OMN (Yet Another Post-Viewranger Navigation app thread)

[Dave Barter]

I am also looking at:-

- adding alternatives to a route, sometimes I'm not sure if a path will go so want a backup
- a segments database so you can make routes from segments you've done before
- alerts for when you are getting close/riding away from a waypoint
- road closed warnings

It's all in R&D at the moment so don't hold you're breath ;-)

Dave, just take a year off work to develop it

That would make for a desperately sad and boring book....

[thenorthwind]

Bit of an update...

Over the last couple of weeks I've reluctantly defaulted to using OA. A lot of that is because of the option of Harvey's maps while I'm doing Wainwrights, but being able to quickly plan a route online and then sync it to my nav phone, and backed up to my main phone, usually last minute as I'm rushing out the door is too convenient to ignore. I haven't had problems with stability or battery life, so that may have been a blip - I wouldn't have the confidence to use it for multi-day stuff, but when I'm just out for the day, it still seems like my best option at the moment

I had another go with Topo GPS on a road ride at the weekend, but discovered a couple of quite significant flaws, for me. I splurged a whole £3.29 on the world OSM pack, and then found that the downloads are huge. I tried to download an area maybe 25x40 miles of my local area covering my 3 hour ride, and the download was something like 8Gb - this seems hugely excessive for vector mapping, or even raster. As usual, I was doing this at the last minute, and I downloaded about 2% before I realised it wasn't going to happen, so switched back to OA. The equivalent download on OA was about 50Mb.

It also appears that there's no way to access routes you've plotted or recorded, or maps purchased, even in the same app on a different device. They seem to tout this, and the lack of any sort of account as a privacy feature, but it's just a pain, and means if I want to have the maps I've already purchased on my main phone as a backup, I have to buy them again. And manually exporting, transferring and importing GPXs is a bit of a pain.

I emailed their support about both of these issues a couple of days ago, but haven't had a response yet (not unreasonable, but OA and OMN have been more responsive in that department).

[thenorthwind]

Just in case anyone found OMN useful, they're offering half price subscriptions at the moment (£18) with the code PP50.

[thenorthwind]

Here we are again...

Several instances of OA losing a recorded track, losing the position signal (big straight lines in a recorded track), and p***-boiling sluggishness in the interface got me back to looking for an alternative before I ended up shelling out more cash for this least-worst option.

I (re-)found Memory Map. It's been around for forever and a day, originally as a Windows program. I remember a mate using it on a netbook (remember them) for greenlaning. I think there's been an app for a while, but last year they re-organised it, and there's now one cross-platform "app", the somewhat clunkily-named "Memory Map for all", available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and even Linux.

I'm starting to try it out, and it looks pretty promising...

OS maps are the default. Obviously you have to pay for this (apart from the 250k "road atlas" which is gratis): 50k and 25k are available separately, but quite expensively. There's a "Platinum bundle" which has both, plus OS Street Map, which looks a bit like an A-to-Z (remember them?), currently on sale at £25 (pretty reasonable), but usually £40 (steep in comparison to the same data through other apps, but probably worth it for a well-developed service).

OSM or similar alternatives don't seem to be available. You can import your own maps, or even calibrate an image, if you want to go full full map nerd, but you have to pay for the Pro service to access that ($20/year).

Map downloads are pretty straightforward. In fact, in theory you don't really have to think about it since it caches what's shown on the screen and that's supposed to be kept when you go offilne. You can also force it to download mapping for a route, or an area (by drawing a route around that area), and there's a "bulk download" tool that I'm yet to investigate.

The UI initially seemed quite clunky, with Windows XP vibes, but I'm finding my way around it pretty quickly. I used it on a short ride today, and track logging worked well. Battery use was fine. There's a separate logging screen for distance, time, etc., but there also seems to be a second map screen with some basic info (e.g. distance) overlaid. They've clearly been careful not to unnecessarily obscure the map on a small screen. My most favouritist thing is that you can zoom in and out using the volume up/down buttons, which is massively helpful when wearing gloves, which I am from about September to May; I've always though that was an obvious feature, but this is the first app I've seen that implements it.

Another feature of the "for all" era is a cloud service. It's pretty basic, but I prefer that to OA and even VR which seemed to be trying to be a social network. You can sync routes and tracks to your account, and then to other devices. You can also see them if you sign in on the website, but it's just a list - you can download a GPX, but you can't actually see it on a map. There seems to be some basic organisation with "categories" which I haven't tried yet. The main sticking point here is that "Cloud Sync" is a paid extra at $10/year or $20 for Pro, as above, otherwise you're limited to 2Mb of data and 10 syncs a month. However, you also get it with the £40/£25 Platinum OS map package. It also says that having more than 2Mb of data synced to a device will "quite severely degrade" performance of the app, which is a bit of a bummer considering I have 227Mb (which is loose change in 2024 terms, surely?) of tracks, and apparently I'm paying for this feature. There's something about an archive too, so need to see how that works.

Anyway, so far so good, and I'll probably buy a subscription to this while it's a reasonable price, despite my OA subscription having another 4 months to run.

[Lazarus]

Been using mm on my phone ( and yet never knew about the volume.trick ).and laptop for a ayear or so. No issues to report, but I don't record on it., jus5 look at where I am. It zooms.super fast but maps are on the phone (1:25 were too big for the phone I used when I bought ). Now using a waterproof Samsung.s21fe

I have a lifetime sub as countryside does not change much IME( my 15 year old garmin os occasionally.emcounters new estates on the road but never had a problem off road). Works out cheaper but obviously not updated.

Given all the gripes about OS app and not getting to paid maps I am not sure why its not everyone's default tbh.

They do deals about 2-3 times a year and whilst I have the 1:50 I wish I had bought the 1:25

Edit you get it for 5 devices so can download at your house to.a friends phone or laptop BUT the device MUST never contact.wi fi or data etc as they MAY pick up on this. Only useful if you have an airplane mode phone simply.for.bike gpx duties

[fatbikephil]

Timely Dave as I was looking at that given that OS want £35 for a subscription this year - up £10 and still not fixed any of the issues I emailed them about several times.
MM looks good but no aerials which are useful for ground proofing trails
Hmmm.....

[voodoo_simon]

Timely Dave as I was looking at that given that OS want £35 for a subscription this year - up £10 and still not fixed any of the issues I emailed them about several times.
MM looks good but no aerials which are useful for ground proofing trails
Hmmm.....

I think OS are charging faithful customers less for renewal, think it may be £28ish if that helps

[fatbikephil]

Timely Dave as I was looking at that given that OS want £35 for a subscription this year - up £10 and still not fixed any of the issues I emailed them about several times.
MM looks good but no aerials which are useful for ground proofing trails
Hmmm.....

I think OS are charging faithful customers less for renewal, think it may be £28ish if that helps

Yeah I saw that. TBH I was thinking of telling them to poke it even if it was £25 again...

[thenorthwind]

Good to know John.

Yeah, I saw there's a perpetual licence option - currently £125 for all the OS maps. Normally I'd rather buy outright than subscribe, but it's a fairly big chunk upfront, and while MM has been around forever, and hopefully will continue to be, there's always a risk (see also perpetual licences purchased for VR. Once bitten, twice shy). You'd also have to pay extra for cloud sync if you wanted that. And while you're right, in most of the areas relevant to us, there's very little change, it seems a bit bonkers to not ne using the latest data. Besides, a subscription model with a reasonable charge seems like a good way of supporting sustainable development.

Agreed about the OS app... seems like a lowest common denominator: it's just about good enough for most people, and it's popular because it's the official app. There always seems to be an offer on it... I'm sure I saw recently they were offering a year for £12 and you could "stack" it with your current sub if you had one... did I imagine that?

Yeah, being able to swap back and forth with Google satellite photos was a useful feature of VR. It seems like a bit of an open goal to pull free map/satellite data (OSM, Google, etc.), but perhaps I'm underestimating what's involved.

[Lazarus]

Re perpetual licence you really only need either 1:25 or 1:50 ( which makes it cheaper) no real point having botit seems a bit bonkers to not ne using the latest data.
]Mountains and roads don't really change much over time. Would be interesting to see what OS updates each year but I bet ( off road) it's not significant and would be vwry hard to find with a manual search.. I would happily use the old garmin ones tbh.
Only errors I have ever encountered (2005 vintage OS IIRC) were doing a road lejog and it was easy to resolve. ( both were down south, new build estates that changed the road)
YMMV
Deals work out about £40 and £80 ish (50 and 25 respectively).

[thenorthwind]

I would feel quite restricted not having access to both 50k and 25k. The detail of the 25k (particularly fencelines) is indispensable for mountain biking IME. The 50k less so, but once you zoom out so far, the 25k becomes a bit useless and you get a much better idea of the lay of the land from the 50k.

But absolutely YMMV as you say.

[Itchynuts]

I've been reading the comments about mapping/navigation software because I have a bit of a map fetish and generally like to try new stuff to see how it compares with
my goto route planning and navigation software.

No one has mentioned OziExplorer which is a bit of a surprise so I will mention it now.

The bad news first.
Getting hold of maps for Ozi has been a trial.
You have to have the PC version which is expensive and then the mobile (Android version) costs extra.

It started out as a PC based planning/navigation tool about 10 years before smartphones were thought of. In those days hand held GPS units were primitive by todays
standards and a good one could set you back £500 to £700!

It was based around the idea of scanning paper maps, calibrating them (a bit nerdy but easy once the instructions have been followed once or twice) and then using
these maps in the PC version to produce waypoints and routes and then printing a paper version with all the info in place. Plus sending it to the primitive gps.

The good news.
There is a free unrestricted version of the software available. (If I remember rightly it puts a watermark onto the maps but otherwise all its features can be tested/tried out.

Once paid for, you own it. There is no annual charge, no nag screens, no adverts.
Updates are free. I have been getting free updates for 22 years so far.
An Android version was produced a few years ago so now it works on Android smartphones and tablets if they have a gps chip. Tracks and waypoints can be exported or
imported PC to Android or Android to PC.
It can import and export gpx files for receiving from or sending to Garmins and the like and also kml files for Google Earth.

Tracks can be shown at any thickness, any colour, solid, dots, dashes whatever. Several can be shown on the same map with different colours if required.

Good OS based 1:25000k maps are now available in Ozi format from here :-
http://www.the-thorns.org.uk/opendata/ozi.html
(I only found this site recently - Reasonable prices and again, you own the maps - no annual charge)
MOBAC (Mobile atlas creator) had its map sources severely restricted a few years ago but can still produce Open Streetmap based maps in Ozi format.

I realise this post has become a major OziExplorer rant and will point out that I am a long time Ozi user but have no affiliation with them or any other mapping
company. I also play with Memory Map occasionally because I have an old copy from the days when you bought maps on CDROM. It is not in the same ballpark as Ozi as far
as features are concerned.

End of rant. I hope this info is useful to someone.

[thenorthwind]

Interesting. 22 years you're probably pretty familiar with it now then

I'd check it out further, but I'm having quite a good time with Memory Map. I went ahead and bought a year's "Platinum" licence (all OS maps + cloud sync), which turned out to be £30... £25 is ex VAT I'd even clicked through previously and noted the £0.00 sales tax line, which is updated when you actually pay Even so, it doesn't seem like a bad price.

The app is really impressive. Very stable, very reliable. I discovered just how deeply customisable the display is too. You can make different screens with maps, data, or a combination, and arrange it exactly as you like it. Nerd heaven.

My only real gripe so far is that you have to manually switch between 25 and 50k OS. You can set it to change the scale when you zoom, but that only seems to work when you zoom out; it doesn't matter how far you zoom in, it doesn't change to 25k.

The route plotting seemed a bit clunky when I briefly tried it, but there's plenty of other tools out there for that anyway.

[fatbikerbill]

This might sound odd but I'd be interested to know how you are using your phone based apps when out and about.

Info like:
Is it in airplane mode
Do you have a separate device for phone calls
Do you use a walking/cycling device as well.

For me, I moved from an etrex to a garmin 830 and that is my primary on bike navigation tool, mainly with a preloaded gpx route/course/track. I find the garmin upload process very easy (nowadays).

My android phone mapping app is BCN but that is not navigation. The phone is kept in airplane mode on longer trips and is only used to refind myself or that path. I would not a phone out on my cockpit and like it tucked away warm and safe. The garmin is good, once loaded, for 95% of situations.

Phone route creation I have started using FatMap. This is pretty good and also is a reasonable navigation tool. It is free with a Strava subscription. No idea, sorry, if you are not a Strava fanboy.

FatMap has OS maps, offline caching but one really great bonus it has French IGN and other topo maps.

[Lazarus]

I have a gamin 530 on the bar and a phone ( sometimes my actual phome sometimes my gpx only phone in airplane mode as no sim in it.anyway ) depending on what i am doing.

I tend to not like using my own phone as its needed in an emergency but also dislike taking two phones so flip flop.with no over riding principle.
Only recently got a waterproof phone for personal use so this conudruum.is fairly new and used to have a sperate phone as well.


I agree a garmin is perfect most of the time but if making a decision, or its telling me i am.off course i find it best to check on an actual OS map. Getting it out from its safe warm place can be a faff . My phone is between the two loops of a jones bar so would need to land upside down and hit a rock that cleared between the bars . It could happem but its quite unlikely. I dont tbink a phine is any more likely to get damaged than a garmin ( much more of a concerm if its your emergency communication device as well ).

[thenorthwind]

Doesn't sound odd at all.

Is it in airplane mode
Do you have a separate device for phone calls
Do you use a walking/cycling device as well.

Yes.
Yes.
No.

I have a separate phone I use only for navigation mounted on the bar. I've used this setup for years without issue (aside from Viewranger being discontinued!).

[Lazarus]

My only real gripe so far is that you have to manually switch between 25 and 50k OS.

As.you can have more than one map screen can you not have 1:25 on one screen and 1:50 on the other ? Is that what you mean by manual switch?( considering getting 1:25 now DAMN YOU)
MM is ok on the computer but others are better.

[thenorthwind]

My only real gripe so far is that you have to manually switch between 25 and 50k OS.

As.you can have more than one map screen can you not have 1:25 on one screen and 1:50 on the other ? Is that what you mean by manual switch?

I was doing it by going to the map "library" and selecting the other one, but I kinda realised while I was out today (when I did it by accident) that you could have different screens with different maps like you say, which would be a bit better.

DAMN YOU

You're welcome

[fatbikephil]

Download maps of route onto phone, use as a way of ad-hoc route planning on the hoof as it has a big screen - this is without the GPS switched on. Garmin dakota does nav duties although in theory the phone is back up but gawd help me if I had to rely on it. (Although increasingly I'm navigating by memory - must ride some new places this year)

Hence my beef with the OS app - downloading maps takes an eternity and often several attempts - it's clearly geared to hill walkers only looking to download a small area - may as well use a paper map! Plus opening maps you have downloaded is glitchy, with the thing crashing continuously. The last time I tried I could only get it to display a map by switching on data which defeats the object of the exercise....

[Lazarus]

MM lifetime for is full uk on phone memory. Zero glitches( not had one issue personally ) and can zoom in or out to full uk seemlessly. Never tried to plot a route on the phone* but have used it for diversions etc when needed

* quick attempt says ok for following it on phone( hard to be very accurate ) but would not want to send it to a garmin ( as it would say off course constantly )