Navigate to Caches with Bosch "eBike Connect"-App

[+4Henke]

Hi,

within the Geocaching App (Android in my case), it is possible to navigate to a cache. The app suggests me e.g. "Waze" or "Komoot" to navigate. But I would love to see the "eBike Connect" App from Bosch as well to be able to navigate with my bike to the location of the Cache. Is that somehow possible?

Regards
Martin

[geoawareUSA9]

It is possible. You need to go into your phone settings to change (or remove) the default application used for map navigation.

 

There is an excellent post in the forums...let's see...

 

Here it is!

 

When I followed these steps, I simply removed the default application so that my phone would let me choose what app to use. I could even use MyTaxi or the DB Navigator if I wanted. (Though I usually chose Waze.)

Edited December 2, 2022 by geoawareUSA9

[+4Henke]

Hi,

I already get a list of apps (Waze, Komoo, c:geo and Firefox). "eBike Connect" is missing in this list. I see in the Apps settings, "Supported Links" (translated from German) only "resources.ebike-connect.com".

In the same setting in "Waze", I see several other links like: "www.google.com", "maps.google.com", etc.

 

So I think I would need to adress this to the development-team of "eBike Connect" so the app is able to open Google-Links.

 

Kind regards

Martin

[robertlipe]

Sounds like the magic words you need to utter to the developer are "Android Intents".

This is the mechanism that Android uses to allow programs to request another program (Messages, Chat, Maps, Dialer) to do a thing (Send a message, draw a pin on a map, place a call) without knowing the mechanics of each other. The calling program (e.g. the geocaching app) doesn't have to maintain a list of apps that knows how to draw a map; it asks the system to draw a map and the OS looks through the array of apps that have registered their ability to service such requests. That app might be Google Maps, Waze, Google Earth, OpenStreetmap or whatever. (OK, three of those four apps are Google, but those are just the examples I know from memory...and because I implemented this stuff in the early days of one of those apps.) Basically, your request to Bosch should be to get them to register themselves correctly via the manifest and then handle the incoming intent, parsing the bundle as necessary for the payload ("navigate to Lat: X, Lon: Y"), and acting on it.

If you've used Android for any length of time, you'll hopefully now recognize the basics of how such apps call each other and make it easy for your favorite Pizza app to do common tasks like draw a map of the pizza stores (like the list I just named) and call the store to place an order with each of these steps having multiple applications available that can handle either step.

Honestly, if an end user has to describe such a fundamental Android concept to a software vendor, that says a LOT about the amount of institutional Android knowledge from the vendor. This is either a bug in a really basic part of their software in not registering these intents or displaying a sad knowledge of the surrounding Android ecosystem. Bosch is a huge company. They should know better. This sounds like it may be an outsourced project that wasn't run by "Android People". Sorry (not sorry) for the tough love.
 

Edited December 4, 2022 by robertlipe
Add examples of common system intents