lucidiot's cybrecluster

OpenStreetMap contributions

As the OpenStreetMap community is pretty active here, the local map is quite good and it is very useful to me when doing urban geocaching or just to walk around, especially with OsmAnd, a very good map app.

I had contributed to OSM a while ago while I was in a different region, mainly by posting notes and telling other contributors to fix the map for me. Now I want to do something a bit better and actually contribute myself.

I added a public bookcase and tried to look a little deeper into how traffic signals are mapped because there was one right new to the bookcase. That got me to start a discussion on traffic signals having audio signals for blind people being activated using remotes in France.

I also started looking into two particular things: mapping public drinking fountains, which are commonly found in the city center here, and addings tags on public places with Wi-Fi access, as there are free Wi-Fi hotspots provided by the city among other things.

Tagging drinking fountains

Tagging internet access

Note that hotspots that are strictly restricted to a set of persons, even after paying a fee (e.g. Eduroam, company networks, etc.) should not be mapped.

Wi-Fi scanning

Ideally, we need a way to log both the current GPS position and the found networks with their signal strength, which would allow us to later do some triangulation and guess at where the network is. We also need to see the currently detected networks while on the go, as we might be able to guess where they are without having to do a mess of triangulation.

We tried to use an Android app, WiFi Tracker, but it does not work on my phone and is quite power-hungry. Additionally, on Android 9, Wi-Fi scanning is limited and lifting the restriction is only possible in the developer options in Android 10+.

We might have an ESP32-based scanner soon.


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