How to include "User defined" POIs

[pre...@googlemail.com]

I would like to be able to have my POIs clearly distinguished from those built in to the OSM maps and, if possible, to use my own categories other than the predefined categories.

https://code.google.com/p/osmand/issues/detail?id=800 says tag "user_defined" in Osm data is supported and displayed in specific category in Osmand. However, I'm not sure how to use this tag. (All the online examples that I have found describing how to define personal POIs use the code <tag k='tourism' v='museum'/>, but most of my POIs would not be museums!

When defining a <node> in my osm file do I include

<tag k='user_defined' v='???'/>

and, if so, what do I put after v= ?

Is it possible to have sub-categories of the user-defined category?

[pre...@googlemail.com]

I have experimented defining a <node> in my osm file including

<tag k='user_defined' v='TestCategory'/>

Note the underscore character has to be included between user and defined; a space didn't work.

The resulting POI appears on the map if either "All" or "User defined" is selected in the "Define view"->"POI..." menu.

So, yes it appears that I can have as many sub-categories as I want, but I can't choose which subcategories should be displayed. It seems to be either all or none.

[Richard Goodwin]

Currently I think you are correct, and I find this frustrating - although you can include many different user_defined types of nodes, whenever you choose to display them (define view->POI and scroll down to "User Defined") you only get an option to select All or None.

I raised this back in this thread in June: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/osmand/g9b-5EvBL5E 

The conclusion in the thread was that indexing the User Defined POI Types would be a useful additional feature, though I received a direct reply from Victor saying he was concerned that there could be an unlimited number of User Defined types and that it wouldn't be possible to load everything into memory.

He said "Search by name already supports sub-categories ... So I plan to move more and more to free text search direction."

This is disappointing, because Search is pretty good and very useful if you are in a particular location and want to find the nearest POI node of type xyz but there is no substitute IMHO for displaying JUST one or two of your own User Defined POI node types.

Search would be OK if all my user_defined POIs of a particular type contained some unique string in the description that could be used as a search value, but the problem is that Search will also display POIs that I am NOT interested in, whereas the 'v=' field can always be made unique.

Richard

[Richard Goodwin]

It is difficult to explain, so I have attached a small example .OSM file and the resulting .OBF file.

My particular interest is Motorhomes. In France, many small towns provide overnight parking spaces called Aires. Some are free and some are Paid for. I want to be able to record Aires I visit and to be able to display them as User Defined POIs.

I don't want to include these in Open Street Map - they are my personal set of POIs with my own personal comments. They are of no interest to the wider community.

In the attached example OSM file, I have included two User Defined node Types:

<tag k='user_defined' v='Free Aire'/>

and

<tag k='user_defined' v='Paid Aire'/>  

What I would ideally like is, when I click on Define View, then POI then Custom Filter for me to be able to select "Free Aire" or "Paid Aire" in the same way that I can select sub-categories beneath other POI types (such as Camp Site, Caravan Site, Hotel etc. beneath POI type "Tourism").

As I said before, a search filter works OK for finding the nearest free aire, but is not nearly as useful as a POI custom filter would be.

Personally, I don't think I would ever use more than around 10 or 20 User Defined POI Types, so I cannot see that memory would be an issue?

Richard

[Hardy]

Richard, have you thought about simply creating 20 GPX files, name them like the categories you need, and simply add your POIs as waypoints in them? Then in OsmAnd you can simply display one (or several)of the files (via Settings/Map layers/GPX) on the map any time, The map will show all these waypoints as markers, and you can even click them, and read the point descriptions, I think?

 

Best, Hardy

[Richard Goodwin]

Hardy,

yes, I have tried this (Settings->Define View->GPX track [I cannot find Settings/Map Layers/GPX??]) where I can choose to display one or more GPX tracks. There are two problems with this:

1) You cannot click on them and read point descriptions (as far as I know - I have tried adding <cmt> and <desc> tags, but Osmand+ won't display them - it only displays the <name> tag.)

2) They are displayed at all zoom levels. As soon as you have lots of GPX waypoints, this makes the map impossible to use.

This is a map of France with 8,700 Aires displayed. Even when zoomed in, it makes navigation difficult if you have lots of GPX points:

[Hardy]

Richard, yes, I think you are right, these are the limitations ...

 

I like France covered by the Aires, though, it looks nice an cozy for the winter time ... :-)

 

Menu wording: Yes, we had changed it a bit, it will appear in the next release.

 

Best, Hardy

 

[Akkana Peck]

Hardy writes:
> Richard, have you thought about simply creating 20 GPX files, name them
> like the categories you need, and simply add your POIs as waypoints

Richard Goodwin writes:
> yes, I have tried this (Settings->Define View->GPX track [I cannot find
> Settings/Map Layers/GPX??]) where I can choose to display one or more GPX
> tracks. There are two problems with this:
>
> 1) You cannot click on them and read point descriptions (as far as I know -
> I have tried adding <cmt> and <desc> tags, but Osmand+ won't display them -
> it only displays the <name> tag.)

I use the <name> tag for that purpose and it works well. It even
works for multi-line descriptions. I've been using GPX waypoint files
with <bame> quite a bit in place of user-defined POIs or Favorites.

Speaking of which, is there a way to create a new Favorites file? At
first I thought I should use Favorites for my user-defined POIs, but
if I modify favorites.gpx to add new points, osmand doesn't ever show
the new entries, even after a restart. I can make new favorites
interactively in the app, but not by modifying the file outside osmand.

> 2) They are displayed at all zoom levels. As soon as you have lots of GPX
> waypoints, this makes the map impossible to use.

Yes, that's true. I use Define View to turn them off when I'm not
actually using the waypoints at high zoom levels. And I usually
use separate files by local areas so that I only have 15 or so
waypoints active at a time. But of course that wouldn't help if
you had many hundreds of points -- the waypoint files in Define
View/GPX Track are a flat listing in no particular order, so you'd
never be able to find the GPX file you needed.

...Akkana

[Richard Goodwin]

I use the <name> tag for that purpose and it works well. It even 

works for multi-line descriptions. I've been using GPX waypoint files
with <bame> quite a bit in place of user-defined POIs or Favorites.

Multi-line descriptions is an interesting idea - I haven't tried that, but I will do so!

Thanks for the suggestion.

Richard 

[pre...@googlemail.com]

I'm sorry to be slow in responding to these posts. I have been away (in my motorhome). Thank you all for your thoughts.

I agree with Richard that it would be helpful to be able to determine which user-defined categories are displayed, to define different icons for different categories (different colours would be helpful), and to display more than just the 'name' text.

I also would like to be able to link POIs to separate files (additional text, images, pdf files, web pages or whatever types of file the device is capable of displaying).

Hugh

[Andre]

Web pages are possible.  Not sure how (right from the head), but there are a lot of tourist pois with web links. Search the google group.

Op 16 sep. 2013 00:16 schreef <pre...@googlemail.com> het volgende:

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[pre...@googlemail.com]

Thanks, Andre. I'll have a look.

Hugh

[Hardy]

Akkana,

The favorites are kept in the device memory. The favorites.gpx file is only a backup. If you edit it, you have to import it to see the new favorites (on the favorites screen, chose the appropriate "refresh" icon.)

Best, Hardy

[Akkana Peck]

Thanks -- I'd missed that Refresh button. Works great!
That should make it much easier to find waypoints by category.

...Akkana

[pre...@googlemail.com]

I couldn't find any specific advice by googling, but by trial and error I have found that all I need to do is include an extra tag like the following:

<tag k='website' v="www.google.com"/>

On Sunday, September 15, 2013 11:20:35 PM UTC+1, Andre Oid wrote:

[pre...@googlemail.com]

That sounds very interesting, Arkana. When you say that you will use Favorites to find waypoints by category do you mean that you will replace one Favorites file with another when you want to view a different category?

Hugh

[Richard Goodwin]

Thanks for the tip. 

<tag k='website' v="www.google.com"/>

This could be really useful!

Richard

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[Akkana Peck]

I wrote:
> > Thanks -- I'd missed that Refresh button. Works great!
> > That should make it much easier to find waypoints by category.

pre...@googlemail.com writes:
> That sounds very interesting, Arkana. When you say that you will use
> Favorites to find waypoints by category do you mean that you will replace
> one Favorites file with another when you want to view a different category?

No, I just meant that I can use the Favorites screen to view my
Favorites categories and find one specific point, something I can't
do when the points are just waypoints in a track file. With track
files there's no way to find a specific point. For instance, if
it's time to quit sightseeing and go check in to the hotel, I don't
know which of the track points is the hotel, so I would have to keep
tapping until I found it. If it's a Favorite listed under Hotels, I
can find it much more easily.

Though I probably will switch Favorites files for specific trips --
points that are useful on a trip (e.g. hotels) aren't generally useful
after the trip is over, so why keep the favorites file cluttered forever?

I'll still use track files for groups of geographically-close
locations that I want to turn on and off all at once. It's good
to have both options.

...Akkana

[pre...@googlemail.com]

OK. Thanks.

[petr.t...@gmail.com]

I agree with idea that user of the Osmand is able to select which user_defined POIs is selected and showed on map.

I would be very helpfull.

Dne sobota, 7. září 2013 11:25:13 UTC+2 pre...@googlemail.com napsal(a):

[Richard Goodwin]

Yes Please! Yes Please!!

It would be incredibly useful to be able to select the Type(s) of user_defined POIs to be displayed - in the same way that you can for Shops, for example (where you can choose Bakery, Bicycle Shop etc).

At present I have to keep multiple different user_defined POI files in a directory on my tablet and copy them across to the \osmand directory (and stop and re-start Osmand) each time I want to change which one(s) I want to display. This is very tedious.

I have tried several times to get this onto the development roadmap, but I don't think Victor sees it as very important/useful. I think he feels that you can find anything you want using the search and filter functions, but there really is no substitute for displaying a whole set of user_defined POIs of a particular Type.

Richard

[helif...@gmail.com]

Hello all,

 

maybe i'm off topic, but i've been trying to have the favorite's name displayed on screen. you said it only display's name tag, did you meant it diplays it when clicking on it, or at all time? my screen only shows the icon, and no names, unless i click on it...

 

am I missing something? :-)

 

thanks,

chris

[Luciano Afranllie]

I have a similar use case. I am travelling to Europe this year and planned what to visit in each city using google mapsengine. I have created one google map per city and day with all pois I want to visit in that city during that day (if you use google mapsengine pro you can have one map per city with multiple layers or even a single map for all cities).

My goal was to be able to use osmand during my trip being able to display only the pois for the given city and day. So, the feature that I wanted is: as a user I would like to display in map only the pois/favorites with a given category and sub-category (for example madrid - day1 or rome - day2), where both of them are defined by the user (me).

I was investigating basically two options: user defined pois and gpx tracks.

With user defined pois we have the limitations described here, you can only use category = user_defined and filter by one level, you can not choose a  sub-category. So after reading this thread I tried with gpx tracks and I think they solve the problem very well. I created one gpx file per city and day, for example madrid-day1.gpx.

How I did it?

For each city and day (or google mapsengine layer if you prefer)

1 - Export google mapsengine data to kml file (if you use google mapsengine you can have only one layer per map)

2 - Use gpsbabel to create gpx file from kml file

$ gpsbabel -i kml -f madrid-day1.kml -o gpx -F madrid-day1.gpx

3 - Upload gpx file to device

$ adb push madrid-day1.gpx /sdcard/osmand/tracks/

Hope this help.

Regards
Luciano

[Filu]

Hi guys,

Sorry for copypasting my problem all around but I definitely need the answer ASAP.

OSMAND suddenly stopped rendering railway=halt tags using the "train stop" in the transportation menu. It still displays them if I choose to show all transportation POIs but then the screen becomes cramped by all POIs. It still displays railway=station tags. I need to see both halts and stations. So my idea (before they solve the problem?) is to create a custom POI filter which would allow me to see both railway-halt and railway=station POIs. I can't find ANY information how to crearte such file and how to make it work. Can you please help me?

Filu

[Sebastian Spaeth]

Not by copying your posting to 4 threads simultanously...

[Filu]

Thank you, thank you ...

However, I believe it does as topic-related people may get notified by my question and help me.

Filu.