AlpineQuest & OfflineMaps

Hello there, I'm a new user of your app, having previously used Viewranger which is now defunct.
The app seems great with lots of interesting features. The other I day used it to follow an imported .gpx route and I had a few questions about it, if you could help that would be great:

#1 - When I started to follow the route I got an error message 'AgentWarning ftx.onReceiveSettingsUIT(): Follow distance setup not correct!', do you know what may have caused this?

#2 - The alarm when leaving the route is helpful, but how do I turn it off, for example if I'm temporarily leaving the route on purpose - Viewranger had a 'silence alarm' button which would stop the alarm until you returned to the route. I tried putting the phone on silent and also do not disturb but the alarm continued.

#3 - Reaching the end of the circular route the app got confused - the return leg was parallel to the outward leg a short distance apart. Rather than taking me to the end of the route, the alarm was going off and it was trying to take me back to the parallel point across from me on the outward leg. Is there a way to avoid this?

Finally a question, is there a way when you are following a route to estimate the distance along the line of the route to a point later on in the route?

Hi James,

Welcome and well done for finding app, I am ex Viewranger as well, this is every bit as good as VR and in some respects better, only missing up to date OSGB mapping. As for AQ put it in the dustbin of history.
I am not being cheeky but the AQ manual is excellent and well worth a read - landmarks/waypoint/placemarks are generally the same thing.

As it happens I wrote a long post on this subject last night which I have still to check before submitting.
I got the #1 warning a few days ago.
#3 I guess you are following a route (not a path) and I am thinking it seeks the nearest waypoint (as indeed my garmin would do) and not the next sequential one.

Enjoy the app I am sure you will.
Regards
David

ps re #2 Long press on the route and toggle 'remove target'/follow path should do it. (I have got a long press toggle set for this, I don't know yet whether it works together with map long press which is more useful to me).

You might not be aware that a long press on the map removes any data overlays and gives a clear map, very useful for detailed navigating, data returns when you release the pressure.

Have another go, almost finished and lost it all.

I have the FOLLOWING observations:

By way of introduction I used to be a very satisfied ViewRanger user and then they sold the business to Outdoor Active a simply dire app. I shall be eternally grateful to an AQ user who was brave enough to express a sentiment on the OA reviews site along the lines of – “You don’t have to put up with this get on over to AQ. I tried it and was hooked. The manual is very good, and I confess I have read bits but not all of it so some of this could be down to my mis-operation.

I will try and use the correct words but since some are ambiguous I will try to use them in the following context:
Path a place mark drawn on a map,
Route a series of waypoints joined together on a map.
Track a placemark created by the track recorder.

I was going on holiday for a few days in an unfamiliar area and thought it would be a good idea to have some routes or paths displayed ready for use on arrival.
Firstly I downloaded a route to a desktop mapping app and could see that it was crude and barely indicative of the route. I settled down with the route on the desk top computer and path drawing on my phone. I got on fairly well considering it was my first time.

Then I was on my own and still had a day and a half to fill. Next I plotted a route, this was much quicker as I was far more familiar with this.

Finally as it was only shortish walk before heading home I drew another path.

Then it was the big day – following my first path. I had the track recorder set and elected to follow a path (all settings were at default). I got an error message here only fleeting. Agnt or something like that but I had a little blob on the path so I ignored it. I did not get any warnings all day whether that was due to the error message or the volume control on my phone I have no idea, (At the end of this walk I did a bit of testing and managed to get some error bleeps but not what I expected – (more later).(I dropped the track during the day and had a segmented track file).

Next day I was following my route, well I thought I was! As the placemarks were sequentially numbered I thought following the route would pick them up sequentially but instead it seized the nearest which was not always the next. I presume this is the intention? It is after all what my Garmin Gps would do.

On to my final walk and once again following a path. This time I decided to do some real alarm testing. This had the target at least 164ft in advance and Warn me if I go more than 82ft away.
In order to activate the alarm it seems you have to be more than 82ft off the path AND more than 164ft away from the target so depending on the distance ahead of the target and the angle of divergence you could walk quite a way off course.
Here I deliberately walked off course until I got an alarm. I got 'well done beeps' until I got to the track.
Here I accidentally walked off course.

If you have read this far, thanks and I hope you have found it interesting and the observations correct.

Normally I find the osm mapping pretty good and up to date (I have even added a few bits myself), but here it was poor. The qct maps are obviously quite old and we were caught out not using a re-routed right of way, fortunately the land owner was quite nice about it and we had a chat. As it happens my wife had an up to date OSGB map which showed the new path and was thus more up to date than the OSM.

I found the Path far superior to the Route and if I had much to do I would seriously consider buying another version to run on a tablet .

Hi both of you!

James,
#1, it's a technical problem, you should not see this. If you (or anyone) see this error message (or any other one) again, could you make an error report from the app (main menu -> more -> report errors) so I get all the information needed to correct it.

#2, after repeating 3 times the same warning sound (so you'll have 3 close away sounds and 3 far away sounds), the application will stop warning you automatically (only a small sound every 30 seconds). Other than that you can disable the notifications as described by David, or reduce the notification channels on your device. It's true that a temporarily silent warnings button would make sense, but it's not currently available.

#3, the application is able to handle the situation when you return using a very similar way, however if you're following a circular path, you must start it accordingly to the path (ie you cannot start from the middle of the path). I don't know if it was your case.

Concerning your last question, no unfortunately it's not possible. Right now you can only get the remaining information (distancen, time, etc) to the end of the path.

David,
Thank you for your feedback.
Note that the warnings don't take into account the target distance, only the "Warn me if I'm more than..." distance is taken into account.
So in your specific case only the 82ft matters. However the app only checks this every 2 or 3 seconds, so you may see a small delay before getting the warning.

Hi Francois,
Thank you for your reply:
Regarding #1 - I will watch out, James did better than me as my error message was only on the screen for a second or two. A guess could be something to do with distance to the start of the path when selecting "Follow path".

Your answer to #2 & 3 I find slightly contradictory. In #2 you suggest do as David says "Remove target" which presumably I would do if wanted to go into a cafe or something like that. Then on returning to the path I would then set "Follow path" again. But in #3 you write "however if you're following a circular path, you must start it accordingly to the path (ie you cannot start from the middle of the path). " But isn't that exactly what I would be doing when rejoining the path?

I will have the opportunity to do some more testing of the alarm feature when I am out tomorrow. I will set a quick waypoint when I leave the path and another when I get a beep and then find out how to measure the distance between two points.

Kind regards
David

David,
For the error messages, after you see a message just make an error report. It emails me the log file (which you can preview) with the errors in it. With just the name I can find where the problem is approximately located, but with the log file I can find why it occurs and correct it.

For #3, I was not clear you're right. Yes you can start a follow path from the middle, it will work fine.
What I meant is that the app will follow the path until its end, and no more, independently from where you start. An user wrote me that he was expecting that when you start to follow a circular path from the middle, the application will follow it all the way around until back to the start position in the middle (ie a complete circle). I don't know if I'm more clear

Francois,

That is certainly more clear, and incidentally what I would expect to be the case.

I was able to do some testing and it was satisfactory however this time it was a linear path.
I switched on "track recorder" and "Follow path" a short distance (120ft) before the actual start of the drawn path. There was not an error message and indeed I was warned immediately that I was 120ft away from the path. I made some deliberate deviations and all worked perfectly including in one case some very heavy tree cover.
I arrived at the end of my path and turned it off. I then met a friend who happened to be most impressed with the AQ path function.

We said our goodbyes and I turned my attention back to my path with the intention of reversing it and following it with more tests. Then disaster struck I deleted the path! There was no confirmation request. I have no idea what I did except that I think there were two quick presses somewhere. It's the second time I have done it but no idea how and I have been unable to replicate it. (This is simply a comment & not a request for investigation on such flimsy evidence).

(I went back and checked my earlier walk using the"between two points" function and they were also satisfactory).

Hi David / Francois
Thanks for your replies!
So #1 the technical problem I haven't seen again, but if it does I will send an error report as you described. I've attached a screenshot, but I guess that probably does not help too much. #3 where it was skipping back to the outward part of the route hasn't happened again and it's quite possible this was user error as it was my first time using the app to follow a .gpx route. I attached a couple of screenshots just to confirm what happened. If it helps to see the gpx file you can download it from this page
https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/walk/tis ... X-KML.html And with #2 the alarm I think I worked out how to get around it now by stopping following the route temporarily and restarting it. I think in this case this may be more of a feature request, ie a way to temporarily silence / snooze the alarm until you're back on the route for cases where you want to leave the route deliberately (most commonly for me visiting a church or a pub just off route for example). If you could do it proactively as well, ie in anticipation of the alarm that would be great so it's not triggered for example as you're entering the church / pub, etc. Obviously for now I know to stop following and then restart again afterwards.

Otherwise I'm enjoying using the app, still getting to grips with it a bit, but it runs very smoothly and I like the graphics. There are other alternatives to Viewranger I saw suggested, but I liked the look of your app better and it somehow felt less clunky.

I had a couple of other small bits of feedback / questions actually.

I like the fact that you can have the app check the gps less frequently to save battery, my relatively old phone coped easily with 7 / 8 hours walking. However I realized that to record runs for example I'd probably be better to have it check more frequently. Is there an easy way to do that or do I have to go into the settings to change each time? If not maybe that could be built into the 'start recording' flow somehow.

Secondly having left viewranger I got all my data exported as an 80MB gpx file containing maybe 700+ recorded tracks / imported routes. If I can get these into Alpinequest will the app be able to display all those tracks on the map okay? And is there a best way to do this - should I be trying to split it up into individual gpx files for each track?

A few comments:

I am fairly sure I know why my path disappeared, I think I accidentally touched Undisplay, and I have discovered how to recover it - Explore placemarks>unsorted landmarks>file-display.

For James: I have had similar and like you need to do further testing and since you mention a gpx file and as it looks as if you are following a route (as opposed to a path) the app is looking for the nearest waypoint.

Regarding your other points:
I have a honor (huwawei) phone which was notorious for battery use but my experience using AQ on battery life has been excellent. However on a full day's walking I take a small battery pack (a few ££'s) and plug that in on my lunch break, never had a problem. (I even had the dreaded OA running concurrently on one occasion as a test because it had legacy up to date OSGB mapping loaded).

Regarding your VR data you are not going to be able to see much on your phone screen. I have a Garmin gps, but even without I am pretty sure you can download "Mapsource" which will read a gpx file, and then find some free osm mapping for it. Then should you need specific files you copy, e-mail them to AQ. I am sure there is other software available but that is what I used mainly because it gave me a concise and sortable listing of tracks. (Message me privately if you want more help on the VR aspect).

James,

In order to start the track recorder with new settings, you must do actions 1 - 3 - 6 here: https://www.alpinequest.net/en/help/v2/ ... ng_a_track
I don't see any faster ways right now.

Concerning your 80MB GPX file, it should be imported fine (but with some time). Just select it from your file manager and AQ should be displayed in the choices of compatible apps.
The file will be imported in the app's own format into the "Imported landmarks" folder. You can leave it there and display it, or you can copy/paste all the tracks in it to the "Recorded tracks" folder, to make them act as if they were recorded by the app.

Regards
François

Thanks for the reply François, that's reassuring, I'm going to give it a try!