EDIT: The app is now available on Github.

https://github.com/IpswichMapper/SwiftAddress/releases

You can find the APK under “assets”.

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When I intended wanted to map housenumbers in my area, I found out about the app “Keypad-Mapper 3”. This seems like the most efficient way to map housenumbers, as it is designed for that purpose.

However, after downloading (from F-droid archive repository), I found out that it didn’t work. The app had not been updated in 7 years, so no wonder that was to case. Luckily however, online I found a fork of Keypad-Mapper 3 with hungarian translations which worked.

After doing one giant survey with this app, however, I quickly realised how much of a pain it can become to try and clean up the raw data in JOSM. GPS data isn’t really the most accurate thing, and therefore the positions of housenumber nodes (which are based on your GPS position) collected from Keypad Mapper isn’t that accurate either.

This survey took me multiple weeks and multiple changesets to clean up. It was a mess.

I then started to look for alternatives: Streetcomplete seemed like the best option and I did a few surveys with it. However, mapping housenumbers wasn’t the most efficient thing on this app. So I opened a issue on Streetcomplete’s Github repository to try and improve the app. This lead to a increment button which adds/substracts one number from the previous housenumber you entered.

This was quite useful, but it doesn’t work for both sides of the road. Streetcomplete housenumber mapping also requires that you have drawn buildings first, which can be tedious (here is my diary entry explaining how to speed it up slightly).

Then, I heard about OSMpad. This is an old application which is no longer available. However, I liked the design. OSMpad starts up as a map: you then add a housenumber on the map when surveying.

This would obviously lead to cleaner and more accurate data compared to Keypad Mapper, and would not require adding building data.

So my app designed to work similarly to OSMpad, with a few more features. Here are some screenshots:

This shows the main map screen with a few housenumbers & a note added. You use the left arrow to add a housenumber on the left side, and a right arrow to add a housenumber on the right side. The reason for this is incrementing. For example, if you had added “24” on the left side, your next housenumber could automatically increment to “26”.

You can also long press on one of the arrows to automatically add a housenumber. For example, if the last housenumber you had added was “24”, the next housenumber will automatically be “26”.

On the top bar, there are buttons to save, take a photo, take an audio note, change background imagery and undo.

So far, I have not implemented the photo and audio note features, and while the app can change background imagery I haven’t added any satellite imageries there just yet due to concerns over copyright (I need to know what imagery I can use in this application).

Although it isn’t shown here, location can be enabled.

Here you can see the contents of the note after clicking on it.

Here is the keypad. You can swipe up on the numbers to add extra characters (for example “a”, “b”, “c” or even a semicolon). The “B1 R0” represents building levels. That means one building level and no roof levels. So when surveying, you can mark housenumbers as well as building levels (Currently I haven’t implemented this feature). The plus and minus buttons allow you to increment the number.

Long pressing on the map allows you to add a note.

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So far those are the features I have added. In the future here are some of the features I think would be useful:

• Upload directly to openstreetmap
• Long press on one of the arrows to automatically add a housenumeber which is an increment higher than your previously added number (this could speed up things by a huge amount). For example, if you had added number “24” on the left, long pressing the left arrow would automatically add number 26.
• Centre to current location
• Alternative UIs for adding housenumbers that are suited for other countries. This could include alternative alphabets (for example, this would be useful in Russia).
• Support for creating addr:interpolation ways between two housenumbers you have added. (This would be really useful for quickly collceting housenumbers for places like North America with gridded streets).