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A new version of our Android app has been released, bringing with it our most-requested feature – waypoint routing!
The full list of new additions is:
Thanks as ever to volunteer Jez Higgins who has done great work on the app. Keep your ideas for new features coming!
This is a guest post from Carlton Reid, executive editor of BikeBiz.com and the editor of BikeHub.co.uk. He writes here about the great new facilities in the Bike Hub app, which uses our routing and OpenStreetMap POIs feed.
The latest version of the Bike Hub cycle satnav app is 2.2; I’m currently testing 3.0, due for release soon. The new version will be packed with extra features, many of them suggested by app users.
I’m conflicted by all the additions. On the one hand I’ve always wanted to keep the app plain, simple, focussed. But users have said they want it to be feature rich.
2.2 – released at the end of October – was enriched with a GPX download feature so plotted routes could be emailed to a user for later use, perhaps in a route visualisation programme, such as Google Earth.
I’ve used this feature a couple of times but it’s not what I’d consider the app’s core function: this core function is to be a cycle-specific satnav. We have also been asked to include other ‘performance monitoring’ features but there are many other apps out there that do this well.
It’s a fine balancing act: making the app feature-rich but not so complex that it becomes hard to use or worse, buggy.
The app is a standard satnav in that it routes from A to B. Version 3.0 adds what could be a world exclusive and that’s A to A routing. This makes the app into a touring tool: arrive at a railway station with your bike, fire up the app to guide you on a three hour trip sticky to country pubs and off you go.
Part of this functionality was added to 2.2. You can navigate to and from Points of Interest: ATMs, places of worship, parks, castles and many other PoIs.
Version 3.0 uses this growing database as a tour suggester.
Also in version 3.0 – and a much requested feature – is dynamic route recalculation. Stray from the route and the app will suggest you make a u-turn. Stray a bit further and the app will create a new route, on the fly. This is standard on car satnavs, and it’s finally on Bike Hub version 3.0, thanks to app coding work from app developer Tinderhouse and routing tweaks by CycleStreets.
Version 3.0 also has tighter integration with CycleStreets, adding a box to input a CycleStreets journey number. This will be useful if you prefer to pre-plan your routes via desktop and then want to transfer the same route to your smartphone.
The most requested feature from users is added in version 3.0. This is map cacheing. Map tiles can be downloaded to a smartphone when in range of wifi or a good 3G signal. Users will still require a phone signal to call down the route from CycleStreets but maps – which can take a while to download in a poor signal area – can now be stored locally. (And deleted later, if wished).
I know I’ll use this feature for cycle tours in Northumberland.
The app has evolved greatly since launch and will continue to evolve, thanks to funding from the Bike Hub levy fund. If you have other features you’d like to see added, get in touch. editor at bikehub.co.uk
Carlton Reid
Jez Higgins is the lead developer of our Android app and has been working on lots of useful new features. He writes:
The new update to the CycleStreets Android app was released to the Android Marketplace this week. If you already have the app installed, it should update itself automatically. If you don’t have it installed, you can read about it in an earlier blog post and download it from the Android Market place here – for free.
This updates adds:
Please do give a review of the app in the Android Marketplace! (Click on ‘User reviews’ then ‘Write a review’).
The Points of Interest menu option brings up the POI selection menu. You can choose as many different categories as you like, and they will be overlaid on the route map.
Tapping on a POI icon brings up a bubble with more information. Tap the icon again to dismiss the bubble, or tab bubble itself to start or end your route at the POI.
You can choose the size of the onscreen icons from the Settings screen.
The Points of Interest facility uses our POIs API available to mobile apps. It’s basically a convenience function replicating the same data in OpenStreetMap. We’ve focussed on practical location types in this app, as our main focus is on everyday, practical journeys.
Every route planned by CycleStreets is given a unique number. Journey number 1332563, for example, guides you from Euston Station to the Natural History Museum. Perhaps you planned a route on the website you now want to open in the app, or maybe someone emailed the route to you? Whereever that number came from the Open route number menu option lets you type it in open the route with the app.
If you’d like to help out with our app, perhaps to add new features, do grab the code and hack away!
Today, we're very pleased to announce the beta mobile web version of CycleStreets – written by me, project-managed by Martin, and funded by Cycling Scotland.
Built in jQuery Mobile and HTML5, this extends CycleStreets' mobile support beyond our well-received Android and iPhone apps to cover other platforms, including iPad and BlackBerry.
Just like the other apps, you can plan cycling routes while out and about, upload photographs you take along the way, and find photos others have uploaded nearby.
The mobile HTML version has an experimental change from the native and desktop CycleStreets. Instead of tapping the map to add a draggable marker, we use fixed crosshairs in the middle of the screen. We hope this makes route planning a little easier, by reducing the possibility of accidental clicks.
Once you have a route planned, it's easy to compare the different journey types that CycleStreets offers – fastest, quietest, or balanced – and see individual turns.
In a somewhat alpha feature (as HTML5 doesn't yet offer brilliant phonecam integration), you can also upload photos you've previously taken of cycling problems nearby. And you can see photos that others have added to CycleStreets.
We automatically save your routes for future reference, and your preferences for cycling speed, route type, and preferred map type – OpenStreetMap, OpenCycleMap, or Ordnance Survey.
For me as a coder, this was pretty much a dream project: a meaningful application, a cutting-edge platform, and a supportive project lead, in the form of Martin, to manage it all.
My goal for the mobile HTML app was to create something easy to use and as accessible as possible – while being realistic about the fact that CycleStreets routing, with its maps and polylines, is inevitably going to work best on a smartphone as a native app.
To that end, technical readers may be interested in the following notes:
This is still very much a beta. However, mobile HTML is a long-term play for CycleStreets, so we expect to add lots of improvements in the coming months and years.
You can help us by trying out the app on your mobile device, and reporting feedback on GitHub issues list. If you're a coder, free to fork the repo (GPLv2) and make improvements.
Happy cycling, and let us know your thoughts on the app.
We'd like to thank Cycling Scotland for a grant to enable this project to come to fruition.
We've added a mini-feature to our website and mobile apps that some regular train-using cyclists may find useful.
You can now enter train station codes (e.g. KGX for King's Cross) in the search box, and the location of that station will be found. It just avoids lots more typing, and is useful if you use particular stations regularly.
We've been able to do this thanks to a dataset on Scraperwiki.
This works in our apps for iPhone, Android and mobile web:
In fact, any app using our geocoder API, such as Bike Hub will pick this up too.
You can also enter these in our preset ("plan a journey to..") URLs too.
For instance, http://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/to/kgx/ will set King's Cross as the destination point.
Or http://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/kgx/wat/ would set the points for King's Cross to Waterloo.
You can read about the many preset URL formats we've set up, which cover postcodes and more.
A new release of our iPhone app is now out. Go to the app store updates page and update today, or download the app if you don't already have it (it's free!).
Version 1.5.1 fixes various reported bugs (including the 'freezing map' bug that affected some installations).
So what's new?
Firstly, we've made various improvements to the itinerary listing page. There are more icons on the listing view to help distinguish the type of paths you'll be cycling on. We've also rearranged the itinerary map view to put the left/right buttons nearer your thumb, and enabled the Photos-en-route to be disabled. In areas like London and Cambridge these sometimes obscured the road names.
We've also added a new feature for Ordnance Survey fans – the OS Street View (open data) map is now available experimentally. You can switch the app over to this OS style (or to OpenCycleMap) on the settings page.
Next, the OpenCycleMap map view works much better. This is the second map option which highlights cycle paths and shows hills.
The app was previously using an older and slower map server (entirely our fault, not Andy who runs it!). We've updated to the recommended server, and ensured that you can zoom all the way in. As a result, OpenCycleMap now loads much quicker and in all its beautifully detailed glory!
Station codes have been added to into the search results – a mini-feature which some people will find useful.
If you take your bike on trains, or perhaps travel to London before hopping on a boris-bike (or indeed now to Newcastle on a ScratchBike!), you can enter the station code (e.g. KGX for King's Cross, CBG for Cambridge), and the app will find that directly. This is particularly useful if you regularly make cycle journeys to/from particular stations.
The full list of changes is:
This update to the app is thanks again to the hard work of Neil Edwards, who has done a few more days' work on it in his spare time. We can really recommend Neil if you need any iPhone app development doing.
The app is open source, and we'd really welcome volunteers to join our team. The code is on GitHub is available, and there are a range of new features and fixes we'd like to add – both small and big. So if you know Objective-C and would like to contribute to an app that's planned over 2 million km of cycle routes, do get in touch. Neil will be doing a tech posting soon, but don't let that hold you up.
Users of other types of phones need not feel left out … Our Android app will see another update soon. And our mobile web site is almost ready for release, meaning Blackberry/Windows/Symbian owners should have access to our routing on the go shortly – stay tuned for a blog post soon.
Jez Higgins is the lead developer of our Android app. Here he writes about getting involved in the project.
Until Christmas last year, I'd never even thought of writing software for an Android phone. Yet within a month of googling "Android development quick start" I was committing code to the CycleStreets Android app. This indicates two things – writing code for Android is pretty easy to get in to, and the chaps at CycleStreets are pretty welcoming.
I don't remember quite how that happened. I'd used the website for a while and probably registered in the back of my mind that an Android app was in the works. When I wanted something more substantial than a toy example to play with, there it was on GitHub just asking to be forked. The basic shape of the code was there, laid down by Theodore Hong and incorporating pieces from Jono Gray's BikeRoute and Christopher Fraser's Cycloid. I made a little change and submitted a patch, something GitHub makes very easy, and that was that.
Because I have a job, and kids, and a dog, and the other joys and encumbrances of modern life I worked on the app in my space in between. Half an hour in the evening perhaps, an hour on the train. Bit by bit, piece by piece, it came together and really quite quickly. Because the heavy lifting of mapping and routing, provided respectively by the osmdroid library and by the CycleStreets website via its API, work could concentrate on wiring things up and making things happen. It wasn't without incident, of course, but the Android platform is well documented and surprisingly few quirks. Most of the time it was more a question of "how do I do this?" rather than "why is this happening?"
The app went live in the Android Market last month. At time of writing it's installed on around 3,250 people's phones. It might not (yet) be the most widely used piece of software I've worked on, but it's by far the most useful, and one of the most fun and satisfying.
If you feel like dipping your toe into Android development but didn't know where to start, come and have go. If you're already swimming around in there, but fancy working on something that really does make a difference to people's lives this could be the project for you.
Jez
We're pleased to announce the launch of our updated iPhone app – version 1.5.
So what's new? Well, it's mainly a tidy-up release (looks prettier!) with a few new features. We've also been getting the app ready so we can add new stuff next.
Download the updated version from the App Store, and please do review the app!
This release has been the hard work of Neil Edwards, who also wrote the great Red Nose Day app earlier this year. Neil's contribution to the CycleStreets project has been tremendous, and his changes set the scene for future improvements.
The top priority feature for our next release will be the ability to switch directly between different route types, e.g. change to fastest route having planned the quietest route. We've added this to our other apps for Android and mobile web (under testing).
If you'd be interested to help develop the code, please do get in touch! Here are the features we'd like to add - can you help?
The itinerary screen is now a bit more helpful, with the route summary shown and walking bits more obvious:
We love Jamie's new icons for the Photomap (which have also been used in our other apps)! :
Settings and saved routes are also improved – and you can see that Shortest route is a new option now available (though in practice the routes are not as usable, since it's not a very clever form of routing – it really is just the shortest route!) :
CycleStreets, providing cycle routing for the UK, is now available on Android – thanks to our new app. Download it from the Android Market now – for free!
Our OpenStreetMap-based routing, for cyclists by cyclists, is now available on the move, complete with full placefinder, tap-to-set and with turn-by-turn directions.
Brought to you by CycleStreets, the UK-based cycle routing people, run on a not-for-profit basis.
Search for CycleStreets in the Android Market, use this link or use this QR code to download it directly:
Plan cycle-friendly routes from A to B anywhere in the UK!
Cycle campaigners will love it too: Photomap photo facility
Part of the development of this App has been funded by Cycling Scotland.
We’d particularly like to thank our great volunteers who have put in an enormous amount of effort: Jez Higgins (our lead developer), Theodore Hong, Christopher Fraser, Jonathan Gray.
CycleStreets for Android is an open source project, and the code is available on GitHub. If you’d like to get involved with the coding to add new features, do get in touch.
The Bike Hub levy -funded smartphone app, which uses CycleStreets routing, will be highlighted in Sense and the City, an exhibition about being "connected & on the move".
A new exhibition at London Transport Museum will explore how people in the past imagined the London of the future and how new technology will influence city living over the next ten years.
"While the urban landscape will look much the same in 2021 as it does today in terms of buildings, transport infrastructure and even vehicles, our ability to sense and connect to all that the city has to offer is about to be transformed by the convergence of data and communication technologies," said a statement from London Transport Museum.
The Sense and the City exhibition will explore the differences this revolution of connectivity, networking, architecture, town planning and energy will make to our lives over the next ten years. The exhibition has been developed in partnership with the Royal College of Arts.
Alongside high-tech vehicles, the exhibition will feature smartphone navigation, including the Bike Hub cycling-specific satnav.
This app allows cyclists to plan cycle journeys and find bike shops while out and about. Bike Hub app is available for iPhone and Android and is free thanks to the Bike Hub levy.
The app, created to steer cyclists away from busy roads, has a full-on 3D map mode and all of the usual satnav info that drivers are used to, but can route on bike paths, bridleways and the Sustrans National Cycle Network.
Sense and the City will be staged in the CBS Outdoor Gallery at London Transport Museum, Covent Garden Piazza, London and will open in July and run until March 2012.
–
Written by Carlton Reid and reproduced with permission.
A project originating from Cambridge Cycling Campaign // Hosting kindly helped by Mythic Beasts
Short link: http://cycle.st/blog/category/mobile/
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