I just spent a few moments following up a tip-off I was given ages ago ... and had a look at the following web site: http://www.hippsomapp.se/?lang=en
The web site English seems to make sense and they seem to have implemented a serious amount of useful stuff, though unsurprisingly none of their free maps are in the UK. Given it is now becoming commonplace for maps to be geo-referenced, JPGs from them should probably be suitable for calibration, and this app might actually deliver phone-based GPS dibbing !!
At £3.97 to download the full app, it's not exactly expensive.
Has anyone used this App ? I'd be very interested in what people think of it.
Smartphone GPS Orienteering
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Re: Smartphone GPS Orienteering
Sloop wrote:Has anyone used this App ? I'd be very interested in what people think of it.
I've had this app on my phone for a year or more and think it's basically very good. I've only used it for fun though. The app itself is quite intuitive and looks useful, but I find my phone screen fiddly for inputting courses, and have trouble georeferencing the existing maps I have. The app has the potential to be a great training aid, especially if you can get a few people using it. I did however manage to lose my (ex) smartphone out of a pocket on High Pike last year - found it in a puddle on the track when we were going back to the car. Dried out slowly in the airing cupboard it worked ok for quite a while before finally giving up the ghost. The moral of that story is - get a waterproof case, or use a water resistant, brightly coloured phone - and hang on to it tightly at all times!
- usuallylast
- red
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- Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2010 4:17 pm
- Location: North Cumbria
Re: Smartphone GPS Orienteering
I forgot to add that the phone battery could be a major problem with this sort of app - I find gps alone uses mine up quite alarmingly, though my phone is not the best by any means. I suppose it would be fine for short training runs.
Nobody else tried it? I chose my username with reference to my orienteering capabilities (or lack of), but it seems to apply to this forum as well!
Nobody else tried it? I chose my username with reference to my orienteering capabilities (or lack of), but it seems to apply to this forum as well!
- usuallylast
- red
- Posts: 158
- Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2010 4:17 pm
- Location: North Cumbria
Re: Smartphone GPS Orienteering
I've just done an experiment with one of our local Permanent Courses. It worked really well.
1. I created a jpg of the map with the controls on, and loaded it onto my phone.
2. I got a GPX export from OCAD 11 from our map meister of all the courses, and loaded that onto the phone.
3. I observed that because this map has been georeferenced, the GPX file contains 10-digit lat and long for each control.
4. I calibrated the map on the phone by selecting the two furthest-apart controls and giving the 10-digit coordinates for the centres of the two circles.
5. I imported the courses from the file into the app.
Now you're ready for action.
Because I was going to that park for other reasons, my "run" round the Red course was actually a stroll round lots of other things but included the Red controls in their correct order. Having parked the car, and selected a race round the Red course, I was told I was at the Start control, did I want to actually start ? Having said yes, the display shows the next control you want (ie. #1). The phone went to sleep and I pottered off. When I was within a few metres of #1, the phone beeped and when I refreshed the display, it was showing #2. etc. all the way round, which took almost 2 hours. I didn't notice any massive drain on the battery, and all controls beeped when I was decently close (between 2 and 10m, I'd guess). When you're going round, you can choose to be shown the map (and hence use the phone map instead of a paper map); and if you want, there's an option to see where you are on this map.
And now I have a complete list of my splits.
There's a couple of things I didn't like ... the display shows just #1, not #1 and its code; at the moment you can't import a control code "T".
I can see it gets a bit harder to set things up if your base map isn't georeferenced, but for a first dabble, I was seriously impressed. I'm thinking you'd want some sort of wrist-attached phone holder
I'd be very interested in hearing of people's experiences with this app, and what uses they might be putting it to.
1. I created a jpg of the map with the controls on, and loaded it onto my phone.
2. I got a GPX export from OCAD 11 from our map meister of all the courses, and loaded that onto the phone.
3. I observed that because this map has been georeferenced, the GPX file contains 10-digit lat and long for each control.
4. I calibrated the map on the phone by selecting the two furthest-apart controls and giving the 10-digit coordinates for the centres of the two circles.
5. I imported the courses from the file into the app.
Now you're ready for action.
Because I was going to that park for other reasons, my "run" round the Red course was actually a stroll round lots of other things but included the Red controls in their correct order. Having parked the car, and selected a race round the Red course, I was told I was at the Start control, did I want to actually start ? Having said yes, the display shows the next control you want (ie. #1). The phone went to sleep and I pottered off. When I was within a few metres of #1, the phone beeped and when I refreshed the display, it was showing #2. etc. all the way round, which took almost 2 hours. I didn't notice any massive drain on the battery, and all controls beeped when I was decently close (between 2 and 10m, I'd guess). When you're going round, you can choose to be shown the map (and hence use the phone map instead of a paper map); and if you want, there's an option to see where you are on this map.
And now I have a complete list of my splits.
There's a couple of things I didn't like ... the display shows just #1, not #1 and its code; at the moment you can't import a control code "T".
I can see it gets a bit harder to set things up if your base map isn't georeferenced, but for a first dabble, I was seriously impressed. I'm thinking you'd want some sort of wrist-attached phone holder
I'd be very interested in hearing of people's experiences with this app, and what uses they might be putting it to.
- Sloop
- red
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- Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:50 pm
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