Castlevania IRL?

April 5, 2017 8:32 AM

Is there a way to easily track how much of a given neighbourhood one has walked? My inner completionist loves to get to 100%. When I go to a park, I try to walk down every path and explore every nook. I use the dinky little maps to make sure I've gotten everywhere. I'd love to track my daily wanderings like this, but digitally. I don't need step counting or distance per trip. I'd prefer it if it could be offline or at least minimal data usage.
posted by Trifling to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (14 answers total)

Several friends use Strava for doing similar by bike. It works for walks and runs too.
posted by brokeaspoke at 8:39 AM on April 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have been enjoying Trails on iOS for the past year. The maps are very detailed including small walking trails and topographic information.
posted by fairmettle at 8:45 AM on April 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

Fog of World on iOS sounds like what you're looking for. I have friends that are obsessed with it.
posted by booooooze at 9:14 AM on April 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

Best answer: The app Strut kinda does that.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:21 AM on April 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Unfortunately, I'm on an android. Those games sound interesting, though!
posted by Trifling at 9:26 AM on April 5, 2017

Best answer: I did this a few years back using Runkeeper as my GPS tracker, then custom GIS software to make a map. The map looks like this or this, I ended up having it lasercut into wood.

I don't know of a turnkey product that will do this for you, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is one. You can get pretty far with generic tools just by importing a bunch of GPX tracks from a GPS tracker into Google Earth, or make a custom Google Map.

Back in 2012 the location accuracy meant the tracks were fine for figuring out which street I'd walked on, but not something more detailed like reliably which side of the street.
posted by Nelson at 9:40 AM on April 5, 2017

Seconding Fog of World! I've been using it for about 5 years and it's really cool to have a visual representation of my travels, both local and not.
posted by Automocar at 9:55 AM on April 5, 2017

For android: strava works, but the "heat map" function is one of the premium features.

Stand alone apps like Fog of war (I haven't tried any):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.unchiujar.umbra2

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rollingfortress.wanderlust.free
posted by nobeagle at 10:19 AM on April 5, 2017

Is there a way to easily track how much of a given neighbourhood one has walked? My inner completionist loves to get to 100%. When I go to a park, I try to walk down every path and explore every nook. I use the dinky little maps to make sure I've gotten everywhere.

Why not leave chalk marks to indicate where you've gone?

I'd love to track my daily wanderings like this, but digitally.

Chalk marks + weekly/ monthly digital map updates to record your progress and preserve it in case of rain? You could use Google Maps and draw your paths, or go with something static and use any raster image editor (Photoshop-like) to edit an image, or go scaleable with vector images. Start with a map of your neighborhood, either Google Maps or Open Street Maps "blueprint" view (roads and paths) for ease of map viewing and scaling up or down, or aerial photos if you want to mark up specific nooks and crannies that aren't currently mapped.

And you can create your own heat map by making the paths transparent. Save the paths as layers (or individual vector drawings) and you can play around with coloring schemes.

This is all more manual than getting an app, but it's also more customizable, and can produce whatever end result you want.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:27 PM on April 5, 2017

You could record it the way Mrs P did (she walked, invented and published the London A-Z).
posted by clew at 12:41 PM on April 5, 2017

Response by poster: Thanks for the ideas, guys. Looks like I'm going to have to do it manually (but not quite as manually as chalk marks); being on android and in an area inaccessible by Google puts paid to many apps. Knowing that Strut exists is going to annoy me, though.
posted by Trifling at 6:26 AM on April 7, 2017

Link to Strut, for posterity.

I've been running Fog of War for a few days and it's kind of neat but it's playing hell with my iPhone battery, even in background mode with it configured as carefully as I could. To the goal of "every nook", Fog of World draws traces very narrowly; if I walk on a street on both sides of a city block sometimes the middle of the block is left marked "unvisited". Strut seems to split the world up into tiles ~6 city blocks big, so is coarser grained.
posted by Nelson at 9:35 AM on April 7, 2017

Oh yeah. Given all that, I can't use Strut or MapMyHike on a full day, say sightseeing. You'll need to be close to something that recharges.
posted by humboldt32 at 12:49 PM on April 7, 2017

Perhaps I should have mentioned OpenPaths before. It's another passive location tracker and I've been running it for ~5 years in the background with no significant battery impact. The downside and explanation is it records data maybe once every 10 minutes or so, maybe less if I'm not moving.
posted by Nelson at 1:18 PM on April 7, 2017