VeloViewer Explorer Score and Max Square

[salar55]

Over to the east for tiles between Stirling and Polmont. Ranger v Celtic today so the crap roads should not be very busy. Cluster up to 1901 as a few gaps filled in.

[DrBru]

Rain and persistent north-easterlies have put my plans for heading south to the unpaved ridgeway on hold. So I got out early this morning (6am) to pick off a few tiles along the horrible road between Oxford and Eynsham. Square up to 10x10 now, and cluster to 128 (52.2% of my total tiles -- showing I haven't done many far flung rides!).
Two broken spokes in 40k shows it is time for a wheel rebuild, not just the fake ones I do on the road...

[citoyen]

There is a tile explorer IQ app I have on my garmin. It means you don’t have to go too far down dead ends before turning.

After much faffing about, I’ve now managed to install this on the Garmin. Thanks for the tip.

[carlosferreiro]

A Saturday ferry trip over to Yell for a change. Not too much too far off roading for us this time, with lambing going on, but a nice road loop round the south half of the island, picking up the stray tiles that weren't too much work to get to.
By the end Yell will involve a lot of MTB coastal stuff and a lot more hill run/hike through the rough peat hags in the middle, so it'll be a long term project.
Little video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m11xMzdu-Nk

[citoyen]

FUCKING USELESS PIECE OF SHIT GARMIN!

The stupid thing had an eppy about halfway round today’s ride, which meant I lost half a dozen tiles I’d bagged up to that point. I wouldn’t mind so much but it was a tough route, very lumpy with some dreadful road surfaces, so I’m not relishing going out and doing it all over again.

Fortunately, it behaved for the rest of the ride so I have at least secured a couple of really tricky tiles I was after - they were grim ones, involving riding on busy main roads and crossing motorway junctions. Ugh! Very glad I won’t have to do those again.

Suffering a bout of cramp and several punctures in the final 30km didn’t improve my mood at all.

I suspect the everytile app could be the cause of the problems - it was misbehaving even before I set off and it took lots of faffing about to even upload the route to the device. I’ll uninstall it and see if it behaves better on my next outing.

[Davef]

I do hope it wasn’t the fault of everytile after my recommendation. I had my first ride of the year over 200km with some slippery bridleways to hone my offroad skills with slick tyres. Still 54x54 but I feel a sudden growth spurt coming soon.

[andyoxon]

...
The stupid thing had an eppy about halfway round today’s ride, which meant I lost half a dozen tiles I’d bagged up to that point. ...

    These days I tend to run back-up logging on my phone. My normally 'dependable' etrex, shut off on bumpy ground in Shrops a few months ago, fortunately because I was navigating I realised after not too long.   I don't have paid Strava, so tend to run free Komoot for back-up, as can download gpx easily.  Actually I find Komoot, on my phone, runs at the same time as Strava, with no issues - & low power drain. Strava app seems pretty stable too (on this phone).

[citoyen]

I do hope it wasn’t the fault of everytile after my recommendation.

Well, it's impossible to know for sure. But the Garmin was being a bit sluggish and unresponsive from the moment I turned it on, so I wonder if it could be down to relatively limited processing power of the Edge Explore, compared to, say, the 1030, making it harder for the device to handle the plugin.

I won't hold it against you anyway!

I think I'm going to delete it though. Tbh, I prefer using the method of uploading the kml from veloviewer to maps.me anyway, since it shows the specific tiles you need, whereas Everytile shows, er, every tile and seems to only count visited tiles per ride - would be better if it could sync with your Veloviewer account.

[Jeff E]

I cannot speak too highly of my Wahoo Bolt.   It never lets me down, unlike the  4 previous Garmins over the years.    Most long distance cyclists have two computers on show (quite often using their Stem and an out front extension on their bars).    I bought a Wahoo Roam for the larger clearer mapping and 50% larger battery ETC.    Only the Bolt is on Auto Pause, so that the ROAM tells me if I risk finishing out of time on an Audax

Having to make plenty of out and back turnings in and out of tiles, especially at roundabouts, it is so easy to miss a turning, so having both Maps screens on display at once allows one to be showing at a scale of 200m and the other giving an over view of what is coming up at 500-1000m, ensuring that I get every planned Tile.    I have been stuck on 44x44 for a while, but would have a lot more if I had not missed so many Tiles when I started 13 months ago, due to turning round too early on dead end roads or bridleways, also by missing Turnings by having the wrong map scale and no overview back up.  Tiling has been all about Solo exploring new roads for me during these depressing COVID Times.  Audaxing has always been about enjoying great routes devised by others, so Tiling has been mini-Audaxing for me

[salar55]

Use the phone as backup and a check to see if i have cycled into a tile up a dead end road/track . Couple of tiles down at the Endrick Water. The old bridge west of Drymen, and this tile. Last time here my garmin was about 20 m out and i missed the tile.

[PeeJay]

Any one else having problems with the explorer android app recently?

I've been using the app to output tiles for OSMand, but recently the app just crashes out when I click on the "Select OSMand Folder" button.

I've contacted the developer, but just wondered if it was just me having this issue.   

[Solocle]

FUCKING USELESS PIECE OF SHIT GARMIN!

The stupid thing had an eppy about halfway round today’s ride, which meant I lost half a dozen tiles I’d bagged up to that point. I wouldn’t mind so much but it was a tough route, very lumpy with some dreadful road surfaces, so I’m not relishing going out and doing it all over again.

Fortunately, it behaved for the rest of the ride so I have at least secured a couple of really tricky tiles I was after - they were grim ones, involving riding on busy main roads and crossing motorway junctions. Ugh! Very glad I won’t have to do those again.

Suffering a bout of cramp and several punctures in the final 30km didn’t improve my mood at all.

I suspect the everytile app could be the cause of the problems - it was misbehaving even before I set off and it took lots of faffing about to even upload the route to the device. I’ll uninstall it and see if it behaves better on my next outing.

I have no qualms about using the GOTOES utilities to convert my GPX route into one with timestamps, and then upload it as a private ride (so you don't claim KOMs etc), in such circumstances. Very useful too if your recording had a GPS drift, but you checked that you were in the tile on your phone.

[CarlF]

Any one else having problems with the explorer android app recently?

I've been using the app to output tiles for OSMand, but recently the app just crashes out when I click on the "Select OSMand Folder" button.

I've contacted the developer, but just wondered if it was just me having this issue.

I don't bother clicking the "Select OSMand Folder button" when I want to update Explorer Helper, because I assumed that was a one-time setting and it sees to work fine without doing that each time (I'm not using OSMand for anything else - I just use the helper app). I've just checked what happens if I do click on that, and it crashes out for me as well.

If I click on the "Recreate Tiles and Rides" button it goes into a loop where it pops up alerts saying

[MAP] Explorer tiles has been recreated!

[MAP] All rides has been saved!

Error during creating rides file.

Cycling through each in turn, endlessly until I force-close the app. After that, I reopen it and it seems to have updated fine.

It started doing this a month or two back, but I don't need to update it very often so I've just lived with it.

[PeeJay]

Yeah, I get that looping through those messages thing too, and as you say, it seems to work, so I've lived with that as well.  I was having an issue where it wouldn't update the tiles for OSMand, so I tried reselecting the OSMand folder button which is when it crashes,  so I'm now stuck with my old tiles on OSMand.

I  heard back from the developer earlier today, and they were already aware of these issues, so hopefully there'll be an update soon. 

[salar55]

 Is it android 10 thats causing issues, my XZ3 sometimes crashes when using veloviewer and updating the map is a pain. 
Yesterday was a tour of the fly tipping capital of Scotland, so much crap tossed onto most of the places you can pull off the road. The roads to the south of Falkirk are an eyesore. Cluster up to 1927.

[Davef]

FUCKING USELESS PIECE OF SHIT GARMIN!

The stupid thing had an eppy about halfway round today’s ride, which meant I lost half a dozen tiles I’d bagged up to that point. I wouldn’t mind so much but it was a tough route, very lumpy with some dreadful road surfaces, so I’m not relishing going out and doing it all over again.

Fortunately, it behaved for the rest of the ride so I have at least secured a couple of really tricky tiles I was after - they were grim ones, involving riding on busy main roads and crossing motorway junctions. Ugh! Very glad I won’t have to do those again.

Suffering a bout of cramp and several punctures in the final 30km didn’t improve my mood at all.

I suspect the everytile app could be the cause of the problems - it was misbehaving even before I set off and it took lots of faffing about to even upload the route to the device. I’ll uninstall it and see if it behaves better on my next outing.

I have no qualms about using the GOTOES utilities to convert my GPX route into one with timestamps, and then upload it as a private ride (so you don't claim KOMs etc), in such circumstances. Very useful too if your recording had a GPS drift, but you checked that you were in the tile on your phone.

GPS should be accurate to 3m or so.

If you are sampling frequently though your position might always be accurate to 3m your distance travelled could accumulate large amounts of error, but this won’t affect tile gathering.

I have certainly found with footpaths and bridleways often reality is out of sync with the maps by much more than this amount - tens of metres if not more.

Using the everytile app I can see immediately whether my recorded position is within a particular tile. I think this preferable to reverting to using the planned route to claim the tiles where it deviated from the recorded route.

[Solocle]

FUCKING USELESS PIECE OF SHIT GARMIN!

The stupid thing had an eppy about halfway round today’s ride, which meant I lost half a dozen tiles I’d bagged up to that point. I wouldn’t mind so much but it was a tough route, very lumpy with some dreadful road surfaces, so I’m not relishing going out and doing it all over again.

Fortunately, it behaved for the rest of the ride so I have at least secured a couple of really tricky tiles I was after - they were grim ones, involving riding on busy main roads and crossing motorway junctions. Ugh! Very glad I won’t have to do those again.

Suffering a bout of cramp and several punctures in the final 30km didn’t improve my mood at all.

I suspect the everytile app could be the cause of the problems - it was misbehaving even before I set off and it took lots of faffing about to even upload the route to the device. I’ll uninstall it and see if it behaves better on my next outing.

I have no qualms about using the GOTOES utilities to convert my GPX route into one with timestamps, and then upload it as a private ride (so you don't claim KOMs etc), in such circumstances. Very useful too if your recording had a GPS drift, but you checked that you were in the tile on your phone.

GPS should be accurate to 3m or so.

If you are sampling frequently though your position might always be accurate to 3m your distance travelled could accumulate large amounts of error, but this won’t affect tile gathering.

I have certainly found with footpaths and bridleways often reality is out of sync with the maps by much more than this amount - tens of metres if not more.

Using the everytile app I can see immediately whether my recorded position is within a particular tile. I think this preferable to reverting to using the planned route to claim the tiles where it deviated from the recorded route.

I get some interference between the Wahoo and the front camera, which can cause quite significant drifts at times.

[Davef]

FUCKING USELESS PIECE OF SHIT GARMIN!

The stupid thing had an eppy about halfway round today’s ride, which meant I lost half a dozen tiles I’d bagged up to that point. I wouldn’t mind so much but it was a tough route, very lumpy with some dreadful road surfaces, so I’m not relishing going out and doing it all over again.

Fortunately, it behaved for the rest of the ride so I have at least secured a couple of really tricky tiles I was after - they were grim ones, involving riding on busy main roads and crossing motorway junctions. Ugh! Very glad I won’t have to do those again.

Suffering a bout of cramp and several punctures in the final 30km didn’t improve my mood at all.

I suspect the everytile app could be the cause of the problems - it was misbehaving even before I set off and it took lots of faffing about to even upload the route to the device. I’ll uninstall it and see if it behaves better on my next outing.

I have no qualms about using the GOTOES utilities to convert my GPX route into one with timestamps, and then upload it as a private ride (so you don't claim KOMs etc), in such circumstances. Very useful too if your recording had a GPS drift, but you checked that you were in the tile on your phone.

GPS should be accurate to 3m or so.

If you are sampling frequently though your position might always be accurate to 3m your distance travelled could accumulate large amounts of error, but this won’t affect tile gathering.

I have certainly found with footpaths and bridleways often reality is out of sync with the maps by much more than this amount - tens of metres if not more.

Using the everytile app I can see immediately whether my recorded position is within a particular tile. I think this preferable to reverting to using the planned route to claim the tiles where it deviated from the recorded route.

I get some interference between the Wahoo and the front camera, which can cause quite significant drifts at times.

That is bizarre. Normally it is the radio wave bouncing off something taking a slightly longer route from one of the satellites to the gps and thereby throwing calculations off. I can see how a camera might be radiating causing interference meaning you lose signal but it should be short lived. I have only really noticed problems in cities with tall buildings tricking me into thinking I am running a pb as I my watch thinks i am jumping about like a prawn in a frying pan.

[Kim]

Back in the old days when GPS chipsets were a lot less sensitive than they are now, my front light on the other side of the handlebars would cause enough interference for my eTrex Legend to lose its lock on most of the weaker satellites (add a bit of dense tree cover and it could lose its fix entirely).  Fewer satellites mean bigger error.

There's not a lot to a bike light.  It was clearly a switching regulator causing the issue.  I'm sure a camera could have the exact same problem (as well as the computery bits having to run more or less continuously in order to record video).  I'd just expect the GPS receiver to be a bit more robust.

[CarlF]

Is it android 10 thats causing issues, [...]

No, my phone is running Android 11

[andyoxon]

Finally finished off Swindon (cluster 1779).  While the car was being worked on I did a very rainy 60km, up to through Blunsdon to Cricklade and back.  Very wet.  Rainlegs* came out!     Fortunately I had a reasonable jacket + hood, double mitts - soaked up a lot of water, had to wring them out, but feet were dry n' toasty because I employed the waterproof socks with 'marigold'-cuff gaiter trick.  It works.  Oh yes, and there was tea on board...

swindon2 by a oxon, on Flickr

Blunsdon lynch gate shelter

PXL_20210513_2 by a oxon, on Flickr

Bridleway to Castle Eaton

PXL_20210513_3 by a oxon, on Flickr

The rain... (VIDEO)

PXL_20210513_rain by a oxon, on Flickr


*ETA.  Beware: rainlegs...

(click to show/hide)

PXL_20210513_1 by a oxon, on Flickr

But, that A419...     Those junctions...  Really tortuous route for bikes (to Cricklade).

A419 by a oxon, on Flickr

[L CC]

In a similar vein, I had an exam in Sunderland today. Telling myself if I've passed I never have to go there again, I took a bike.

Before :


After :




Didn't look too bad from this angle:



Cluster 2307.

[FifeingEejit]

Claimed some more tiles and roads today with a nice spin into a chilly easterly with a strong sun doing its best to both boil me in my warmers and chill me if I dared leave my jersey unzipped.

Out the village and up the Cadgers towards Kennoway with the first new road of the day being the cut along Baintown, prettier than Kennoway anyway.
A busier road drag then new road towards Leven before turning into a series of loops on the hillside above Lundin Links and Largo for road and tile bagging purposes, this had the altitude counter flying and by the time I finally got the other side of Largo Law I had most of the days climbing clocked up >700m in 35km.

With such a long lay off due to fucking my right leg (last year it was my left leg) just at the start of the cycling season it started to seem like I might have made a bit of a mistake, however as well as being home to civil servants that don't know their own rules Elie is home to a rarity, a flat(ish) bit of Fife and I was soon holding a decent speed around Shell Bay and Kinneuchar with the biggest concern being the climbing strain on my dodgy right ankle starting to show.

The track on Ruddons point proved to be unsuitable for skinny tyres and a gentle walk round eventually found a bench to rest the ankle.
Another new tile and new road bagged.  I had planned to get here earlier but this was scunnered by a sleep in, and the going being slower and tougher than I thought but my plan to get something to eat here was scuppered in entirety by the fact that all my masks were hanging up at home. Doh!

The lateness however did have one advantage, everyone that hadn't gone home for tea was sitting in a pub garden eating, so after claiming some more tiles and roads on the other way into Kinneuchar and with the wind now thankfully behind me it was a good blast along from Colinsburgh to Lundin Links and a deliberately chosen easier route back up to the top of Langside and the gentle descents home.

https://www.strava.com/activities/5302668850


I've got a few tiles to bag nearby that are well off the road, might have to get the hiking boots out, or even maybe, possibly, the MTB...

[L CC]

It's finally done.
I had to use the shopper as the bling bike is having its sealant replaced and by all accounts, it's not going well.
103 new tiles. The wrong tyres. A great deal of Tesco Value County of Lincolnshire (Kim). Cluster increase 1140

[Deano]

 

You'll have leapfrogged Graeme on max cluster now?