Hello everyone.
I have been working on a property over the last couple of years to re-clear old tracks, regain access to fences, etc. As I’ve progressed, I have needed to mark locations on a map from time to time so I can find them again or measure things. Long story short, Google Maps/Earth aren’t really working for me anymore and I need some advice…
My needs are:
- view, add and edit waypoints on my phone while out in the field, sometimes with limited or no data connectivity.
- search and/or filter by category - eg only show locations tagged as “weeds”
- measurement tools
- sync between my phone and a desktop (or web) program
- share data with one or 2 other people. This doesn’t necessarily need to happen live or automatically. KML export would probably suffice.
So far I’ve tried (and some of this is from memory over the past few months so might be inaccurate):
Google Maps: Points show up in the app and web versions synced, but appear to use different icon sets so icons change. They also seem to have different concepts of categories and labels on the 2 platforms, which is both confusing and doesn’t always match up. Maps lacks measurement tools and is more oriented at Google Business listings than personal mapping data.
Google Earth: Desktop version is really good. Mobile is simple but works. Unfortunately they can’t be set up to sync. Mobile uses an internal database while desktop uses KML files. You can open and export KMLs in the app, but it’s a manual process. Sharing with others is also a manual process by copying the KML. I did try using Syncthing to sync the KML file, figuring I could always manually import and export in the app… But that doesn’t flow well because the app recreates the entry for it in it’s internal database despite being the same filename.
QGIS: I have fiddled about on the desktop program and got myself a Google satellite background, figured out how to add some points. It’s way more complex than I want or need, but does look like it would manage to solve the sharing and syncing problem… Although I’m yet to find a suitable app on the phone. QField sounded promising but doesn’t look like it really works without their own cloud sync service.
Am I over complicating this? Is there a mobile app like Google Earth but that can use KML files directly?