OSMAND_+ and GPX track for the full Francés

[woody66]

Hi !
Well here goes be aware i am no techy( Osmand is so customizable and what it offers me suits me and my visual limitations!)

I use and am accustomed to the way Osmand + functions! (well more or less )

I have Osmand and the Frances on my Tab and it functions OK!
However i want a back up version of the route on my Moto g8.

I think the problem is my phone maybe and my assistive tech but not sure.

I have downloaded all Gpx tracks Spain from the Dutch Fraternity of St James and selected the appropriate track !
(all other tracks are still visible) used them last year and the latest version of the tracks are installed.
Osmand crashes, freezes continually etc and locks up the phone i have sent feedback to them! (also tried basic Osmand same happens)

My question at last!
I have found a Wikiloc track from 2019 for the route so much less for the app to cope with; so do you guys think that will be OK or is it to out of date to use ?
All the best
Woody

 

[wisepilgrim]

1. Beware the Dutch tracks, at least a few a long out of date.
2. Most any track from 2019 would be adequate.
3. Give priority to the arrows an in situ signage.

 

[Flatlander]

Hi !
Well here goes be aware i am no techy( Osmand is so customizable and what it offers me suits me and my visual limitations!)

I use and am accustomed to the way Osmand + functions! (well more or less )

I have Osmand and the Frances on my Tab and it functions OK!
However i want a back up version of the route on my Moto g8.

I think the problem is my phone maybe and my assistive tech but not sure.

I have downloaded all Gpx tracks Spain from the Dutch Fraternity of St James and selected the appropriate track !
(all other tracks are still visible) used them last year and the latest version of the tracks are installed.
Osmand crashes, freezes continually etc and locks up the phone i have sent feedback to them! (also tried basic Osmand same happens)

My question at last!
I have found a Wikiloc track from 2019 for the route so much less for the app to cope with; so do you guys think that will be OK or is it to out of date to use ?
All the best
Woody

If you can master Osmand then you are quite the wizard!

Any track that you download can have any number of issues. I say that not to frighten you but the only route you can guarantee is the one you make yourself.

Have you tried isolating the (Dutch) Frances track from all the others and just saving that (or deleting the others)?

That may solve your problem.

Osmand has a user's forum that may be able to help. It's under the "Help" option on the menu - at the very bottom.

Another problem may be the age/specs of your phone. In that case the problem is a device/software issue.
You may be able to get around that with another app on your phone. I'm sure others can recommend ones best suited for hiking.

If the Wikiloc route "works" on Osmand on your phone then it can be used - with the proviso that you use a bit of common sense. (Same goes for the Dutch route).

Toy way of thinking there is no "one true way" so any gpx track is a guide and nothing more.

Good luck!

 

[dougfitz]

I have found a Wikiloc track from 2019 for the route so much less for the app to cope with; so do you guys think that will be OK or is it to out of date to use ?

There is always the prospect that track information becomes outdated, as @wisepilgrim has already noted, and having a GPS track is never going to be a complete replacement for maintaining good situational awareness and keeping an eye on where the markings might be taking a different direction.

Depending on what maps you have downloaded, OSM maps already have a layer with the major walking and cycling routes through Europe, which can be turned on in the configuration menu. I found this aligned pretty consistently with the track markings on the CP this year. Sometimes it was obvious why the waymarkings had taken a new route, eg to avoid a long section of road, but not always.

Like you, I had a variety of GPS tracks from different sources. Yes, there were small discrepancies between them, like small differences about what roads to take through some towns and villages. Not enough, though, to make me think they weren't useful.

If you are prepared for this dissonance, I think you would be fine using whatever sources you can get your hands on.

My big worry would be the erratic behaviour of your phone using OSM. I use OSMand+ on both my phone and tablets (all Samsung) and have never seen this happen.

 

[woody66]

There is always the prospect that track information becomes outdated, as @wisepilgrim has already noted, and having a GPS track is never going to be a complete replacement for maintaining good situational awareness and keeping an eye on where the markings might be taking a different direction.

My big worry would be the erratic behaviour of your phone using OSM. I use OSMand+ on both my phone and tablets (all Samsung) and have never seen this happen.

Hi Dougfitz!
Thanks for the reply and help.
I have installed the Wikiloc track and so far so good; i have also added my bookings to the track up to Estella from there i will hopefully wing it the rest of the way!

My tab is a Galaxy A8 inch and is fine my phone is almost new and a moto g8 i upgraded from moto g6 just over a month ago!

I do think it might be the phone and yes i don't want it to fail but it is backup and my tab has a sim slot.

In normal circumstances your advice to keep an eye on the signs is obvious but my reliance on the phone tab and assistive tech is my lifeline as i have very limited vision and miss loads. (get confused where i live )
I spotted my first sign on the Coastal in Viana do Castelo ha !ha! that's why i chose the Coastal as my first Camino sea on the left cant get lost well i did quite a lot.
On the VE last year i went astray as well as my tabs voice navigation took a while to tell me i had gone wrong (signs there were smaller than the size of ginger nut biscuit stuck on a stick)
At the moment i am tentatively hoping just having the one track on the phone it will remain stable.
All the best
Woody

 

[Rick of Rick and Peg]

On the VE last year i went astray as well as my tabs voice navigation took a while to tell me i had gone wrong

You could run the OSMand app on a track to get voice navigation but also run the Wikiloc app on the same track to get an earlier notification that you have veered off the track. I recently posted instructions on how to get Wikiloc to give you that notification. See

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/re-educating-myself-with-wikiloc.76698/#post-1074459

 

[dougfitz]

In normal circumstances your advice to keep an eye on the signs is obvious but my reliance on the phone tab and assistive tech is my lifeline as i have very limited vision and miss loads. (get confused where i live )

I can see that would make things more difficult for you.

There is a route planning function in OSMAnd+ that I have used quite successfully on my phone that allowed me to build a daily route for each walking day on the CP this year. If you haven't already used this, it is in the menu screen as Plan route, and opens up with three planning options and a list of most recently edited routes.

I start a new route by placing the 'dot' over wherever I am starting the day. This might not be directly on one of the marked routes, such as when I stayed somewhere slightly off the marked track. I then get the route back onto the marked track, and then follow that so that I am close to where I want to end up that day. When you are planning the route, you can change between different routing options. I tend to use either straight line joins or the walking option. I will flick back to the straight line mode if the walking option gives me an unusual result because the underlying mapping doesn't have a more direct walking join, and wants to send you around the roads even though you think there should be a walking track available.

It might appear a bit fiddly at first, but it shouldn't take you long to get the 'finger' skills to get the dot onto track you want to follow.

Once you save this route, you can then find it when you want to start walking and set it as the route you want to follow. This works best if you are using the Walking profile. I know I set OSMAnd+ to default to the Browse profile, and needed to change that before I started walking. This makes sure that if you go off track at any point, it will offer you the shortest walking route to get back on track.

Once I knew where I was going to stay, I would then adjust the end point on the route for that day to take me to that place. I did this a couple of different ways, depending on how I got the location details for the end point. Most of the time I was able to find a location on Gronze, and copy that into OSMAnd+ and drop a marker there. If the marker was before the end point, I would remove points from the end of the route until it was near the marker, then add the marker as the new end point. Otherwise I would add the marker as the new end point, and add any new points that I needed to make sense of navigating to this point.

I initially built the routes for the whole CP based on my initial plan, and then adjusted the start and end points for each day based on what I had actually done, where I was staying and what adjustments I had made to the plans for the next few days. It quickly became part of my evening routine to keep my planned routes up to date and align the plan with reality.

 

[woody66]

Doug and Rick big thankyou for the effort to help!
I will do my best to follow both pieces of advice given by you guys!
The more options i can use to improve my ability to help myself and be independent on Camino the better!!
All the best
Woody