Route planning & sharing

[brown5tick]

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could…

@Oddcomo

…upload the data from my telemetry and gps, and verify it as a route that others can take.

Ideally, it would also let you upload pictures from the route. For example if there is a tough spot in a route, the user can take a picture, upload it you the app and mark exactly where it is located.

It would also be cool to be able to post group rides, and notify regular users of said route that the event it’s going to take place, to encourage interaction

…and if an app could allow you to share your location cos…

@Venom121212

I ride in the boonies sometimes and right around 40mph I sometimes think “if I crashed right now, who would even find me?” and that’s scary.

Meanwhile, fellow forum lurker, @LexHoja, whiles away the dark winter evenings planning marathon esk8 tours for us to ride together. It’s tricky in NL cos it’s illegal to ride PEVs on public roads so you really wanna be careful to avoid built up areas where you’re likely to encounter the cops, who come and try to snatch yo crops/boards.

Come the day, the poor bastard sets off with a sheet of A4 in hand with his route-plan on it. He’s spending his time trying to make sense of his handwriting as the piece of paper flaps furiously in a 50 kph headwind while I follow along carefree in wingman formation, enjoying the Dutch scenery.

There’s gotta be a better way, right?

Looks like there is. Frank suggested the Komoot app, which is a route planning app primarily for hikers and cyclists but which would work perfectly for the likes of us lot as well. Here’s the key features:

• Plan your route by setting waypoints on a map or by searching for locations or points of interest, or…
• Record your route as you ride, or…
• Import GPS data to create a route, or…
• Load up a route that a fellow esk8er has shared with you.
• Review the route for…
  • Road surface suitability!
    e.g. gravel and cobblestones vs. asphalt and paving
  • Distance & incline profiles
    …to help you gauge whether your battery pack is going to make it.
• Apply photos and comments to the route overall and also to specific waypoints/‘highlights’ along the route.
• Get voice navigation prompts during the ride (one-off payment req’d)
• Share live location (monthly payment req’d)

I don’t think you can actively collaborate on specific routes but you can inherit the routes of others and make changes to your own version.

Plotting out my usual route was really straightforward and much more intuitive than doing so in Google MyMaps.

I haven’t used it in the wild yet but it looks really promising. I’m gonna give it a crack this weekend and will let you know how it goes. I’m also interested to know if anyone’s got any other app suggestions that might offer improvements on this.

[rusins]

Oh wow, I really like that I can see your route without needing to log in. This seems great, I’ll try it out as well!

[Evwan]

I use onthegomap.com for group ride planning in the US. it uses Google maps bike friendly.poanning.

[Ariehh]

I use plotaroute.com if I’m planning a route ahead of time, you can even add 1 selectable detour as a free user.

If I can’t decide where I want to go or which route to take I use Createmy.run
You can set the approximate distance you want to ride and also what type of environment (avoid cars, nature). It creates a route that loops back to your starting point with the set distance.

[LexHoja]

Jo ! Great post/thread dude !

I’m back from holiday just now reading up. Did you do any more “testing” with “Komoot” ?

[rpasichnyk]

@brown5tick

Road surface suitability!

One idea is to use IMU / accelerometer in the board / phone to automatically measure surface quality. Less vibrations - better surface.

[davidbonde]

This is a recommendation to use the Komoot app mentioned in this thread.

I’v been searching and testing for a route planner and navigator that’s actually usable.

My needs are:

• A route planner that “knows” all the cycling paths and can prioritise a cycling / skate route.
• Good navigation that works well and doesn’t confuse me too much.

I want to be able to let the app do a quick route for me when on the go, but also be able to plan a route in advance, where I in more details can plan the route to the specific paths and roads I want.

I want to have navigation on the go that is not confusing and that keeps me from constantly pulling out the phone to check if everything is as it should be.

I am locked in the Apple world so something working on iPhone / iwatch / headphones were what I was looking for.

Apple Maps havn’t introduced cycling yet here where I live, so even though Apples navigation seems to work pretty good, it’s not useful for me.

Google maps have been a pretty good planner. Especially in cities. In the country side its not as good as in cities. But the integration to Apple Watch is not working as good as the promise. Actually it have ended up being more problematic to use it than not.

I think I have now fund a good solution. Its the best “system” I have used till now.

I use the Komoot app. It’s pretty comprehensive, and does a good job planning cycle specific routes both on the go from the phone app, and on my desktop planning specific routes.

It have the best integration with Apple Watch I have tried, it seem to only be a little behind Maps use of the Apple Watch.

But only using the watch navigation havn’t been enough for me. It still confused me more often than not. So I had to bite the sour apple and get my self a set of bluetooth EarPods small enough to have inside my helmet.

That did the trick. So my system is:

Phone in the pocket, so it can quickly be pulled out if things fuck up despite watch and EarPods.

Watch on my wrist for tactile and visual turn by turn navigation.

EarPods in ears for audible navigation.

This combo, seems to work pretty good. I just needed a little getting familiar with how the app / navigation did things, and getting used to the every wrong English pronunciation of Danish street names.

It seems that if I only use either visual or audible navigation I fuck up. But those in combination very seldom leaves me unsure of what to do. And if that’s not enough I quickly pull out the phone and get back on track.

When I sometimes miss a turn the audible cues quickly let me know so I can take action. Before I could go long before knowing something was wrong. It have been the constant pulling out the phone to check things, that really have been disrupting the flow of my rides. That have been reduced to a bare minimum now.

Did a 100 km ride a few days back, and only had to pull out the phone three times. That’s pretty good compared to what I have been used to.

The Komoot app have quite a few features to play with when planning a route. Different boxes to check that gives you more or less paved road or gravel. You will find lots of tutorials on youtube

[ablairlamb]

I just downloaded this app to check it out. It has a lot of good rides in my area that I wasn’t even really aware of. I use TrailLink mostly for finding local bike paths and such around here to ride, but this had a fair amount of rides I wouldn’t have thought of. Very cool. I will keep using it to see how I like it. Thanks for the suggestion.

[ShutterShock]

Good shout - I used strava routes before to plan group rides but they don’t offer navigation while on a route

This might be a great option for the nav part