Reinwald

Over the past 3 weeks Ive discovered, researched and mapped out the area of the abandoned Russian town of Тенкели, located in the middle of Siberia.

Picked another town nearby. Patterson NY. Added most of the buildings in the area. Now need to work on the lots and land cover.

I must be mad as I have started two proposals in a day.

Today marks the day on which I have completed the addition of every currently existing address in the 97390 ZIP code. This particular ZIP code, excluding subaddresses, only has 492 unique addresses. I also added 98 unique addresses in the Alsea ZIP code, from Tidewater up to the Lincoln/Benton county line.

As a final quality check, when I am done adding addresses to an area, I export and run OSM data against the address data to check for errors. I found a total of three. One address had the wrong street name, and I somehow skipped adding address info to two buildings that I changed the geometry of.

Next on the list is to start mapping the Waldport and Seal Rock ZIP codes. There are roughly 3,700 addresses to map in Waldport, and roughly 1,200 addresses to map in Seal Rock. The goal is to prioritize areas with limited or no cell reception.

While there is somewhat good building footprint coverage in these areas, the vast majority of them have been added from Microsoft building footprint data. I briefly attempted to use the same data to save time drawing footprints, but found that fixing the problems with it took more time than drawing without it.

I am not sure how else to end this entry, so this sentence will serve as the conclusion.

A few minor changes, so this is more an update, but with close to full details.

The tools;

• Forward looking 8.3MP/4K dashcam 2FPS.
• Left facing (270 degrees) old Samsung 8MP phone 1FPS. (Out passenger window)
• Left rear facing (225 degs) old Samsung 3.6MP phone 0.6FPS. (Out passenger window)
• The dashcam records audio (my voice) in one minute chunks.
• All photos and audio are geo-referenced to their current location.
• The Garmin navigation GPS has a current OSM based (mkgmap) map, a POI set of OSM FixMe’s.
• I am a permanent road dweller, retired and wandering Australia. For 10 years now.

The methods - Start of day;

• Start a GPS/NMEA (USB via laptop) UBLOX recording function that also flags movement >3kph and <40kph.
• Start an APRS beacon for those that like to track me. (msg me for details)
• Mount/power up the side facing phones and launch their (laptop) 3>40kph recording scripts.
• Power up the dashcam and let its own GPS settle for 2-3 mins. This is also the voice notes recording device.

The methods - Basic drive;

• Open high speed road 70*100kph. Just let it capture doing voice as below.
• Can’t really play music as it can trigger voice events.

The methods - Voiced items;

• Every road surface change paved vs unpaved on route. (incl concrete bridges)
• Any road calming objects (humps and chicanes) and gates on existing roads.
• Any one*way road situations and associated signage.
• Road surface left and right of track (surprising how many are not currently valid)
• Verify road names signs vs Garmin GPS and voice differences. (including missings)
• Verify waterway names signs vs Garmin GPS and voice differences. (including missings)
• Voice any obvious missing public cross etc roads or major private ones. (eg sealed mine roads)
• Voice all bridge names. (if they exist)
• Respond to FixMe’s. (many an unknown water crossing!)
• Voice any obvious informal parking areas (like stockpile/gravel pit areas) plus any formal not showing on GPS.
• Voice any farm/property names/type and if possible address numbers.
• Voice as many town/other objects as possible, priority to Fire, Police, Ambulance, Church, Govt Offices, Post Office & Telstra phones/exchanges, but try to get all shops, parks, recreation grounds, playgrounds, toilets, camp areas, dump points, water points/tanks, fuel stops, rest areas, touristy things, information boards, welcome signs, comms towers, windpumps, large dams etc as possible.

The methods - High density shopping etc areas;

• It’s impossible (and distracting) to voice such detail, so I rely on the side cameras to (say) take 2-4 images per shop front. This is usually done between 20 and 30kph. Especially high detail I’ll go to 5kph for, and less to 40kph. More than 30kph though there is a higher blurring risk, so really only useful for more distant scenes.
• I open and close the powered windows as I drop below 40kph. Yes I could automate that via a ECM/VCU connection along with capturing some interesting data. Have to be able to override on a wet/cold day though!

The methods - End of day;

• The side cameras save their jpgs direct to laptop, so I stop the capture process and launch a single script that processes every image, including EXIF GPS and other data.
• The dashcam has a WiFi connection, so I download the entire days movie capture. I leave the SD card in the camera. Later in that script I extract out jpgs also with GPS EXIF plus the road speed. The road speed (0) is then used to remove all stationary only videos.
• Processing (before upload) takes roughly twice the time of the actual captures. I have to throttle the i5 laptop in hot weather, but generally it runs flat out for 4*5hrs per drive day. The entire system is actually solar powered (with a charge boost when driving) and more efficient if run this way.

The methods - OSM and Mapillary upload;

• I have 2 laptops, so some concurrency of the workflow happens quite regularly. What I do has been mostly covered by previous diary entries so these are only a few extra.
• The stream of side facing camera views are visually checked for any private dwellings or blurs. These won’t be uploaded, but some are used for house numbers entry before being discarded.
• The dashcam images are not uploaded as the Mapillary server will direct process mp4 videos. They and the (non private) side camera images can be uploaded async with any OSM entry. I upload between 8 and 20 GBytes per days travel. This can overheat the cell modem despite a cooling fan, so I may delay uploads for a location with better signal that keeps the mode cooler. The record was a backlog of 150 GBytes in one 12 hr period.
• I mix the side camera views in the one directory, so I can scroll back and forth over the same scene to read around objects in front of information I need for OSM. I would usually remove them from the directory afterwards, but may need to correlate them with dashcam and voice notes. Images removed means work complete, so I can also keep an OSM backlog, sometimes a week old.
• Although I upload the images to Mapillary I rarely if ever use them for OSM (through ID). I try to do OSM entry when the detail is still fresh in mind and it can take a week for them to appear on server. It’s also far easier/faster to enlarge and track them locally.

About the phones as cameras;

• Android phones with USB tethering enabled is much faster than using its WiFi through an AP. Problem is that the device IP is fixed, so only 1 phone per laptop USB. The 2nd phone is via the slower WiFi. Am thinking of combining USB ports (bridging) to the one network interface, but it’s probably not worth the hassle.
• I use the Android App “ipwebcam”. Basically it presents a web server like functionality, so I just “wget” an image as fast as it will respond. I don’t enable or use the phone GPS. The rate does vary somewhat with light level and WiFi congestion. Telstra also has their cell modem/AP firmware configured to power down if there is no cell signal for more than some time (like maybe an hour), so that can break capture.
• The loss of 3G made these phones very useful as web cameras. No SIM installed, but emergency calls might still work. The USB attached phone is in “airplane mode” so no WiFi/cell RF.
• I have an ordinary cell smartphone. It’s boring though.

About the Garmin GPS navigation device;

• I have a custom mkgmap script to update maps whenever I have the need. Minimally every month.
• Using overpass with some text processing and gpsbabel I can add all manner of special POIs as needed for whatever project I may be working on.
• The default POI is all Fix-Me’s with all the associated point or way fields (minus lat/lon) concatenated with spaces removed, so it can best fit on the Garmin screen. They show up as red blobs on the Garmin screen along with an audible alert at 800m.
• Anything is possible with the OSM data and POI’s. One recent set was of roadside parking sites that were missing some required info, ignoring others that were complete.

About the UBLOX GPS unit;

• This is one of the USB dongle things that I have glued to the inside of the upper left windscreen and connected to the laptop via a USB A*A M/F cable.
• At day start I configure it to act as if mobile (the default being to assume it is sitting still and has position dampening applied) and run at 5 positions/sec rather than 1. I have on occasion wanted the best accuracy for road/way alignment, so upload to OSM the combined UBLOX and dashcam GPX’s in both directions as a private trace. All 4 track lines are then very obvious and easy to centre on. I can also look at any image (they are all georeferenced) to check for a reason for an unusual track deviation. (Like giving a truck the entire road!)

About the laptops;

• The capture laptop is quite an old Toshiba i5 with a (replaced) SSD running Debian Bookworm. The 2nd one (used for OSM entry) is the same, but an i7.
• It helps that I was a systems manager in my employment life, so do a lot of coding.
• The scripting and processing has evolved over the years and kind of complex. Well beyond the scope of this diary items entry. It is worth noting though that I also optimise the image contrast and gamma prior to uploading the side cameras, as none of this processing is done on the Mapillary server. It is well worth doing.

About the vehicle;

• A camping fitted out AWD VW Transporter. Grunty diesel.
• Enough antenanas that I am asked if I work for ASIO quite often.
• 480W solar panels and 300AH LifePO4 battery.
• There is a bed, fridge and cooking gear in there somewhere.
• QRG 40m, 30m, 2m APRS only, no voice. (for those that know what that means)

Please feel free to suggest or ask opinions! As I type this I am camped at Captains Flat, not far south of Canberra (Australia’s capital). The entire Mapillary and OSM backlog is cleared so more driving coming up!

Cheers Bob

This is a backlog of before and afters. I went up the road a little bit to another town with not too much mapped. Mapped the buildings in the immediate town center and a bit of the green.

Picked another small town name in Vermont. There wasnt too much to map here. Dont have details on the ground.

I am a visually impaired user of Open Street Map, and I already contributed some places to the city of Simi Valley and a few surrounding areas. I think it would be nice to create a Navilens tag for Open Street Map. I don’t mean an actual Navilens QR code, just a tag saying that there is navilens available at a particular place. This is just a sort of true-or-false or yes/no tag. Navilens is a service that allows visually impaired people to navigate using special QR codes detected by a celphone from several meters away without the camera pointing to the code. Now if the Navilens tag gets implemented into OSM, Navilens themselves could contribute directly to Open Street Map for places that have Navilens codes, especially bus stops. We could also contribute to Open Street Map if we know for sure that a place has Navilens. That way, visually impaired people around the world know what places they can use the Navilens app for navigating.

As an OpenStreetMap contributor, I always pay attention to how maps are used in media and various software applications. It is fascinating to see OSM data appear in unexpected places.

Whenever I use files containing OSM data, Im faced with two major
problems. These problems are inherent in the OSM data model and
inherited by the common file formats (, , ).

My personal enemy that I take so serious, is someone who edits an area on a map as “under construction” and then it SITS for longer than 6 months in that stage. In some cases people have been living in that neighborhood for 3 years…and it’s been marked as “under construction.” Here I am today fixing areas that are fully developed now, fully established- and the average of the construction edits were made 2 years ago. Here’s hoping doordash, my personal use favorite Strava, or even pokemon go run an update for those poor folks.

This is purely a diary rant about residential areas and their roads not being updated. I almost wish there was a way to make “under construction” just be something for an existing thing being updated/fixed, not something being built. We’re mapping what’s there to be mapped. I’d rather new developments or roads have like a “coming soon” tag of some sorts that wouldn’t block in app access.

We can use strava as an example, i’ll set a route and it’ll make me avoid an entire neighborhood because “Deleted User” 3 years ago marked these 7 streets near the lake trail as “under construction.” Took me a sad amount of time, admittedly, to realize what was happening. Another example is Niantic not having in game spawns (pikmin, pokemon, ingress) if an area is marked “under construction” because the game labels the area as dangerous, so why would they give server room to RNG spawn their in game items there? Reality though is Ash can and SHOULD be able to catch his Pikachu there because he’s been living there for 3 years- Niantic just doesn’t think it’s safe.

So, here’s my little rant about the amount if neighborhoods i fixed today that i have personally been to, biked through, walked my dog through, that have been “under construction” the last 28 months.

I finally got back to mapping, after about 6 months of being inactive. I’m really happy!

Green Open Data Day 2025

Ive just roled out some updates for waymarkedtrails, the website for browsing route relations. The most notable improvement is that waymarkedtrails is finally able to understand member roles in route relations.

OSM History Viewer and OSM Route Manager are two ancient tools that help visualising and analysing changesets and route relations.

Latest Update from Henderson.

Traili Map - Bike route planner that prioritizes official bike trails

I want better local information so here I am learning and updating Open Street Maps! (4 MAR 2025)

Introduction

This diary entry describes my current insights how best to map and tag pedestrian and bicycle crossings. The many words may make it seem complicated, but the actual tagging is designed for easy and direct tagging what you see on the road, with as little redundancy and required expertise as possible. As follows:

A simple unmarked, uncontrolled crossings is only an intersection nodes without any tags.

A simple zebra can be tagged with highway=crossing + crossing=zebra (or, equivalent highway=crossing + crossing:markings=zebra)

A simple crossing with other markings can be tagged with highway=crossing + crossing:markings=dots/dashes/lines/surface

If traffic lights control the crossing, add crossing:signals=yes

If there are special kerbs, add kerb=lowered/flush/…

If there is tactile paving, add tactile_paving=yes

If there is a crossing island, ad crossing:island=yes

If the crossing path goes uninterrupted over the road it crosses, so the road is interrupted rather than the crossing path, ad crossing:continous=yes

Scope:

• Footway crossing any higher order way, including cycleway and busway, excluding rail.
• Cycleway crossing any higher order way, including busway, excluding rail.
• Mentioned, but excluded: designated horse crossings.
• Mentioned, but excluded for now: how to map a crossing as a way.
• Mentioned, but excluded for now: detailed mapping of the operation of traffic signals.

Basic principles:

• Consider only nodes where a footway, path or cycleway intersects a higher order way, or would intersect if it is actually drawn as a way of its own.
• The intersection of two ways is already a crossing node, even without any tags. It gives the location and the fact that the ways cross, and type and access/designation tags from the crossing way apply to the crossing node.
• only add the highway=crossing tag and additional tags if there are actually attributes to tag, which do not follow (inherit) from the crossing way itself.
• Only tag positive attributes, not missing attributes, unless: a. the applicable default values in your country differ from world-wide defaults; b. the no indicates something generally unexoected, such as crossing=no on a loactoion that cannot be crossed.
• All existing crossing=* schemas are flawed and form a chaotic mix, leaving data users and other mappers to guess what was meant. I use only the additional tags to describe each additional attribute. A crossing= value may still be computed from the separately tagged attributes, for any of the previously used mixed schemes.
• For incremental mapping (start simple and add details later) crossing=zebra is acceptable as a stub for a zebra crossing. All the other crossing types have unclear meanings, because of historical differences in tagging schemes. Note that in some countries even crossing=zebra has been used systematically for non-zebra crossings!

Explanations of the basic principles

Ad 1. If a path, footway or cycleway is not actually drawn in OSM, you can still put a node on the way representing the place where the actual crossing is. In this case, it’s required to tag it highway=crossing., and prefaraby a tag to indicate how people see that it’s a crossing (crossing:markings=zebra/dots/dashes/lines/surface and/or crossing:signals=yes)

Ad 2. The intersection node of a footway with a higher order way is a pedestrian crossing with access foot=designated. If the footway is tagged with bicycle=yes and/or horse=no, the crossing is also foot=designated + bicycle=yes and/or horse=no. Explicit tagging of the node with the same information is redundant, unnecessary, because the information is already there.

Ad 3. Information which warrants explicit tagging of the crossing node is: markings, signal control, tactile_paving, special kerbs, presence of a (safe) crossing island, access or designation not present on the crossing way (or in absence of the crossing way).

Ad 4. Many crossings are tagged as e.g. highway=crossing + crossing=unmarked/uncontrolled + crossing:markings=no + crossing:signals=no + crossing:island=no + tactile_paving=no. The only information there (apart from being an intersection) is that someone some time did not see those attributes. While taht is useful workflow information for a mapathon, OSM generally stores what you can see, not what you can not see, and it’s up to data users to determine what to do if they want information which is not there. We should be clear in what we tag and how, so data users can apply logical defaults. Only if e.g. a national default is clearly differen from the OSM-wide default, it is sometimes wise to tag no, such as foot=yes on Dutch cycleways., because the recommended worldwide default for cycleways is foot=no. Tagging crossing=no on a location where seemingly a crossing is possible: an example is a point where separately mapped cycleways are linked from both sides to the centre line representing the road. This would suggest a crossing, but that is an artefact of using short link sections to make routing possible.

Ad 5. These special tags I often use:

• crossing:markings=zebra/dots/dashes/lines/surface /* road markings showing where to cross
• crossing:signals=yes /* the traffic over the crossing node is normally controlled by traffic lights
• crossing:island=yes /* the crossing has a traffic island, but the road has not been split around it.
• kerb=yes/lowered/flush/… /* The kerb type, important for the impaired pedestrian
• tactile_paving=yes /* presence of tactile paving to guide the visually impaired pedestrian over the crossing.
• crossing:continous=yes /* The crossing path goes uninterrupted over the crossed way; the crossed way is visually interrupted rather than the crossing path.

Tag what’s there, not what you would expect

Only tag positive values, where the expected default is no. However, for footways a kerb is to be expected, so kerb=yes on a foot crossing is redundant and kerb=no is special, to be tagged if it is seen.

bicycle=yes/designated?

In Nederland, bicycle=yes and bicycle=designated have been used a lot. I regard this as unnecessary for a bicycle crossing, because the crossing cycleway already contains that information. Only if a bicycle crossing has been mapped without a crossing way, an explicit bicycle=designated would be warranted; this is because crossings without the crossing way are usually pedestrian crossings.

Crossing node or crossing way?

I think it is acceptable to map both the node(s) and the way as crossing, but preferably tag the details on either the node OR the way, not on both at the same crossing. The exact geometry of a crossing can be mapped using the crossing way, adding way type and access as needed, possiby split into sections such as cycleway=crossing, footway=traffic_island and kerb nodes at the exact spot. My preference is to tag markings and traffic signals on crossing nodes, and to add a crossing node on every intersection node.

Example. Suppose we have a footway crossing a secondary road that has two separate ways for the directions, a traffic island in between, and separately mapped cycleways on both sides; and zebra markings from side to side; and traffic lights for pedestrians to cross the main road, but not the cycleways. There is tactile paving all along, and kerbs are lowered.

I would draw a highway=footway from side to side, crossing a cycleway, two halves of the secondary road, and again a cycleway. I would 1. tag the footway as highway=footway + footway=crossing. 2. tag the four intersection nodes as highway=crossing with crossing:markings=zebra + tactile paving=yes + kerb=lowered. 3. additionally tag the two footway/tertiary intersection nodes with crossing:signals=yes

Now this is intermediate level of detail mapping. Other mappers might just put crossing=zebra on the intersection nodes: low level of detail. High level of detail would be to add nodes for the exact postion of traffic lights and kerbs, splitting the footway into sections for approach, crossing and traffic_island, and e.g. tagging request buttons, sounds and vibrations.

Horse crossings

I don’t know any designated horse crossings in Nederland, although I am sure there are some. Since it would be a bridleway crossing a higher order road, I think the basics are the same as for cycleways and footways. There might be special markings, then we could simply add a value for crossing:markings. Where horses are allowed on footways, paths and cycleways, not even horse-yes would be needed. If they are -by exception- not allowed, add horse=no to the crossing footway/cycleway/path. I know that in several places high placed request buttons are present for horse riders. This is probably best tagged as a detail on the crossing nodes or on the highway=traffic_signals nodes. I don’t know an existing or proposed tag for this.

Blacksburg Square Dance Odd Fellows Lodge #20, 199 Wilson Avenue, Blacksburg, VA Homestead Farm, 5500 Homestead Rd, Riner, VA 24149

The latest updates from the town of Hernderson Nebraska. I believe i have around 90% of the buildings mapped. Once done, will move on to the sidewalks, parking lots, and other navigation details visible from the sky.

Mapping Journey

12 Fishpond Ter., Barnegat, NJ 08005

Started picking out small towns which have no detail, and started to add some details. This is Henderson, Nebraska. Currently trying to get all the buildings outlined.

I made another small analysis about the reviews made with MapComplete and Mangrove. You can read all about it here:

Added missing house names and numbers. Many similar and/or confusing addresses in Old Conna area.

Some of the readers may have experienced the sinking feeling when they just attempted to upload dozen if not 100s of changes and a network glitch resulted in the editor app failing the upload.

The Year 2021 was my most productive year in OpenStreetMap mapping. It was all downhill from there due to a variety of factors, highlighted by an abrupt career change that I never anticipated (COVID-19 pandemic did a lot of damage to everyone), and d…

View, edit, and create GPX files online with advanced route planning capabilities and file processing tools, beautiful maps and detailed data visualizations.

Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume

I used to enjoy making edits on OSM, but now it is so cluttered with every little detail in some areas that you can’t even zoom in to see anything but symbols. I don’t know how to cancel my username. Sorry folks, but I am outta here!

How to delete?

Electronics store

QQ7M+JP9, King Faisal Dt., Riyadh 13215

0561640894

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OSGEO Hokkaido team and SotM Japan team hosted the FOSS4G Hokkaido and State of the Map Japan 2024 in 15th February in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

Hi

I am a absolute beginner in use the open street map tool.

I want to import publicly available data, postcode, address etc into an open street map. How do I do that?

This is cross-linked from my blog, posted on 11 July 2023

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