User:Indomapper

Hi!

I'm indomapper, I've been using OSM since 2007. I started actively mapping Semarang, my home city in Indonesia from scratch since February 2008, mainly by tracing Yahoo! Aerial Imagery using Potlatch. During my almost yearly visits to Indonesia, I went everywhere carrying a gps logger while taking pictures of street names using my Nikon D70, downloaded the data to my laptop , edited it using josm, and uploaded the result to OSM almost everytime I got internet connection.

Tools

• Garmin Etrex Legend HCx

  A long time I've been contemplating on buying a Garmin. I always postpone it since none of it's type meets my expectation. The Venture HC has a short battery life, no external memory, but falls into my price range. The Legend and Vista were out of my budget reach. Last week I finally decided to get the Legend HCx, and I think I chose the correct one. Venture's 24 MB would never be enough for me (and OSM maps), Vista's barometer and compass calibration would be too much for me.

  The Legend has about the same sensitivity as the Holux, which is very good. I've been training my left hand to use it (I would really love a right hand version :-)). Until yesterday it's unclear to me that I really need to buy a MicroSD card to transfer map to this device. Finally I went to the Garmin homepage and found out that it has no internal memory. I thought it should have the same 24 MB as the non X ones, where it saves those tracks, base maps, and waypoints.

  Well I like this thing, it's small enough I always have it with me. Let's see how far it will support me with all the mappings and travelling.

  My Garmin survived a ~1.5 meter fall, stood 2 days of Indonesian heat on the car dashboard. This is a very reliable device.

• Holux M241 GPS logger

  I bought this little but very practical and useful device before I left for Indonesia in May 2008. I used it to record my travel in Jakarta, Surabaya, Semarang, Yogyakarta, and lot's of intercity roads. I even took it with me while hiking the Gedong Songo, a temple ruins in Bandungan, near Semarang. It has a good accuracy and good enough battery life, and is very sensitive. I left it in Indonesia in the hand of a good friend, which will continue travelling with it, and send me the data regularly for further processing and upload to OSM.

• Nokia E61 with navibe bluetooth receiver

  On this smart but slow phone, I experimented with TrekBuddy. I planned to use this combination to collect more gps data during my next visit to Indonesia June 2008. I also want to port pyroute to this platform (PyS60), so that at least a kind of free routing software is available for Indonesia.

• Asus MyPal A730 with RoyalTek RBT-1000

  I used this combination for writing a map viewer application using .NET stack. Discontinued due to broken hardware.

• Sharp Zaurus SL-5000G with GPS-CF-Card from Holux and external antenna (my first GPS gadget)

  I used this since 2003 to experiment writing automatic map creator application using python and sqlite. I also used this with zGPS to collect data during my visit to Indonesia. I had to write my own small C++ app with the help of zGPS author, to extract the data from the propietary format to a simple list of gps coordinates. Unfortunately the result is somehow chopped. But in March 2008 I was able to load the data into josm, after converting it to GPX using GPSBabel. And the data match perfectly with my work tracing Semarang roads from Yahoo! Aerial Imagery using potlatch. That's really awesome. That's the point where I gained confidence that Yahoo! Aerial Imagery is well calibrated, and I went on completing Semarang's map in OSM.

Mapping Progress

August 2009

• During this visit to Indonesia I was equipped with a Garmin Etrex Legend. It proved to be very useful in combination with the Indonesia map from www.navigasi.net.
• Road to Jepara from Demak and Kudus are now there, also the ferry route Jepara - Karimun Jawa, and some roads in Karimun Jawa.
• Added some names to the islands in Karimun Jawa
• Added lots of new streets in Jogja, Semarang, Purworejo, Salatiga, bypass Purworejo - Jogja. Also a lot of POIs in those cities.

July 2008

• I started a project to create an online routing application, based on OSM. So this should also work for Indonesia. Actually this is what I initially have in mind. The routing logic comes from Pyroutelib2, written by ojw. The web interface is from OpenLayers. And I'm using AppEngine from Google which provide limited website and database for free. It's now live at http://openstreetrouting.appspot.com

June 2008

• I was physically in Indonesia for 3 weeks, and equipped with a gps logger
• extended the tollway in Jakarta, and also some streets
• added lots of roads in Semarang, Surabaya, Surakarta, and Yogyakarta
• added intercity roads between Surabaya and Semarang, and Semarang to Yogyakarta

May 2008

• completing some intercity roads in Central Java with the help of gps tracks from navigasi.net
• added small city names in central Java.

April 2008

• added more residential roads and buildings in Semarang
• traced coastline between Semarang and Surabaya

  After I traced Semarang's coastline, mapnik has trouble rendering the sea north of Java in bigger zoom levels, so I extendeded the coastline to Surabaya. On some areas, clouds hindered the view, so it may not be very accurate.

• extended my chopped gps tracks between Semarang and Surabaya by tracing Yahoo! Aerial Imagery
• started this mapping progress log