Detalhes do evento: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=S%C3%A3o_Paulo_Feb_2010_Mapping_Party

Yesterday I went out biking and got a lot more street names, namely on the East side of Sao Paulo. On a side note, I didn't really like going out with the bike for mapping, because I had to keep stopping to put the street names in my phone. Maybe I should go walking or get the street names in some other way.

Ontem eu fui pedalar e peguei varios nomes de ruas, na zona leste de Sao Paulo. Em analise, eu nao gostei de ir de bicicleta, porque tinha que ficar parando para colocar os nomes das ruas no celular. Talvez eu devesse ir a pe mesmo ou pegar os nomes de alguma outra maneira.

Always take the opportunities that you have to improve our map. During a short break I took with my family this last weekend, we went out to the beach - Mongagua, Sao Paulo - and I took the opportunity to gather some waypoints and tracks to improve the map - All I needed was my GPS-enabled phone, a Nokia SportsTracker (to capture the tracks) and the regular waypoint application in the phone - nothing fancy, everything free. As I walked down the sidewalk following my daughter cycling, I was looking out for the street names so I could upload them. You can see that, where there was nothing, there is now a little bit more info. Hopefully someone else can see the effort and build upon it.

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Sempre aproveite as oportunidades que tiver para melhorar nosso mapa. Durante uma curta viagem que fiz com minha família neste fim de semana, fomos a praia - Mongagua, São Paulo - e eu aproveitei a oportunidade para reunir alguns waypoints e trilhas para melhorar o mapa - Tudo que eu usei foi o meu telefone com GPS, o Nokia Sportstracker (para capturar as trilhas) e a aplicacao padrao de waypoints do telefone - nada fora do normal, tudo gratis. Enquanto eu caminhava pela calcada seguindo minha filha de bicicleta, eu olhava os nomes das ruas para que eu pudesse grava-las. Você pode ver que, onde não havia nada, agora há um pouco mais de informacoes. Espero que alguem veja o esforco e coloque mais detalhes.

Wow, just... wow !

Seeing OSM Mapper from ITO World for the greater Sao Paulo Area (some 500 sq km or so), I come up at a little bit over 6000 ways: 6,057 in total as of today... Well, still have to get the names for the majority of them, though... but tomorrow I'll navigate to some areas that have been drawn but not named, It's much easier now with OSM2GO.

Long live Open Street Map !

Well, it's been a long way, but the metropolitan area of Sao Paulo (~234 sq km) is nearing completion. This doesn't mean that the street names are there as well, but at least the traces are there. Several mapping parties will be required to gather the street names and directions of the ways, but at least some good progress has been completed.

Mapeei um bom pedaço hoje. Desenhei as ruas antes de caminhar, depois fui andando nas ruas para obter os seus nomes a partir de uma folha impressa (não gosto de usar o serviço do walking papers ainda). A parte da caminhada foi divertida, mas eu imprimi usando zoom 16. Eu deveria ter utilizado o zoom 17 para capturar muito mais informações. Se você usar o zoom 17 no mapa você pode ver que estou capturando os números das esquinas nas ruas. O que demorou foi voltar para o PC e introduzir os dados de que eu peguei. Às vezes era difícil conseguir ler o que tinha escrito por causa do zoom. Vou levar o meu N800 com o OSM2GO comigo na minha próxima viagem para acelerar as coisas. Meu objetivo é ter cada casa mapeada, ou, pelo menos, todas as empresas e edifícios (residenciais e comerciais) para que eu possa visualizar o mapa em 3D no meu N95.

Foto da impressão: http://www.flickr.com/photos/diogow/3801312619/

A lot mapped today. I drew the lines prior to walking, then went into the streets to get their names from a printed sheet (I don't like using walking papers service that much). Walking was fun, but I printed the sheet on zoom 16. I should have used zoom 17 to capture a lot more info. If you use zoom 17 you can see that I am capturing the house numbers for some streets. It was very time consuming to go back to the PC and inputting the data from what I wrote. Sometimes it was hard reading back the writing. I'll take my N800 with OSM2GO with me on my next trip to speed things up. My goal is to have every single house mapped, or at least all businesses and (house) buildings so I can render the map in 3D on my N95.

Photo of the print: http://www.flickr.com/photos/diogow/3801312619/

"Before, there was nothing, and from nothing..." ... I've created a city ! Most of the ways now do exist, and also major ways in and out of this city... But, a lot of way to go still, need to go there sometime to survey street names, numbers, postal codes... Also, I've included some POIs that I remember, such as the church, police, unfortunately the sat images are a little out of date, so there is a lot of stuff that has been created that I simply can't see from overhead.

Another couple of hours dedicated to drawing new streets that didn't exist. Eventually I'll have to start surveying those places, to get street names and post codes... That will be the hard work. But I'll also be able to add a lot of stuff that is mostly "invisible" in other maps, such as pharmacies, fire stations, police stations and the such. I like to add this stuff, because it makes OSM different.

Good night and good luck (or is it the other way around ?)

Diogo

I created today a program that allows you to save the position with a voice note in your Nokia S60 phone. Take a look in the wiki. It was a little hard, roughly 3 hours of coding non stop, including the debugging time, but hopefully it will help me and others to improve the map.

Direct link: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Audio_wpt.py
Wiki articles: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PDA_Voice_Recording#Using_Voice_Recorder_on_Nokia_Symbian_S60 and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Audio_mapping#Audio_wpt.py

Got my Nokia N800 the day before yesterday (March 4th). It is AWESOME !

Of course the 3 first things that I did with it: Updated the firmware for OS2008 (much nicer than OS2007), downloaded Maemo Mapper and downloaded all the maps of Sao Paulo (my hometown) into it.

New thoughts: I might release my java applet in the open, since now I want to mess with Maemo Mapper... It only downloads the bitmaps, it would be realy helpfull if it got the vector map from OSM and provided on the fly routing (couldn't manage to get routing working in Sao Paulo, only if I manually create the route points, but where's the fun in THAT !).

Cheers,
Diogo

Ok, now, a lot of stuff got done these last 2 days:

- Offline mode ! Yes ! Now I can browse the map without actually overloading the server at every single request. It's very slow, though, I have to improve the way I load the map data into the memory. On the plus side, for a 15 sq km area from my central location, I only download 427 KB off the server, and it's a one-time download.

- Only draw ways that matter depending on your zoom level, so if your looking at the city from very far, you only see the main roads. As you increase the zoom level, the minor roads are drawn too. Remember that I'm drawing this dynamically all the time, I'm not downloading tiles from the server, you only connect to the server once.

- Some other minor stuff: Drawing the nodes on the map (depending on zoom level); proper aspect ratio calculation when drawing the map, so if you have a non-square screen on your cell, you see the map without distortion; keyboard-based browsing of the map, including zoom in, out and gps lock.

That's pretty much it.

I'm still trying to figure out a way how I can release the source code and the program and still make money from it, but that's for another topic some time.

Still, a lot to go !

Good night,
Diogo

More progress in the java applet to view OSM data...

Allowing keyboard browsing, going left, right, up, down, zoom in, zoom out and back to GPS fix.

Included NMEA decoding function (only GPRMC for now)

Still some stuff to go:
- Bluetooth serial link with GPS
- Caching of data into local database
- Reading Cell ID from GSM phone
- Automatic GPX upload as you go through unmapped places

Server needs:
- Cell ID database
- Real time traffic data from GPS users

Has anybody thought of a server where you could have people uploading their current position, heading and speed to monitor the traffic and avoid traffic jams ? I'm thinking about implementing something along those lines, but I'm aware that the project will only benefit when there is a high number of people collaborating also. I'm also thinking about using the GSM cell tower info from the cellphones so that you could get a location fix without a GPS, but that's going to required the mapping of the cell towers. Anybody can help me out pointing to projects that try to address these ideas ? Thanks in advance, Diogo

A lot of mapping on this weekend... Also, I managed to create the first version of the renderer for Java... This prototype will be used to provide the interface for the cell phones... Really great weekend...

Today I mapped some of my home surroundings, R. Monte Serrat, Av. Apucarana, Av. Salim Farah Maluf, R. Cantagalo, R. Padre Adelino, and the connections in and out of Marginal Tiete. A lot yet to go, though...