In addition to the English versions of the NRCan topos, you can now access French language versions of the maps, too. As with other external map sources, add the French topos to the app by going to the main Map Layers menu, and tap the plus (“+”) button. Scroll down a bit, and tap the “Add” button.
Today, we’re open sourcing a project that makes it easier for non-programmers to serve maps. Instead of configuring a JSON file to use TileStache, EasyTileServer lets you do the configuration for TileStache using a simple web form.
We built this because we needed a way to upload maps (MBTiles and Mapnik config files) to a server, for use in our apps, without doing anything technical. You can check out the EasyTileServer code from GitHub, and view our live example.
The result is a server that shows web pages where you can browse the maps you make (using Leaflet), as well as metadata about your available map sources served as JSON, so you can then use the maps in apps you create.
Along with the open source map styles we released yesterday, EasyTileServer lets just about anyone serve maps, without writing any code at all.
Thanks to MapBox, Leaflet, Mapnik, Django-REST, and TileStache for the tools we needed to build this, and our colleague Jesse Crocker, who wrote EasyTileServer.
Making your own maps is as simple as 1, 2, 3:
In the past few months, we’ve been making a lot of maps at TrailBehind, and since we’re using open data, along with MapBox’s open source TileMill tool, we thought it would be appropriate to open source the stylesheets we developed, too.
You can now check out all of our CartoCSS style sheets and related assets from GitHub. We have styles for tiling data like state hunting game zones, US river charts, topo maps, and more. Pop over to our maps page to browse the live maps that we made with TileMill, CartoCSS, and Postgres. The is a living project, and we expect to add many more styles in 2014.
We hope that our work can make it easier for anyone out there working with open data, particularly the open US government data we are interested in. We also want to note that if you create an open CartoCSS style sheet, we’d be happy to host and publish just about any map you want to use in Gaia GPS. Pull requests are welcome!
When we founded this company and started writing apps many years ago, we always avoided cartography, instead choosing to work with 3rd parties to get our maps. We still pay to license a bunch of great maps, but MapBox’s stack of tools has thrown open the doors for us to make maps. Given we had no previous experience, that means two things – these tools are great, and you can do it too.
Here’s one of our styles, that shows some OSM data in the style of USGS topos.
OSM data styled like USGS topos.
Our online map viewer is now to the point where you can link to a set of layers, along with the center and zoom of the map.
For example, here you can see MapBox Cloudless Aerial imagery, overlaid with GMUs, WMAs, and public land ownership. This is a good combination for hunters, and you can achieve the same layered effect, offline in the woods, with Gaia GPS for iOS. Or perhaps you would like to overlay US Forest Service Maps over the more broad coverage of the USGS maps – this is a very typical combination for me hiking around Tahoe.
Like Gaia GPS, this web viewer already brings together a really useful and diverse array of maps from CalTopo, MapBox, and ThunderForest. We are also doing a lot with Leaflet and TileMill now, to expand map coverage, and the tools you can use online with these maps.
These days, everyone “checks in” code at Gaia GPS – all seven of us checked in some sort of technical work this month. Like many software developers out there, we use GitHub.com to collaborate and keep our code in version control, and we see “check-ins” flow in each day.
This is what we do in our office each day, and how we spend the money you spend with us:
Android – Jesse & Anna – Jesse and Anna are both hard at work on our Android app, and we’ll have a new release for Gaia for Android out today.
GaiaCloud – Anting – Between classes at Berkeley, Anting has made many improvements to cloud.gaiagps.com recently, ranging from bug fixes, to KML uploads, to improvements to the Gallery page this Monday – continuing his work from his internship this summer.
Maps – Savannah – Savannah completed two maps using CartoCSS and PostGres, via TileMill – US Inland Rivers and USGS Geology. She also leads our user support, and wears many hats in general.
GaiaGPS.com – Steve – Our website has long been in need of some improvements, and Steve has done a lot to make the site convey more information and behave like a modern website. Notably, you can now browse Gaia maps on the site, and yesterday Steve overhauled the Apps page as well. The GaiaPro page is up next.
Weather – Ryan, aka GutHook – We are working with a Gaia GPS user in Maine who develops his own trail guide apps, to work on our weather capabilities. He checked in a bunch of interesting stuff this week. Like Jesse, Ryan thru-hiked the PCT.
Bugs and Misc – Andrew – As for me, I’ve has to resuscitate trailbehind.com this week, which failed after Google Maps transitioned to API v3. I also did point releases for Gaia GPS and Skipper to address user-reported bugs.
Visitors to GaiaGPS.com will notice a new link in the header: the Maps page. One of the most common requests we receive is for a way to preview our map sources, and that’s exactly what the Maps page lets you do: interactively explore the various maps included with Gaia GPS, right in your web browser.
If you’re thinking of buying Gaia GPS but aren’t sure if it has the maps you need, now you can check them out. Or if you own Gaia GPS but are on the fence about subscribing to Gaia Pro, the Maps page also lets you view the Gaia-Pro-only map sources, including MapBox cloudless satellite and street maps, and the hunting overlays.
And if you’re a happy Gaia GPS user and want to turn your friends and family on to the app, linking to the Maps page is a great way to give them a taste of what Gaia GPS has to offer.
Gaia GPS users can now use official NOAA raster charts in the app. You can add this source by going to “Add More Layers…” in the layers menu. You can also browse the charts online.
We added another layer for hunters today, showing GMU outlines and labels for Colorado. In honor of the US Government firing up again, and the National Map coming back online with it, here is a screenshot showing GaiaPro with the National Map, overlaid with Public Land and Colorado Game Management Units.
As with the other overlay layers, this one is available in Gaia GPS under “Add More Layers…,” but you will need a GaiaPro subscription to make the most use of it. If you are following these blog posts and I sound like a broken record about the GaiaPro thing, it’s because people will search and find these posts later, and not read the whole series about the hunting layers.
Here’s a look at the GaiaPro layers menu:
We now have all of these layers for hunters:
We’ll get this all working on Android as soon as we can too!
Montana hunters can also now overlay game districts for elk, deer, and mountain lions. You can add this layer by going to “Add More Layers…” in the Layers menu on the map. You can also browse the layer and add the source to Gaia or other TrailBehind apps at this link.
As with the Public Land Ownership data we released yesterday, this layer is mostly useful to GaiaPro subscribers, because it’s best overlaid on a topo or aerial map. All Gaia users may find the layer somewhat useful.
Here’s a neat screenshot showing a composition of MapBox Aerial + USFS + Public Land + the Montana districts, with transparency.
Here’s another showing USGS topo + Public Land + Montana hunting.
Check out an updated public lands layer here.
One of the most common requests we get from Gaia GPS users is for Public Land Ownership data, which is useful for hunting, fishing, exploring, and even business purposes. Today, we’re making a land ownership layer available in Gaia GPS.
You can add the public land layer within Gaia GPS by going to “Add More Layers…” This overlay won’t work very well unless you have Gaia GPS Premium, because it needs to be layered with other base maps. You might have some basic use for it as a regular Gaia user.
We consider this to be a “beta” effort, and we’re releasing it to you because it’s useful to us, though incomplete. It has excellent coverage of California, fairly detailed coverage of the rest of western United States, including Alaska, and federal lands in the east. Here’s a summary view of the coverage, and you can also view the layer on gaiagps.com:
The colors are defined by the following legend, and there is also an entry in the user manual with this info. We’ll integrate it better in the future:
Here’s a screenshot using the layer with GaiaPro, on the iPad. I’m showing the weather panel just for fun, too:
Gaia GPS premium layers capability really shines here, and you can composite a vast amount of information, including USGS topos, MapBox aerials, Forest Service (USFS) maps, weather overlays, and your personal waypoints and tracks.
Today, our public land data collection efforts are stymied a bit by the shutdown of the US government, but we have plans to complete the data set, and integrate it more fully into Gaia GPS, with an interactive legend and alerts.
This project started out from one of our team’s personal interest in hunting (Jesse), and it’s an ongoing effort. Jesse last lived in Montana, before coming to Berkeley to work with us, and he depended on Elk he hunted for food. As with the rest of Gaia, this comes from the needs of people who spend a lot of time in the woods.
Finally for the technically-minded people. you can also view this GitHub gist for how to set up a tile server like this yourself.