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Find your nearest waymark with a smartphone

fi67

By fi67,
in General Waymarking Topics

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fi67

+fi67

Posted
Posted (edited)

As a result of a thread in the features & functions subforum I had an idea how to find your nearest waymarks with a smartphone. So I have created a web page that gets your location and hands it over to the Waymarking site together with some additional options.

 

Thanks to GT.US for the initial impetus and especially to Tante.Hossi for his help, additional ideas and testing.

 

Please feel free to have a look and test it. Any helpful remarks are also welcome.

 

But remember that this is just a personal project, I am not a professional developer (well I am, but not on this platform) and this is not related to Groundspeak in any form. It works for me the way I need it and I am happy if you can profit from it as well, but there is no obligation for further development or bug fixes. It has been tested with Safari on iOS and Firefox on Android. I do not have access to other platforms so if it doesn't work there I cannot do anything about it.

 

Find the nearest waymarks.

 

Of course, you have to allow the browser access to the GPS functionality.

Edited by fi67
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Weathervane

+Weathervane

Posted
Posted

I checked it out this afternoon and it worked really well. Where I can see it having the most benefit, for me at least, is when I travel to different communities. I can now just pull my iphone out and find a few waymarks in the vicinity of where I am staying. I could do this before by accessing the waymarks through the website, but this program quickens this process quite considerably.

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GT.US

GT.US

Posted
Posted

I had some fun playing with this on my Android. It all seemed to function properly.

 

The next thing I would like would be to be able to use those coordinates to "seed" a new waymark. I was thinking the create a waymark would come up with the coordiunates pre-filled in, and I could put in the name using the actual Waymarking page and click the two I agrees, and then come back late to finish it in my unfinished waymarks queue. I think that I would be able to click the Camara for get a file from and I could take and upload my photo right then. Alternatively, maybe your webpage would be able to do this, but I think it would start to be trouble if an interface clicked the "I agree" buttons.

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QuesterMark

+QuesterMark

Posted
Posted

Good job!

 

Works well on iPad (that has GPS)!

 

As a result of a thread in the features & functions subforum I had an idea how to find your nearest waymarks with a smartphone. So I have created a web page that gets your location and hands it over to the Waymarking site together with some additional options.

 

Thanks to GT.US for the initial impetus and especially to Tante.Hossi for his help, additional ideas and testing.

 

Please feel free to have a look and test it. Any helpful remarks are also welcome.

 

But remember that this is just a personal project, I am not a professional developer (well I am, but not on this platform) and this is not related to Groundspeak in any form. It works for me the way I need it and I am happy if you can profit from it as well, but there is no obligation for further development or bug fixes. It has been tested with Safari on iOS and Firefox on Android. I do not have access to other platforms so if it doesn't work there I cannot do anything about it.

 

Find the nearest waymarks.

 

Of course, you have to allow the browser access to the GPS functionality.

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fi67

+fi67

Posted
  • Author
Posted

We all appreciate your work and it's always good to have a choice.

 

I think the main lesson learnt from this is that we see how much an individual person can do without the infrastructure and documentation of Groundspeak. This might give us an impression of what improvements would be possible if GS had the resources available for Waymarking. We can only hope that some day Waymarking will be profitable enough to make this a valid option.

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GT.US

GT.US

Posted
Posted

I've been disappointed at the lack of a Waymarking app, so I threw this quick mobile site together:

http://chilehead.us/wm

 

Thought I'd share this here, only to see that somebody did pretty much the same as I did. Oh well.

 

This is a very pretty interface. I'm concerned that you may get on the wrong side of our benefactor (Groundspeak) by reformatting the output. We have been told not to mention the names of apps that screen scrape GC.com, and I would hope that doesn't happen to this one. Bruce could probably point you in the direction of the right person to talk to so that no toes are stepped on. The real win-win solution might be if they could integrate your code into their web site when the mobile phone browser is detected.

 

Can you imagine Waymarking having some sort of an open source aspect to it, where our amazing creative and talented members could contribute to the functionality?

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ChileHead

+ChileHead

Posted
Posted

This is a very pretty interface. I'm concerned that you may get on the wrong side of our benefactor (Groundspeak) by reformatting the output. We have been told not to mention the names of apps that screen scrape GC.com, and I would hope that doesn't happen to this one. Bruce could probably point you in the direction of the right person to talk to so that no toes are stepped on. The real win-win solution might be if they could integrate your code into their web site when the mobile phone browser is detected.

 

I actually didn't mean to publicly release that one that reformats it for mobile use. I was playing with that for my own use, but I've commented out that part for now till I clarify what's allowed.

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GT.US

GT.US

Posted
Posted

This is a very pretty interface. I'm concerned that you may get on the wrong side of our benefactor (Groundspeak) by reformatting the output. We have been told not to mention the names of apps that screen scrape GC.com, and I would hope that doesn't happen to this one. Bruce could probably point you in the direction of the right person to talk to so that no toes are stepped on. The real win-win solution might be if they could integrate your code into their web site when the mobile phone browser is detected.

 

I actually didn't mean to publicly release that one that reformats it for mobile use. I was playing with that for my own use, but I've commented out that part for now till I clarify what's allowed.

One thing that would be helpful would be to have the link to the actual waymark, so that you could click through and log your visit.

 

When I used the webpage for my local area, I saw waymarks I didn't recognize. It was cumbersome to go to the WM site and see if they were mine that I forgot, or someone elses.

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Tante.Hossi

+Tante.Hossi

Posted
Posted

There is another simple and very comfortable way to view the nearest waymarks on your smartphone. And I'm sure that this is an 'official' way fully supported by Groundspeak.

 

Just use the mobile version of Google Earth and the official Waymarking-KML-file.

 

If you enable GPS positioning on your smartphone, configure mobile Google Earth to use the actual position and display the Waymarking-KML-file downloaded from Waymarking.com, you will get the nearest Waymarks with the possibility to open them in a browser window where you can read the details and log your visit.

 

In Google Earth the category, the name, the default picture and the quick description of the Waymark is shown.

 

With this tool it is not only possible to find the nearest Waymarks. It is also possible to find any waymark all over the world.

 

It's easy! Just give it a try!

 

One additional information: The mobile version of Google Earth for Android (I don't know about iOS) is not able to display KML-files by default. I have installed another app (named 'KMLZ') which adds the KML-support to Google Earth. There may be other apps that can do this also. But I do not know about them. maybe you will have other ideas.

 

 

I would be happy for any feedback or questions!

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fi67

+fi67

Posted
  • Author
Posted

This is an Android only solution. It cannot work on iOs, don't know about other platforms.

 

The other thing is, if I remember correctly, the Waymarking KML does not necessarily show the closest waymarks if you are in a dense area. There is an upper limit, if there are more WMs in the visible area, you only get a random selection. And I am not aware of a possibility to exclude owned and visited waymarks.

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L0ne.R

+L0ne.R

Posted
Posted

This is a very pretty interface. I'm concerned that you may get on the wrong side of our benefactor (Groundspeak) by reformatting the output. We have been told not to mention the names of apps that screen scrape GC.com, and I would hope that doesn't happen to this one. Bruce could probably point you in the direction of the right person to talk to so that no toes are stepped on. The real win-win solution might be if they could integrate your code into their web site when the mobile phone browser is detected.

 

I actually didn't mean to publicly release that one that reformats it for mobile use. I was playing with that for my own use, but I've commented out that part for now till I clarify what's allowed.

 

Thanks! :)

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DnRseekers

+DnRseekers

Posted
Posted

There is another simple and very comfortable way to view the nearest waymarks on your smartphone. And I'm sure that this is an 'official' way fully supported by Groundspeak.

 

Just use the mobile version of Google Earth and the official Waymarking-KML-file.

 

I would be happy for any feedback or questions!

 

So I have searched for the official "Waymarking-KML-file" and I will be darned if I can find it. Where is it???? All I can find is a link to get a kml of waymarks selected in a search. Where do I find the waymaking KML file?

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Tante.Hossi

+Tante.Hossi

Posted
Posted (edited)

So I have searched for the official "Waymarking-KML-file" and I will be darned if I can find it. Where is it???? All I can find is a link to get a kml of waymarks selected in a search. Where do I find the waymaking KML file?

 

It's a little bit hidden. I have also searched for it the first time. The name of it isn't very good.

You can find it on the main WM-Site on the right: Other Service -> Google Earth

This opens a download to the file: WaymarkingNetworkKML.kml

 

Important:

There's a known bug about the kml-file: Sometimes you may have to re-name it with the extension 'kml' instead of 'aspx' after download.

 

Addition:

There's a second KML-File which include all of your own waymarks. You can find it at your WM-Profile on the right behind the link 'Download All My Waymarks'

Edited by Tante.Hossi
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fi67

+fi67

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I don't know about iOS, but Chrome on Android does not allow the Geolocation API anymore for unencrypted sites, and I do not have a HTTPS certificate for my domain. Maybe apple has a similar policy now. Maybe I will have to get a certificate in the future, but currently this is not very high on my priority list. I am sorry, but there is nothing else I could do to make this work again.

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Torgut

+Torgut

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, vulture1957 said:

worked on my laptop and my android using Google browser

 

Well, a 404 is a server error, so it really doesn't matter what software or hardware you used, it just means it was working when you tried and it was not working when I did. Being a 404 it's not like a temporary glitch.

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Torgut

+Torgut

Posted
Posted
19 hours ago, Alfouine said:

I used it today with my iphone and it worked

 

Can you post screenshots of it working? :-)

 

Screen 1: try to click on List Unfinished and you get immediately an error 404.

 

Screen 1: Click on My Location or Map Center and you will go to a list with Waymarks....

 

Screen 2: Try to click in any of those Waymarks and you will get a server error:

 

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function find() on boolean in /home/geotrail/public_html/Waymarking/common.php:268 Stack trace: #0 /home/geotrail/public_html/Waymarking/wmshow.php(65): getuser(false) #1 {main} thrown in /home/geotrail/public_html/Waymarking/common.php on line 268

 

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Torgut

+Torgut

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, Alfouine said:

I thought it was working because I had the list of waymarks.

I have the 404 page for List unfinished (i never used this) and the fatal error when i click to have waymark details.

 

I guess the list can be of some use, let's say it works partially :-)

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