aprs.fi now running with Google Maps, again, for now

[Heikki Hannikainen]

Hi,

aprs.fi is now, at least temporarily, running with Google Maps. The
experiment (https://groups.google.com/g/aprsfi/c/hty6exrm58M) proved
successful in a way: after some fixes it is possible to run aprs.fi off a
self-hosted OSM tile server with Leaflet as the slippy map frontend, with
reduced but still useful functionality.

It is quite possible that I'll have to revert back to Leaflet+OSM before
the end of March, but we'll see when and if. I'll do this based on purely
financial reasons, when necessary.

More details below.

> I’ll have to do this to avoid a recurrence of a Noticeably Large bill I
> got for Google Maps usage in December (think "one new nice HF rig every
> month" large, or "one VERY nice HF rig every two months"). Google has
> had a very large and generous free quota for use of Google Maps on
> aprs.fi, but it's been a bit unstable and sometimes a bit too small
> after all, and I need a backup plan in case it goes away.

First of all I'd like to thank Google, and the wonderful amateur radio
operators working there, for arranging the reversal of those Large credit
card charges! I got it back, and it's a big deal.

It still remains to be seen if the monthly free use quota for aprs.fi is
sufficient in the future. I'll keep monitoring usage, and when it gets
close to the monthly quota, I can easily switch back to Leaflet + OSM, as
the worst quirks are now ironed out and it's proven to work.

Findings:

* Some folks like the OSM data better than Google. It's surely better in
some areas, but in most others, not so. When Google Maps is used on
aprs.fi, you can still switch to OSM tiles from the layers menu, and you
can save it in the default view in Preferences (Map -> "Save current map
view as default view") if you prefer.

* A lot of folks found the OSM data set less good. This is probably mostly
because my tile server is not a very big one (only 16 cores and 128 GB of
RAM), and I had to filter and load only a subset of OSM map details to
make it run fast enough.

* The OSM tile set on my tile server provides just a single layer. No
terrain/elevation data, no satellite/aerial views. That's less good too.
There is a theoretical possibility to get some of this back, by using
vector mapping for example, but it'll need a whole different kind of tile
service and quite some work.

* The OSM PNG tiles generated by my tile server is only localized for one
language. Each place or street name is only rendered in the primary
language of that place/location - the language preference of the person
viewing the map is completely ignored. This makes the place names quite
useless when I go to browse around Japan or China, for example. There is
no cheap workaround for this, because the tile server needs to cache the
drawn PNG tiles on disk, and if those were localized, it would multiply
the number of different PNGs it needs to render, increasing CPU use quite
a lot. I'm not even aware if the tile server software is capable of doing
this - probably not, because the official OSM tile servers have the same
issue. This is not an issue on Google Maps - it shows Japanese and English
names side by side for me.

* The OSM tile server is a bit of a pain to run, but the server hardware
is less than 110€/month (vat 0%), which is totally alright, even when I
keep paying it to have the backup plan quickly available.

* The OSM tile server leaks memory, and some processes get killed and
automatically restarted roughly once per 3 days. But probably not many
people notice it as the restart is pretty quick.

* The tile server is a bit slow - when you zoom around the map, quite
often you end up requesting tiles which have not been prerendered and
cached on disk, and the tile server actually needs to render the PNGs
based on data stored in the PostGIS database. This is noticeably slow.

* The server naturally needs to be patched and restarted every now and
then. That takes long enough for someone to notice every one and start
asking around on one of the Facebook groups. Someone will say "yes it's
down for me too" and then a few people will reply "it's working here in
Wisconsin" after the server has completed a reboot. I could easily put it
behind a CDN (Cloudflare, CloudFront?) which would reduce the effects due
to the caching layer, but that'd be an additional expense.

So, what now?

I'd prefer to run with Google Maps, because of the features, and the speed
of map rendering it provides, and the very little maintenance it needs on
my part.

But if the GCP console sends me a billing warning email saying the monthly
quota is about to be met, I'll just run the Ansible playbook to command a
switch back to Leaflet. It's quite possible that I'll have to do this
before the end of March. Then in beginning of April I can go back to
Google Maps, and then switch to Leaflet yet again before end of April to
avoid going over quota and getting a credit card charge of XXXX EUR per
month.

I hope I can find the time to implement something smarter than that!

- Hessu

[mjglapa]

Heikki

Have you considered a voluntary contribution to help with your related expenses?

Marty

WT0Z

Sent via the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G,an AT&T 5G smartphone

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[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2023, mjglapa wrote:

> Heikki
>
> Have you considered a voluntary contribution to help with your related expenses?

Yes, but there are a few problems. It doesn't generate enough income, and
it's also difficult legally over here.

- Hessu