We have stumbled upon such a problem.
We are developing an application for travelling. To make sure the user doesn't spend much money on roaming charges in our app we decided to implement a settings option for user to view cached maps only. So we let the user decide whether he wants to load the maps from internet or he wants to save money and view cached maps (stored in Library/Caches/MapTiles/MapTiles.sqlitedb).
We can't find a way to implement this. Is there any way to disable network programmatically in this case? Or force MapKit use cached tiles only? We thought about changing APN programmatically for this option to force MapKit go offline. Is it possible to change APN programmatically?
Thank you!
iPhone SDK apps do not have access to the network adapter settings, and I know of nothing in the MapKit API that gives you control over its Internet usage. Your best option in this case is probably to present an alert suggesting that the user enable Airplane Mode or turn off data roaming.
use openstreetmap
think the commercial side of it Cloud-made allows offline maps
http://developers.cloudmade.com/projects/show/iphone-sdk
Libraries that help iPhone developers use OSM maps
route-me is an open-source library used in a number of iPhone applications to display OSM maps.
The CloudMade iPhone Maps Library is an open-source library that provides high-level access to CloudMade's OSM-based map tiles with different sizes and different styles.
John McKerrell has ported the routing algorithm from gosmore to run on the iPhone and has successfully generated basic routes. More complicated routes crash the iPhone at the moment
There are some ways. One is to use your own tile overlay and implement the caching algorithm either in URLForTilePath: or in loadTileAtPath:result:
It works very well with open domain and some private ones. Does not cache the standard Apple Maps.
Another way that will be able to cache everything is subclass NSURLProtocol. There are some tutorials and probably you may detect when is a map image and act accordingly
the google map app does the cache feature ... MapKit seem no , I think Apple will add this feature in next version SDK ...
Related
I'm developing an app that will focus heavily on giving users routes and turn-by-turn directions while driving. It is important that they stay within the app during their drive, so I really don't want to make them leave the app and go to the built-in Maps app. I have been doing a lot of research lately on how to include this functionality, and it is widely known that it is not easy, since Apple doesn't include this functionality in the SDK out of the box. It looks like my options are:
For providing routes (and directions) from one place to another
Use a UIWebView and load some web-based maps with JavaScript, and use the JavaScript API to draw a route
Use MapKit or the Google Maps iOS SDK, query for the route sepaartely through an API, and manually draw some kind of path or polyline on top of it.
Use a library that costs money (like MTDirectionsKit)
For providing turn-by-turn navigation
Use a proprietary library that comes with its own maps (like CloudMade)
Is there anything I'm missing here? What are the pros and cons of each, and how should I pick a solution?
Your insight is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
You say that you don't want to "make" the user leave the app and use the built in software for turn by turn navigation as though this is a bad user experience. A bad user experience would be getting forced to use a turn by turn nav from a webView or some API which would not show up as routing information on my lock screen if I lock the phone or cut into other applications to display banners telling me a turn is coming up, for example, while I'm listening to music on my phone. I strongly suggest you launch Apple maps and let the system handle what it is meant to handle instead of trying to build your own turn by turn navigation and heavily limiting the user from the freedom of exiting the application during a drive.
While on the subject of commercial libraries you might what to take a look at other options:
skobbler/telenav sdk - in-app routing and turn-by-turn navigation based on OpenStreetMap (same maps used by Cloudmade and Mapquest). Check out the demos and the licensing plans and figure out if it's the correct solution for you
(they have a Free Tier that might be good enough for your app - and if you go above that tier I think you should be considering monetizing you app)
and that's about it for the time being (besides the options already named): keep an eye out for Mapbox as they could provide an iOS sdk in the near future - with routing and navigation
I agree with Kris' response. Turn-by-turn navigation is probably best handled by the built-in app. However, for displaying a route and ETA on a 2D map, I think I'm going to go with the Mapquest iOS API, which offers this functionality for free. I didn't know this solution was available until today.
I am developing an iPhone application for restaurants. I have used mapkit to show the locations of restaurants. User also have option to see route to a particular location (restaurant) from the current location. I need to add turn by turn navigation in it. I am using google maps and somewhere I read that iPhone does not show turn by turn navigation because that is restricted in Apple-Google contract for maps. Is it really true? If it is, then is there any other way or any 3rd party library, by which I can implement turn by turn navigation?
Thanks in advance
Regards,
PC
Your best option for navigation is to let the user choose the turn by turn they want:
- Apple Maps using the maps.apple.com
- Google Maps using the maps.google.com
other apps, such as Navigon, Tom tom.
It is a complicated feature and you're much better off not taking responsibility for any shortcomings of services.
Google Maps licence agreement prevents you from doing turn by turn.
Check Drawing a route in MapKit in iPhone SDK
I am researching how to create an app for my work that allows clients to download the app (preferably via the app store) and using some sort of wifi triangulation/fingerprints be able to determine their location for essentially an interactive tour.
Now, my question specifically is what is the best route to take for the iPhone? None of the clients will be expected to have jail broken iPhones.
To my understanding this requires the use of the wifi data which is a private api therefore not meeting the app store requirements. The biggest question I have is how does American Museum of Natural History get away with using the same technology, but still available on the app store?
if you're unfamiliar with American Museum of Natural History interactive tour app, see here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amnh-explorer/id381227123?mt=8
Thank you for any clarification you can provide.
I'm one of the developers of the AMNH Explorer app you're referencing.
Explorer uses the Cisco "Mobility Services Engine" (MSE) behind the scenes to determine its location. This is part of their Cisco wifi installation. The network itself listens for devices in the museum and estimates their position via Wifi triangulation. We do a bit of work in the app to "ask" the MSE for our current location.
Doing this work on the network side was (and still is) the only available option for iOS since, as you've found, the wifi scanning functions are considered to be private APIs.
If you'd like to build your own system and mobile app for doing something similar, you might start with the MSE.
Alternatively, we've built the same tech from Explorer into a new platform called Meridian which provides location-based services on both iOS and Android. Definitely get in touch with us via the website if you're interested in building on that.
Update 6/1/2017
Thought I would update this old answer - AMNH is no longer using the Wifi-based system I describe above, as of a few years ago. They now use an installation of a few hundred battery-powered Bluetooth Beacons (also provided by Meridian). The device (iOS or Android) scans for nearby beacons and, based on their known locations and RSSI values, triangulates a position. You can read more about it in this article.
Navizon offers an indoor positioning solution that works for iOS as well as any other platform. You can check it out here:
http://www.navizon.com/product-navizon-indoor-triangulation-system
It works by triangulating the WiFi signals transmitted by the device. Since it doesn't require an app to run on the phone, it bypasses the iOS limitations and can locate any other WiFi device for that matter.
Google recently launched an API called Maps Geolocation API. You can use it for indoor tracking of devices, which essentially can be used to achieve something similar to what AMNH's app does.
I would do this using Augmented Reality. There is a system sort of in place for this, the idea being that you place physical markers that have virtual information associated with them. I believe the system I saw was a type of bar code. When a user holds up the phone with the app, the app uses the camera to read the code and then display information. This could easily be used to make a virtual tour type app distributable through the app store and not even require a WIFI or 3/4G connection. This assumes that you simply load your information and store it locally with your app. Then to update it you simply push an update through the app store. Another solution is to use a SOAP/REST service and provide the information in that way, and this does not use private API's, though it does require some form of internet connection. For this you can see a question I asked about this topic a little bit ago:
SOAP/XML Tutorials Question
In addition, you could load a map of your tour location, and based on what code is scanned you can locate the user on the map and give suggested routes based on interests etc.
I found this tutorial recently on augmented reality, I haven't gone through it, but if its anything like the rest of Ray's tutorials, it will be extremely helpful.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/3997/introduction-to-augmented-reality-on-the-iphone
I'll stick around to clarify any questions or other concerns you may have with your app.
To augment the original answer for devs who were using Cisco MSE for indoor location - now they have an iOS and Android SDK which enables you to do indoor location using the MSE. A simulator can be used as well to develop the app without implementing the infrastructure to start with : https://developer.cisco.com/site/cmx-mobility-services/downloads/
For indoor location you can use Bluetooth LE beacons since it's a very accessible technology nowadays, there are several methods:
Trilateration: it uses 3 beacons, but with the noise and attenuation of Bluetooth signals, it gets quite difficult to determine the exact position and also it's not easy to use more than 3 beacons to increase accuracy.
Levenberg Marquadt method: used to solve non-linear squares problems showed good results on indoor positioning.
Dead Reckoning method: using the motion co-processor of the device, giving an initial position you can calculate the moving path of the device. Not that easy to implement anyway.
I wrote a post on the topic, you can find more info here: http://bits.citrusbyte.com/indoor-positioning-with-beacons/
And you can use this iOS app for your own indoor positioning experiments: https://github.com/citrusbyte/beacons-positioning
I doubt the American Museum is actually using private APIS; you'll probably find the routers that have been setup serve different responses to each other, so the app can detect it's position in the museum.
If you are looking for a cheaper to way to do the same task, you could have signs with QR codes, and use an open source library to let users scan these barcodes as they move through the museum, and update the onscreen content accordingly. On an even more low tech level, you can just tag each area with unique numbers, and distinguish that way.
I'm trying to integrated in our iOS app. Due to the bad relationship between Google & our government, Google Map is not a good idea.
We have bought a local map service company's javascript & Web Services based SDK, now we want to use it on iOS. But it seems that MapKit does not support customer tiles.
So here are my current ideas:
Use UIWebView. But I tried that map in Safari, I can't drag to move the map nor use two fingers to zoom. I think I need to call some javascripts while touch events happens.
Build a costumer UIScrollView, download map images and display them using iOS sdk. But that map service does not have API to download images, I tried to read their 200KB+ undocumented javascript to find out the relationship between location & image files, but I got no results for now.
Both the two ways could face certain legal risks. I'm not sure what the purchase contract is like.
I need suggestions about the two ways or some new ideas. Thanks guys.
There are a couple of non-Google map implementations available on github that you might be able to use (linked via CocoaControls):
NAMapKit
MRMapView
I am totally confused with google maps and maps of iPhone...
i have read that iPhone uses google maps.....and also spent some time on it....
But it never display the items like location pictures, balloons etc.
EDIT
THIS is photo for of browser
and following is same place for iPhone maps
second one did not show the annotation added by people.....
(this is what i was asking for ballons or other pictures which people adds to location on oogle maps)
I want to display all those in my application....
what should i do...
if you suggests implement Google maps API, then please suggest a working link...or provide some sample code if possible.....if anybody has done it...then please mail me at yogeshkumau#gmail.com
waiting for answer......
Points of Interests(location, pictures and baloons) that you are talking about can be shown in your maps, if you acquire the license for Google maps premier api. In that case you'd have to use dynamic maps by using google's web services. However if you want to implement it using MapKit framework on iOS devices, you'd have to draw your custom POIs using core graphics.
Apple has a special agreement with Google to use their maps on their platform. The internet is packed with examples of usage of MKMapView along with annotations (pins, there're no baloons on iPhone).