OsmAnd Maps Plugin to show node locations

[shoopes2]

I've briefly discussed this in the Discord, but this is a better place for it. Arranging thoughts, pros, cons, support to see if it's worth it or has enough demand for a developer to consider picking up.

OsmAnd is an open source android and IOS app that lets you carry highly detailed, fully offline maps of any region world wide on your device. You can also use it for turn-by-turn voice guidance, search for places, display POIs, and more. OsmAnd interfaces with multiple free culture crowd-sourced datasets, and includes many navigation features, such as: GPX importing and exporting, trip recording, waypoint navigation, tile maps, vector maps, map overlays such as satellite data and topo maps.

The current state of maps within the meshtastic apps is useful, but:

• is missing many critical navigational features
• has limited map sources
• only uses tile maps
• map sources expire and your cache will randomly disappear
• downloading can only be done in rectangular chunks and does not have failure management. If you set a large download and it fails overnight, you won't know unless you scroll across the whole map at the desired zoom level while offline

I took a look at the Android Map Project (https://github.com/orgs/meshtastic/projects/8) and many of the tasks can already be fulfilled by OsmAnd, which already has implementations covering these issues.

Additionally, OsmAnd allows users to create and import custom plugins:

• Available plugin examples: https://www.osmand.net/docs/user/plugins/
• Custom plugin documentation: https://osmand.net/docs/user/plugins/custom/

As the Meshtastic app uses android intents, and OsmAnd plugins also use android intents, integrating node locations onto an OsmAnd app should be possible. There are also similar connections with Meshtastic and the ATAK application.

Thoughts on something like this?

Does the Meshtastic app intend to be a one-stop shop and include fully-featured navigation/maps functions?

[alexander-smyslov]

There are 2 ways to use OsmAnd
https://osmand.net/docs/technical/osmand-api-sdk/

• Android OsmAnd AIDL API
  probably will be closed as OrganicMap Integration Offline map - OrganicMap integration  #1195
• Android OsmAnd Full Library SDK
  but there is no full documentation

The right way in my opinion is to write a plugin for OsmAnd, but this is not the right place to discuss it.

[shoopes2]

Where do you think the discussion should be moved to? I considered OsmAnd's discussions, but it's more likely that someone familiar with Meshtastic and android would be able to do it than someone more familiar with Osmand trying to get into Meshtastic stuff.

[alexander-smyslov]

It should be merge request in OsmAnd repo. :) I, like you, want an offline map for Meshtastic.
I can compile, run and modify Meshastic for Android, but I can't even compile OsmAnd. Work in progress. If you can compile and run OsmAnd and help me to set up enviroment I'll try my best

[shoopes2]

I tried to compile it today. No luck. I'll keep trying when time permits.

[ikearat]

Question: Does the Android app keep local node data in a file that is user accessible?
Reason I ask: If there was a file that was being updated by the Meshtastic app It might be as simple as converting the file into a GPX file and importing it into Osmand. The favorite locations in Osmand can be exported and imported in GPX format. Some kind of content manipulator that generates a file and a way to get Osmand to "want" to import that file periodically would work.

[shoopes2]

It may be in the node database, but I'm not sure. I know meshtastic uses intents and Osmand can read intents, so that is probably the easiest way to push data to Osmand.