I’m a long time user of OSM but I haven’t contributed yet. I am very interested in the program and I want to use it well. I really like it a lot but sometimes there are features I don’t really know how to use and that’s why I’m here !
I am working for a public transport company and we need to track bikes from a bike sharing system. These are ebikes spread out in the city. I would like to record these bikes locations along with the trace i’ll be doing while walking in the city and searching for the bikes using the bike app. Basically I need to create points of interests / waypoints in which I have to include some informations like the bike number and the battery level. Of course using OSM I can also get the exact GPS location for each bike.
Today I made a test, creating a GPX file and creating some random POI while walking in the neighborhood. The thing is, it seems tricky to include both the trace (GPX) and the POI together. I would like to have a file including both things, I think there must be a way but I’m not sure how exactly.
If anyone has a clue on how to do it easily that would be greatly appreciated. I would just like to walk, see a bike, register easily the bike informations and end up with a unique file including it all, if possible.
If I onderstand you correctly, you want to do a survey of assets. OpenStreetMap is not (all) you should be using.
There are dedicated tools for that, also open source. I found http://geoodk.com/ for you, didn’t delve into it yet.
Is this something you could use?
I don’t know about this one. I’m going to look into it.
Basically, yeah, I have to register points and add information manually (bike number and battery status). Actually the gpx trace is not even important.
Mostly, a unique folder containing all points made during a session would be great.
If you have e.g. a Garmin GPS device, it will record your trace. It also has the possibility to create waypoints. You can add any text as description of a waypoint. So that could be the bike number and battery status.
OsmAnd, a smartphone application, has similar capabilities.
The data should never be sent to the OSM servers, as it does not really belong in that database.
For Android, there are OSMTracker or OsmAnd. Not sure there’s any for iPhone.
I haven’t done it yet, but OSMTracker lets you change the button layout so that you can simply click on one of its icons to add a specific type of POI.
Once back at the base, simply copy the GPX + JPG/3GP files onto your computer, and open the GPX in JOSM to see the track + pics/sound.
