IOverlander help?
 

I hope this is in the correct board.

Most of you know ioverlander.com? It's a damn good idea and actually made life too easy for overlanders. No more need to search for places to stay. It's all on one app added by overlanders.

But, there is a glitch in the system, and I hope some of you that is familiar with the app can help me out. it might be that I do not understand the workings to well. The type of accommodation is shown a camp icon or a hotel or restaurant. Now, bikers, bicyclist and 4x4 campers use the app. The problem is a 4x4 camper load and show a Pemex fuel station parking lot as a camping spot on the app. But for bicyclist and bikers it's not a camping spot. We can set-up a tent in their parking lot. And so with the mega amount of places added onto the app over time to sort them will near impossible.

It makes life a bit difficult as you try and look for places to stay and end up working through pins that are not really usefull info.

I have tried to communicate with ioverlander.com and I understand they are a small setup and do not have Google resources. There has to be more options to differentiate between 4x4 campers and other types and different type of camping spots as example.

Or am I missing something?

Ioverlander database has provision for tent friendly classification as part of the description for every accommodation type entry.
Of course not every entry will have all classifications filled in. Tent friendly and pet friendly and showers and toilets dont interest me in the slightest, but bigrig friendly and internet does. Even then i take the time to fill in every box and take photos as well.

As for fuel stations entered as informal campsites (not usually interested in fuel stations as such except in Bolivia because there are tens of thousands), in many places they are all you have and it is up to you to decide if it is any use to you. Some ARE tent friendly, but many are not, just as are many hotels that allow camping really mean you can park and sleep in your vehicle.

The info provided is what you and other travellers provide, so if it is incomplete, then just fix it.
Btw, using it via an app means you cant use all the features. On the main web site you can select to download lists and poi files of only those places that for instance are tent friendly. Then you can download that tailored poi file, email it to yourself and then add it to mapsme or other offline mapping and navigation app and end up with your own special tentfriendly app. Then your problem will be to hope that whover entered the info was a fellow bike rider or pogostick rider or whatever and understood exactly what tent friendly might mean to you.

Hi Tony, yes I understand it, But there are things thats easier for campers vans than for bikers or bicyclist. So when there are a load of pins to work through and all of them in or near a town for example are fuel stop pins for campers to stop for the night it just takes time for us to sit and work through them. We do not have the luxury in a vehicle to sit with a laptop. We use the app on the phone and as offline. Forsure we have a choice to stop at a place or not. That is not the point really.
What I am reffering to is the ability to diffirentiate between pins for just informal camping for example as a diffirent colour if it's a camper overlander who pinned it. As with hotels or restaurants.

Have gone to check on the website and there are nice option to filter. It will make life a lot easier when having wifi to search that.

Tony, just another question, do you have any knowledge of importing the data into MAPS.ME or the Ivoerlander app? I downloaded the .xls csv and gpx files but not sure how to get these apps to import them.

I added to my post a method where you can eliminate 90% of the rubbish. I create special POI files from the ioverlander main search page and install them on my Garmin (and I could do that on mapsme on my phone too) So I have a poi file that is established campgrounds or informal campgrounds WITH internet. I could have a file with all places that have internet. Another I have and use is just Propane refillers. I also have another one which has all POIs just in case I want to find the most scrumptiously delicious hotcakes in woopwoop. I DO NOT have one that is for BigRig friendly places because I know that others' interpretation of what a bigrig is is somewhat different to those of bigrig owners so it is pretty much a waste of time. Does piss me off a bit when i drive 50km and find I can't get in under the gate arch. Shit happens.

So we would need different colours for every class of user. Then the problem becomes if that entry was made by a pogostick rider, can I get in with my 20 tonne bigrig? Shouldn't matter because the pogostick rider should have entered information such as tent-friendly in the appropriate box, plus edited the main entry or checkin indicating that the road was firm and his pogostick didn't get bogged. Then the bigrig driver should have ticked the bigrig box AND told everyone he was 4 metres tall and just scraped in but was badly scratched along the sides and the bridge had a 15 tonne limit on it.

My problem - as the one currently moderating a lot of these additions and changes is that exactly as you have already flagged, too much is subjective. Potable water for instance, or shower temperature, or internet speeds drive me batty because fred has his shower when the solar heater has just finished for the day and changes the entry to hot showers. Freda is a bit slow and has her shower at midnight and edits the entry to cold showers. Two weeks later Peter changes it to warm. Some consider water not presented in a PET bottle as obviously non-potable, while others are somewhat more pragmatic and as long as the local dog is drinking it, they drink it too and edit it back to potable. And internet speeds? Well!!! So end result is the same place keeps coming up for moderation and the shower temperature has been changed yet again and/or the internet speed and/or ....

Best ioverlander can do is supply the platform - free of charge - and then assist the users to enter and modify information - and provide means and ways to extract whatever parts of the information are of interest to particular users. Not perfect of course but what you have is what the users submit and that is going to have 'in the eye of the beholder' flaws and limitations The two apps are a quick and easy way of achieving most of it and I use it on an android, but of course to use all of the features requires visiting ioverlander.com and ticking lots of boxes in order to reduce the clutter, and those decluttered files I use on my garmin.

BTW adding extra categories is a topic that comes up and is subject to intense scrutiny among the "staff" on iOverlander. Recently added a couple to try and reduce confusion, but in some cases that doesn't work. I wouldn't mind having a category for regular accommodation (hostels and hotels) that allow camping. First problem is designing an icon, and then defining what constitutes 'camping" and deciding whether they were allowed to camp in the lobby of the Ritz only because there was a cat5 hurricane going on, or whether they really will welcome any scruff that rolls up in 6 months time or who wants to ride his oily bike into the foyer. Too hard basket. Sometimes it is expedient to allow two entries for the same place. Hitchhikers in Lima is one such. Famous hostel, but equally as famous for allowing 4 overlander vehicles to squeeze in their tiny front yard. (NO tents BTW - sorry) So that place has two entries - hostel and campground. Not ideal, but ...

Getting the poi into mapsme involves selecting the right format - not sure if it is GPX or csv, then emailing it to yourself on the smart phone, which allows it to be imported into the mapsme app. Have never tried it myself but others have. I'll see if I can find it. I know the process has been described on the panamerican facebook group and the overlandshere facebook group

https://m.facebook.com/groups/572928...23468441025320 might help if the link works

Informative, but mostly funny!!!..... Tony, you made my morning..:D

Tony, thanks so much for the taking the time and effort to explain and for the information. I sure learned a few new tricks! :thumbup1:

It was actually quite easy to get the filtered POI from IO exported and .gpx and then just convert it online to .kml Works like a charm.

I have started a thread in Horizons Unlimited and there are also some interesting suggestions of interest.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/thehu...66529743663781

Thanks for the post Bertrand.

Or you could just use Locus or backcountry navigator. They're better apps than Maps.me anyway.

Tmotten, I loaded both of them, will check them out. I see they have paid versions, is it necessary to buy or are the free version adequate enough?

+1

Before giving feedback on iO from a personal point of view, I must stress it's a great app and has made my motorcycle travels around South America much easier as long as I remember to bear in mind the following:

I ride a m/c so many of the suggested locations are irrelevant as most iO contributions are from our 4 wheeled friends. Width/height of gates always crack me up :D

Often the icons are wrong, for what I want. Often the informal camping spots are actually hostels where the car parked outside. I actually want hostels (being on quite a budget and finding my tent a pita) with off street m/c

Wild camp spots are often just paved carparks which for a biker is ridiculous

Locations of petrol station is all well and good in southern Patagonia and I envied the car campers. However I did pitch my tent there quite often as Argentina is so bloody prohibitively expensive. Elsewhere in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia there's fuel everywhere!

I look at the iO app on my smart phone for what's marked en route and at my proposed daily destination, read all the contributions and choose very selectively which gps coordinates to enter into my gps device. I have an informal ignore list of contributors who imho post rubbish/wrong stuff and others' whose views I trust. Just like on the hubb and all other internet forums. :innocent:

Downloading the entire poi database would just spam up my device and make it utterly useless.

Thanks again to those who work hard to make iO such a great free resource!