6 mo. ago • 100%

collaborative map software?

Avenza seems to be the go-to app. It works pretty well and all, but I'm wanting to know if there's any software available that can allow a team of people to simultaneously access and make edits/notes to a geo-referenced map. It also need to have kind of the same base functionality of being able to show your current location and all that. Ideally it should be designed for mobile first, but being able to access it from desktop too would be a plus.

So, just for one example, I could add a placemarker on the map, and any of my team members who are also accessing that map will be able to see (in real time) the placemarker that I just made. Does this type of feature exist?

13 comments

Sound like atak it is a military app

6
- Had to look it up and WTF. I didn't think any military would want to run anything on an android ...
  
  https://4ksolutions.com/solutions/android-tactical-assault-kit/
  
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  Why not?
  
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  Android is open source so it can be customized. If a country decides to use Android I'm pretty sure they can spend a budget to modify and vet the source code being used by their device rather than re-inventing the wheel.
  
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- I will keep that one in mind, thank you for the reference.
  
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This might be fun to write actually. Basically you need a central server you connect to via a websocket that would plot points out on a map (maybe with leaflet?) on receipt of notifications pushed via said socket.

The trouble of course is that with a central server, you tend to incur costs, so you'd have to pay, unless some sort of P2P mesh could be established between participating parties. That'd be a fun problem to solve for sure.

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- WebRTC can be used, and there is public STUN or TURN server
  
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Like Felt? https://felt.com/ Not free or anything and although OSM based I dont think their geo-stack is "open".

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- This seems like a possible contender. I'm currently giving it a test now just to see what it's like. I'm fairly new to all this, what do you mean by their geo-stack not being open?
  
  Edit: I'm not sure this one will be able to work after all. I think it probably needs to be mobile focused, and this one seems to want to be used on desktop. I tried uploading a .pdf for a georeferenced map and it just got stuck in the loading process (this could be just because my internet is shit right now). I may give it another try, but for now I might have to keep looking.
  
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@technomad Streetcomplete has a team modus - never used it - As far I could see it only helps not maping the same Items.
I dont know what happens to notes and how instant they appear.

github.com/streetcomplete/Stre…

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Feels like something that would integrate well with Nextcloud. I know there are some Nextcloud based Tracker apps. Have a look at Nextcloud Maps Geobookmarks from Fdroid.

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There are lots of options depending in the level of complexity you need. On the more complex end of the spectrum there is for example: https://merginmaps.com/

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- Less complex is definitely better in this scenario. Getting people to switch and use another piece of software will already be a challenge.
  
  I'll check that one out though, and thank you!
  
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