Messages

Yes it's a lot of maps    But I posted everything that I found that works, and some are much more interesting than others. My choices are:

In the US. NEXRAD and/or nowCOAST for the weather radar. If you have satellite images as maps then Hydrography Data, Transportation, and US National Map Gazetteer are useful overlays.

In Europe. The Norway Met office. If you are in the Netherlands, the weather radar service.

The nighttime lights map is useless, but a cool thing to show your friends.

Regarding so many maps, I have a request. The name of the map is whatever the WMS server provides, but sometimes that is kind of meaningless to me, and in at least one case (Norway Met office) it's blank. I would like to be bale to assign my own name instead. It would make it much easier to remember which map is which.

OK Some questions.

Where are you located (i.e. which country)?

Which map service(s) have you tried to download from?

How big is the map you tried to download? Have you tried a very small map as a test?

I also found this service, at the UK Met Office: //http://data.ncof.co.uk:8080/ncWMS/wms?service=WMS&version=1.3.0&request=GetCapabilities

To use it I truncated the URL to this: //http://data.ncof.co.uk:8080/ncWMS/wms

Is that correct? I have found many URLs in that format, and have always truncated at the first "?", so I hope that's the right thing to do. Some of them have then worked, but some haven't. This one unfortunately not only does not work, it crashes Locus! That is a real pity, because if it could be made to work then I think you would get the layers you can view here: //http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/pws/invent/weathermap/. Most layers, including the weather radar, are only for the UK, but a few cover all of Europe. I wonder if the problem with this service is that it is a ncWMS service (see //http://www.resc.rdg.ac.uk/trac/ncWMS/)?

I posted some more wms links: //http://forum.asamm.cz/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=570&p=4507#p4507

The Netherlands weather service has weather radar, but it does not cover all of Europe. The Norway service has layers that cover all of Europe (such as wind speed and direction, cloud cover, etc), but unfortunately no weather radar. The German service has some nice past data, such as total rainfall, but nothing current (so it's really climate information, not weather information). Not what you really want, but perhaps better than nothing  

Some more WMS services:

Netherlands Met Office. This has several layers, including weather radar //http://geoservices.knmi.nl/cgi-bin/RADNL_OPER_R___25PCPRR_L3.cgi

Norway Met Office. This has many layers, and covers all or Europe. Unfortunately does not provide weather radar, but does show cloud cover, wind speed and direction, and more: //http://openmetoc.met.no/metoc/metocwms

German Met Office. Has past weather information (such as rainfall in the last 3 weeks) but that seems to be all.  //http://maps.dwd.de/geoserver/wms

Australia. Lots of layers. Some work, most don't. Has weather radar, but those layers are some that don't work    //http://ows.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/mapserver/users/bomw0473/latest

US nowCOAST service. Lot's of layers. including another weather radar //http://nowcoast.noaa.gov/wms/com.esri.wms.Esrimap/obs

Nighttime lights for the whole world. Kind of pointless, but kind of cool too     //http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/maps/cgi-bin/public/ms/poster/

This shows wild fires and fire risk in Europe.  //http://geohub.jrc.ec.europa.eu/effis/ows

For the US, there's a WMS service for the NEXRAD weather radar. I posted the link here: //http://forum.asamm.cz/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=570&p=4284&hilit=NEXRAD#p4284

I would think that in Europe there might be similar WMS services.

Move all your maps into one subdirectory in maps directory and all will work as one map!

Really? So if I have a map of a country at low zooms, and then maps of several cities at high zooms, I can drop them in a subdirectory of the maps folder and they will work as one map? I wish I had known that a long time ago. I would have built many maps differently if I had! Good to know for the future though!

Some more observations:

1) If you choose to download a map that is larger than the available space on the SD card you do not get a warning (I knew it was too big before I tried; I just wanted to see what it would do   ). I missed the error message when it failed, because it was not on the screen for long enough (I had to wake the screen up to see what had happened), but something like "not enough space". Apart from being somewhat annoying for the user, downloading several hundred Mb and then failing also wastes server bandwidth.

2) I expect you are aware of this, but in vector maps the warning icon in the top panel brings up the same warnings as for personal maps. Many of these do not make sense for vector maps (such as not downloading high zooms for the whole area).

I'll try some other large maps later to see if I can reproduce this.

Well, I can't reproduce it. I deleted the China map and downloaded it again. No problem. So then I downloaded the California map, which is even bigger, with no problems. Just a bad internet day maybe :?

I had that issue too, but I figuered out, that you can place the button "add new button" to right or even top panel. Just try it out

Yes, thanks for the tip. That would make it easier. But I still prefer the single screen, where I can select all the buttons I want, deselect the ones I don't, and I'm done.

And I think most users will not figure that out, and will not find your tip. So for them the old screen surely would be better.

Another observation. In personal maps if you touch a map name you get a pop-up menu with several options. In Vector maps there is no such menu, not even the option to delete a map.

I agree with dibrial about the gray on black letters on the download bar. The contrast is not enough to be bale to read such small letters. Once a map has downloaded "Ready" would also be more readable in a slightly darker shade of green.

I downloaded Nevada and China as tests. Nevada went OK, but I had problems with China. The China map is large enough that I left it downloading and went to bed. In the morning the download had timed out, and I didn't have the map. I started it again, and again left the phone. When I came back the download had timed out again. Strangely though, when I exited the vector maps screen ad came back in it said "download successful", but there was no China map and the button didn't say "Ready". The third time I was successful, but I happened to look at the phone right at the point the download was finishing. Perhaps if the screen is off it's interfering with the download in some way? I'll try some other large maps later to see if I can reproduce this.

I don't like the new way of adding buttons to the right panel. when I first started Locus free all my right panel buttons had been wiped out, so I had none. Now to add them back I can only do one at a time, which is a multi-step process: Main menu, functions, add new button, select the button. You have to repeat that for every button, which is a PITA  

Thanks- does this mean mobac is the only way of getting maps now?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Getting maps on the phone: this still works fine for me. I generally don't use it, because I use MOBAC, but it works.

Getting raster maps on the computer: MOBAC is the only option I am aware of. If there used to be another one then I was not aware of it.

Getting vector maps on the computer: Read this very long thread: //http://forum.asamm.cz/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=613. Note that the vector maps are still in beta mode. They seem to work very well though   The problem is that unless you want either a small map or you have some serious computing power available to you, or both, you can't generate them.

There's information abut using MOBAC here: //http://forum.asamm.cz/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4&p=3145&hilit=MOBAC#p4

OK. I did split the UK parking to make it more manageable. See here: //http://forum.asamm.cz/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=655&p=4324#p4324

Now I can turn on all the S England parking; about 17000 points. It takes a while, but once it's done I do not see any problem with the names.