StreetComplete: Easy to use editor of OpenStreetMap data | Hacker News Reader

StreetComplete: Easy to use editor of OpenStreetMap data

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434 pointsrjzzleep49 comments

If you like Street Complete, please consider sponsoring it on Libera Pay [0], Github Sponsors [1], or Patreon [2]. For the last year, it was funded by OSMF by a grant to help develop alternative OSM editors. This grant has come to an end so they no longer have funding other than donations.

[0] https://liberapay.com/westnordost

[1] https://github.com/sponsors/westnordost

[2] https://www.patreon.com/westnordost

To be more exact, OSMF funding was 3000 euro ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Microgrants/Microgrants_... )

There was also funding from The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research "between 09.2020 and 02.2021" https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete#sponsors

(I am one of contributors, and small part of my work was also grant-supported by NLnet foundation - I also definitely encourage to consider sponsoring the app author)

(Author here:) I got many emails about new patrons/sponsors yesterday and was astonished where this was all coming from, now I know!

Thank you for posting this and thank you all for your support! This helps me a lot to find the time to maintain the app, in general a kind of work that I think is often underestimated, also in terms of time invested.

For example, Google recently kicked the app out of their app store for spurious reasons so I had to act quickly to get it back ASAP. I kept track of the issue (and am still updating it, it's not over yet) here:

https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/2909

This may be an interesting read and shed some light on how the Google Play Store team works and handles policy violations and appeals.

I think anybody developing open source / collaborative commons software that targets non-technical users could learn some tricks from streetcomplete. It has managed to lower barriers to entry and seems to get many people engaged in what is quite a technical area. Some UI expert might be better able break it down but here is my braindump of some key factors:

* at a basic level, generally smooth handling of drawing of a legible map and basic UI functions (esp. compared with some other foss openstreetmap apps, no need to name names :-)

* considerably narrows down the map editing options. by presenting controlled choice lists the novice editor feels "safe"

* uses simple and innocent gamification (scoreboards, "unlocking" websites etc)

There are ofcourse glitches and indeed a keen openstreetmap enthousiast may "outgrow" it relatively quickly but assuming the devs get further support and build on the initial success it could be a reference point for highly usable open source apps targeting larger audiences

> There are ofcourse glitches

If you notice something not covered by existing https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues - feel free to report it.

Some glitches in map rendering are https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es/ bugs, but in the worst case issue will be transferred/closed.

I can recommend installing this and opening it while you are bored on a walk somewhere through your city. The questions are very well phrased, come with intuitive pictures to help you answer.

I'm not sure how useful the edits are in practice but I've contributed hundreds of questions about wheelchair-accessible sidewalks, street lighting etc and hope that this is helping some people make better navigation decisions.

> I'm not sure how useful the edits are in practice

It depends on who you ask!

For me, things like opening hours or paid parking indications are very helpful.

My girlfriend was doing some running training a while ago and in summer during the day it can be quite hot. But at night, how do you know which roads are lit if you want to plan your route ahead of time to have the right distance? Easy: OSM has the data, OsmAnd and others can display it... except our area had almost no coverage at all. StreetComplete made it super easy for me to map that, so now it's there. She stopped running in the meantime but... hopefully the next person can make use of it, the data is there to stay :)

For the wheelchair questions, there is of course another audience that might like to plan routes without finding inaccessible steps in the middle.

I can also imagine if you drive trucks, having good weight/width/height limit data is also useful. Right now I think this data is quite incomplete (though I didn't do a comprehensive study) and I have no idea what those companies use instead (maybe they just drive a route before sending trucks down it?), but at some point a free worldwide uniform dataset is going to be easier than whatever they use now.

> She stopped running in the meantime

Made me laugh!

Thanks a lot for sharing. These are all great usecases and it is good to hear people make use of that. I didn't have the need for it, and while I can see the intrinsic value in having this data widely available in OSM the fact people do actually use it for something makes it more "real"!.

In addition to the wheelchair ramp example, there are a few navigation apps for people who are blind which use OSM data - crucially features like tactile paving and crosswalks with voice prompts:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_for_the_blind

StreetComplete can create Notes, too. [edit] I think that's default when a question cannot be answered.

For those not aware: On https://www.openstreetmap.org/ you can leave comments on the map, so called Notes (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes). It's like bug reports but on a map, with comment thread. Local mappers look at those. Or that is the idea, I've seen notes open years and others resolved within hours.

The answers with new information are useful for local mappers, even "this shop no longer exists" answer (examples https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2659780 , https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2641050) when asked about opening times. Many notes need a local mapper to verify (visit the place, find secondary information).

Notes also come from other services that make use of OSM data, like MapsMe. There are lots of them.

Correction: MapsMe → Organic Maps

I prefer Organic Maps too, but it isn't incorrect to state that MapsMe "makes use of OSM Data".

No need for that correction. The issue is that while MapsMe got sold to a dodgy company and now has some respectable FOSS forks, the Notes layer on OSM is still full of notes that were created from Maps.me over the last several years and clearly state that.

Amazon uses it for deliveries and also contributes to OSM.

> I'm not sure how useful the edits are in practice

Heavily depends on a question, some are quite niche.

But even backrest quest has some use - thanks to it I detected and deleted some no longer existing benches.

See comments in https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/blob/master... and below for some additional context.

And note that some not-yet-used data will be more likely to become used as OSM coverage improves!

The recent update which re-architected the internal systems was a great improvement for my uses of the app, based on a few minutes of testing at least. Very nice to be able to immediately put in the house number after choosing that a building is a house.

- 7876 contributions over the last few years, #19 rank in USA and #248 globally

Just out of curiosity, how quest-less is your vicinity? Because for the village I live in there's almost nothing left by now and I had to resort to micro-mapping street lights, hedges, fences, walls, trees, entrances, building/roof colors and materials, etc. when outside, instead of using StreetComplete.

(I'm only #263 in Germany and #714 globally, though.)

It's a really great gateway into OSM, I have to admit. Even though my previous work had to do with maps and I've had an OSM account since then, I've never mapped gain after the first few changesets until I found StreetComplete this winter.

I once added a bench to OSM just to see how the process works, and it all feels pretty tedious, specially when you want to update it in order to add some properties.

There's the Android app OSM Go! nowadays (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm_Go!), made by a French developer so it might have some local bias, but it's the easiest app I've seen to add point-based POIs, like trash cans, shops, playgrounds, billboards, etc. It's not perfect (some templates miss optional properties), but it enables adding POIs in a few seconds, so you can do it while walking.

Note that the link is supposed to include the "!". It's at https://osmgo.com.

This seems to be unrelated to another thing called OSM Go at https://osmgo.org, and on the same wiki at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_go

Not confusing at all!

I have lived in a lot of different places over the past three years so have improved each area as I pass through. Now where I am settled down most of the city's buildings aren't even traced so there is a lot to do. I'm busy with substantial home improvement projects for probably the rest of the year but I will get to it eventually.

> Just out of curiosity, how quest-less is your vicinity?

I have still thousands, maybe tens of thousands quests within walking range. Despite systematic use of StreetComplete for a long time.

But I live in a city that is well mapped in OpenStreetMap - Kraków, Poland https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/50.0621/19.9431

How did you find your ranking?

Shows up in [Hamburger menu] > [My profile].

Great app :). I recommend it to my friends to introduce them to OpenStreetMap. Ease of use, good UX/UI is a game changer.

Those things matter a lot but most OSM Editors/Maps suck in this area. Usually it's caused by a design made by developers for other superusers.

Like this lots. Best thing is the can't answer buttons. Need a name for that feature. The number of times I have aborted a form because some incompletable entry is "required" is almost certainly an unreported stat :)

Hats off, top tool.

Does anything similar exist for iOS?

It doesn't seem like it, no. The sheer number of custom UI things (basically a well-designed custom UI for each and every question that can be answered) is probably the most challenging aspect to redo on another platform. And that's precisely the part that makes StreetComplete so good. I often edit with Vespucci as well when outside, but for the things that SC covers, I don't even bother fiddling with the tags, as long as I know the feature will generate a SC quest.

Not really. I'm a very happy user of Go Map!! for iOS, which is a much more full-featured map editor but doesn't have the streamlined workflow of StreetComplete.

That’s interesting. Go Map!! is the only OSM editor for iOS I know about, but even moving an existing street a few yards left or right is an almost impossible chore in it…

When it comes to that sort of fine tuning, there's no substitute for JOSM, which is the all-powerful java-based desktop editor with a hundred plugins and a somewhat inscrutable UI. But it's great because it can load several sources of aerial imagery at the same time, and quickly cycle between them or set transparency levels. This gives good perspective when it comes to precise alignment of map features to imagery, and to each other.

The project is looking for help porting it to iOS: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/1892

Some preparations and refactorings were already done in anticipation, but there's still a lot left to do.

As an avid contributor to OSM I must say that I am impressed.

It is an excellent tool for normal users, I would need to check what it suggests in areas that are not well mapped (my surroundings only miss some unimportant elements)

Is there a way to add elements to the map, such as a missing store, a one-way road, a construction work blocking the street...? Basically, to create new bubbles from a limited subset; or to classify notes by (a limited subset of) its possible type of street elements.

This would make this app a perfect entry-level editor to contribute on poorly mapped areas. Other editor apps are too complex for that, but this one feels somewhat limited without a possibility to add freeform content, not just following exisitng prompts.

OSM Contributor (android) is quite good for the set of POIs it supports. I believe Go map! is the go-to on iOS.

There are also imagery capture apps (Mapillary, Kartaview, etc) which allow you capture a lot of data on the ground and then process it later (either yourself or by utilising other members of the community).

OSM Go! (Android app) allows adding point-based POIs, so mostly stores (if you point to the entrance) and fixtures, not so much path-based things (e.g. crosswalks, which are bound to a path). But it's quite easy in my opinion, and offers several templates. It's open source (on GitHub) even though not on F-Droid, so you have to use Google Play to install it.

If you want the ability to do full editing on the go, then Vespucci (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.blau.android/) provides the ability to edit, on Android devices, everything you can edit with the desktop OSM editors.

You can't do those things with StreetComplete, but you can add notes which other editors can -- and in my own experience, will -- address.

I find it puzzling how random OSM things go to the top of HN on a seemingly monthly basis. I imagine some vast conspiracy network promoting these links and wonder who's in charge and what their motivation is?

:-)

Very cool; I don't work with OSM in my "day job" but took an interest early last spring.

It's amazing how far things have progressed in the mapping space. I think back to my first "serial-port attached" Magellin GPS device that only worked plugged into a laptop and stored seriously outdated maps on a CD-ROM. Taking just the advances since the first time I saw a "Google Earth-like Product" (called Microsoft TerraServer[1]) to Earth, Maps, and OpenStreetMap and it really is mind-blowing how far the geo-* space has come.

I was (inappropriately) disappointed when I saw that it was a mobile app. Of course it is. It's a mapping app. I'd still want a laptop version, but then I dug into what they were trying to solve and the details of how their app works and, I'm genuinely impressed. It appears you identified a real problem: lack of current, complete metadata on OSM[2] and gave me a way to update it semi-passively, or at least with the "thing I have available to me right now" while standing "near the thing I'm trying to capture information about". Since map data is relied upon for anything from leisure to outright safety, accuracy is really important, and the design[3] seems to nail ensuring that accuracy can be easily accomplished.

My interest stems from my purchasing of a OneWheel. I put more miles on that than I did my car last year and I noticed that neither OSM, nor Google do very good with sidewalks. They'll get the ones that showed up well in the last satellite pass, provided there's a road next to them, and they'll get a lot of trails. They miss a few really helpful things. Where I live, most elementary/middle schools are located within a cluster of subdivisions (often 1-2 miles from a main road). In my neighborhood, the school is on the far side, and our subdivision borders two other neighborhoods, a large apartment complex and a trailer park. To get from my home to a home in one of the three bordering subdivisions -- by car -- I will drive at least one mile and have to make a couple of ugly turns onto main roads -- our subdivision does not connect to the trailer park, apartment complex or the other bordering subdivision.

On foot, because of the elementary school, there are paved, fenced side-walks, meaning I can roll 1/4 mile and reach any home in the other subdivisions. Similarly, our neighborhood does not have a road leading out to one of the main streets that it borders because the residents feared it would be used as a bypass during high-traffic times to get from one popular main road to another ridiculously busy main road. To solve this, they brought the road all the way to the parking lot of a McDonald's and then built a large, brick, wall covering that whole side of the neighborhood. McDonald's takes the same amount of time to get to by car as it does by onewheel because at the end of that street, if you look really closely, there's a second fence, and the home-owner bordering it put pavers down and knocked part of the wall out, so you ride right through to the parking lot, avoiding lights/busy roads/anything else -- and that main road has many retail businesses.

This pattern exists in almost every subdivision in my township, and the schools as side-walk nexus points connecting neighborhoods is state-wide (it allows for more students to walk, less busing [mandatory through most of my state]), but I've had to add each one to OSM, myself -- and I'm happy to do it, except that the online map editor, as amazing as it is, lands in on the "intimidating" side, resource-heavy [expected] and just generally not as pleasant as I wish it were. I run Linux and last I looked, that was the best options of the choices I could get working (easily, anyway) with my current configuration.

Does anyone have any non-Android OSM map editor recommendations? Or even any mobile versions that are particularly pleasant for adding the kinds of paths I've described? And hey, if you know of any good source data for discovering those paths? For instance, I have a link bookmarked around here that takes me to a heatmap produced using the phones of people who have a particular biking app installed and have enabled public logging. It was super-useful in finding trails that are seasonal/hidden/otherwise not well mapped.

[0] I've done a mess of things with Google Maps API a while back, but even in those cases it was really simplistic sorts of things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraserver.com

[2] Not a knock to OSM; to clarify, considering their largest alternative is ... Gooble ... it's pretty amazing that even on the metadata side, OSM is more complete in many categories than Guh'Maps.

[3] I'm going on screen shots, I will be installing this in the afternoon but have not installed it, yet so if some of the things I like (or dislike) aren't actually the way I think they are "in the app", my apologies.

> For instance, I have a link bookmarked around here that takes me to a heatmap produced using the phones of people who have a particular biking app installed and have enabled public logging

Could you post this link, please?

> Does anyone have any non-Android OSM map editor recommendations?

JOSM. It's no beautiful and the UX is clunky, but it's java based and therefor works on a lot of operating systems.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors

It's Strava's Global Heatmap, and here's a writeup I did on how to use it as a layer in JOSM: https://nuxx.net/blog/2020/05/24/high-resolution-strava-glob...

Note, you need a paid account to access the high-res data.

I've considered asking if any of my friends have an old Android so I could use StreetComplete, I hope we will one day see an iOS version.

(Author here:) I too wish there could be an iOS version one day and it is also theoretically possible to do this, i.e. share code between the iOS version and the native Android version. The issue is, that the intial effort to do this is enormous and then, there'd need to be a maintainer for the finished (and continuously extended) version too.

See here for more information, especially for iOS programmers this might be interesting: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/1892

Is there anything like this for the PinePhone or Librem 5?

Doesn't it run in anbox?

Oh man the power of branding. The first few times I saw the headline I assumed it was about StreetEasy because that's how my brain is conditioned to recognize the word Street followed by another word in CamelCase I guess!

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