ok, but probably not enough.
Need at least one way to mark POIs, or names (e.g. voice record, camera, screen, etc.)

*) At night mapping you lose a lot of the details, and miss many POIs.

*) 90 minutes is a good time frame. more than 2 hours is too long.

*) It was nice to see how our tracks filled the existing map.
It would be nice if it was easy to see if we can get the tracks from all the GPSs at the cafe afterwards.

*) I believe the meeting place was good, and we should choose similar places in the future:
There was free parking there, and a cafe with Wi-Fi.

Thank you Mr_Israel and talba, it was fun! :slight_smile:

talkat.

Yes, it was fun!

I agree that this was fun.

As the city was bigger than expected we didn’t made it,
BUT there have to be something left for the mappers that wasn’t there :slight_smile:

BTW: I forgot that I have another GPX track when driving to the parking lot (let me check)

I added this track and as I see the streetnames are already added by somebody else :slight_smile:

As I see there is some kind of problem with the new potlach if you look on the following map:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=32.135641425848&lon=34.8629531264305&zoom=18

There are two streets that I have replaced already 3 times but Mapnick does not render them correctly.
Osmanderer renders this street like expected. Any ideas ?

There is no problem with the OSM data.
You can check it using the Data Overlay.

I guess Mapnik either doesn’t have the latest data, or the area (it spans over several tiles in the highest resolution) wasn’t rendered after the data was last changed.

talkat.

First of all let me express my compliments! You done a good work.

About the notes from talkat:

you’re right: 1 and half hour is the prefect duration and a warm wifi cafe is the most pleasing place where to meet and edit.
The combination of people on cars, bikes and foot (or rollers…) is the best way to map large areas.
I found very usefull to use my compact camera to take pictures of all the poi I meet. If you sinc the camera time with the gps is quite easy to match the pictures to the gpx in JOSM. This way you stop very shortly at any poi and you will have a lot of information (streetsigns, amenities, post-boxes…) to put on the map.
Just a little advice: take the pictures at the lowest resolution possible, 1024x768 is ok most of the times, it save space on the card and josm manages it very easly while hi-res picture makes josm crazy.

When/Where the next party?
Maybe we could complete ramat hasharon.

If Monday evening is good for several people,
maybe we could do a habit of a monthly party, every 1st Monday in every month?

Maybe it’s better to start at 20:00 so there’s less trafic,
so meet at 19:30-19:45, and go at 20:00,
meeting again around 21:30.

talkat.

I support the idea of Mondays. And I also like to the idea of completing Ramat Hasharon in the next party.

I’ll be glad to join on days I can :slight_smile:
Meanwhile, I’m in miluim 'till Wednesday, and then studying, so just tell me when.

Yaad

Is Monday 7/Dec ok?

We’ll try to finish Ramat Hasharon.
Meet at 19:30-19:45, and go at 20:00, in the parking lot of Ramat HaSharon townhall,
and meeting again around 21:30 in the CafeCafe cafe around the corner.

talkat.