Maprun orienteering app

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jda Sep 2019 4:20pm, 3 Sep 2019 5,100 posts	0 jda Discovered this last night thanks to a club member who organised an informal urban orienteering event as one of our regular club runs. I think other people here may be interested as it seems like a really great system. Maprun is a smartphone app that automatically acts as control puncher/scorer/timer via the phone's GPS and a digital map. We also used a paper copy of the map with the phone kept in a pocket bleeping when it reached a control. There is nothing on the ground at all, the control points are entirely virtual and the course is live at all times so if anyone is close to Settle they can have a go and see what they think of it. A huge advantage over having to set up courses and then collect the controls afterwards, with problems of lost (stolen) and misplaced equipment etc. The Settle event is timed at 50 mins, about 10km would clear it though the event type is one where you just visit as many controls as you like in any order so all abilities can take part. I think some UK orienteering clubs have used it quite extensively and have set up lots of courses in their local areas. maprunners.weebly.com
StuH Sep 2019 7:24pm, 3 Sep 2019 3,303 posts	0 StuH Oh, don't do orienteering, but this sounds like it could be good for Fetchpoint.
Rosehip Sep 2019 8:17pm, 3 Sep 2019 13,399 posts	0 Rosehip wow - that sounds really clever¬
rhb Feb 2021 4:07pm, 11 Feb 2021 1,619 posts	0 rhb I have a maprun course a few hundred metres from home and finally gave it a go the other night. Was good fun albeit easier than punching in as the 10m radius meant I could run straight past many of posts without delay. Off out shortly to do the next course along. There're at least 2 more nearby within warmup jog distance too.
RooA Apr 2021 11:36pm, 11 Apr 2021 66 posts	0 RooA Oh wow. I was looking at how orienteering was going under Covid restrictions, just out of interest, and saw reference to the maprun thing, which I didn't quite get. So thank you for the explanation above. I had assumed it was a Covid forced development. It's interesting that it pre-dates it...
rf_fozzy Apr 2021 11:51pm, 11 Apr 2021 13,892 posts	0 rf_fozzy Yeah we've been using it through covid in AIRE. It's a bit fiddly to set up with non georeferenced maps and doesn't work too well in areas of steep slopes or in forests, but is ok on urban terrain (as long as you don't have typical urban/sprint controls on one side or other of an uncrossable wall or fence to catch people out) and I'm expecting it to be ok in open moorland, but we've not yet tested it in the dales. It won't replace kites and si blocks just yet...
RooA Apr 2021 6:47am, 12 Apr 2021 67 posts	0 RooA I noticed INVOC seemed to be using it but didn't really register what type of areas. I would generally prefer real checkpoints and the whole caboodle that goes with an event. But I imagine a switch to maprun would save volunteer man-power a bit. It's a moot point for me. All the events are a bit too far away and horses take priority these days anyway.
rf_fozzy Apr 2021 8:26am, 12 Apr 2021 13,894 posts	0 rf_fozzy It definitely saves time on the day (no controls to put out or collect in), and it automates the results, bit the prep time is just as arduous, if not more so. The planner still has to check that the controls register in the right place and I found that it was wise to have someone else with a different phone also check it works! And because some of our maps are more than a few years old, we've had to redo a lot of georeferencing and in the process found a few of our maps have a bit of a distortion in them. Plus of course, O maps aren't precise - they're interpretive to some extent and we shift features by a few mm on the map to make it clearer to read in places, so the GPS might register you in the 'correct' place, but that might be slightly different on the ground. You can adjust for this in maprun, but that also takes some work. There were some during lockdown suggesting we'd never use physical controls ever again - which isn't going to happen, particularly if they want events in quarried areas or similar...
Oranj Apr 2021 8:30am, 12 Apr 2021 2,551 posts	0 Oranj That thing of putting a control on one side of an uncrossable wall/fence in urban O doesn't work well in MapRun. Last summer I tagged a control like that from the 'wrong' side I knew I was going to run near it before turning down the cul-de-sac it was in; I saved myself a minute or two.
RooA Apr 2021 8:50am, 12 Apr 2021 70 posts	0 RooA I imagine maprun working quite well for less technical courses somehow. So good for the kind of orienteering phase you'd get at a TREC competition (equestrian sport) where your control points would be path junctions and the point of the controls is to more or less just lead you round the correct course rather than there being much route choice involved... But "proper" o-ing seems, to me, like it still needs physical controls. Half the fun is finding the damn thing hidden in a deep depression you've run right past 3 times surely?