HEMA Explorer North America

1Louder

Explorer
But it's still not fixed! You can change the directory and the tiles indeed save to the SD card but the displayed path doesn't reflect this change causing users to repeat the action. This should have been an easy bug to fix. I spent the better part of an hour yesterday proving to myself that the tile folder actually changed to the sdcard. I shouldn't have to do feature validation as a user on a $20 app!



The only option in the current Android version 1.0.0 under Settings>Units is to change the lat/long coordinate units.


I think there's good promise in the App. From limited experience it has a good UI on Android. Not as slick as the Motion X UI on IOS, but I'll gladly take the improved tile download speed. I do have two complaints though: 1) it's not ready for prime time. If Hema is going to advertise it all over the forums and facebook feeds they should have done their homework to ensure its completely bug free and sorted out. It's no coincidence that the reviews are at 2.8/5 on Google Play. 2) be up front that it's Gaia with a Hema wrapper. I was expecting a new product for my $20 not new packaging.

Heading out onto the trail for four days starting tomorrow. Will be running in parallel with MotionX to see how she performs in the wild.


I'm not Hema tech support and only have the iOS version. I do have Gaia for Android and under settings I can scroll down and see where you can check metric or nautical units. So not sure where Hema has changed those settings.

I agree they should have not launched and been more up front but guessing the marketing department said move ahead full speed ready or not because of the Overland Expo. Gaia for Android has more map choices. The iOS version is still my preferred version of Gaia though.
 

Cmoxokla

New member
My main issue is when I want to travel off road I have to try to find which map to download around the trail. Why can't someone give us a great base map of the whole USA? They are all the same in this regard. Also instead of having to pick a square to download, why can't we download 1 mile in each direction around the trail we choose. The base maps pre loaded is what we need. It's way to hard to use for the beginner.


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LandCruiserPhil

Expedition Leader
My main issue is when I want to travel off road I have to try to find which map to download around the trail. Why can't someone give us a great base map of the whole USA? They are all the same in this regard. Also instead of having to pick a square to download, why can't we download 1 mile in each direction around the trail we choose. The base maps pre loaded is what we need. It's way to hard to use for the beginner.


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Topo USA
 

LandCruiserPhil

Expedition Leader
My main issue is when I want to travel off road I have to try to find which map to download around the trail. Why can't someone give us a great base map of the whole USA? They are all the same in this regard. Also instead of having to pick a square to download, why can't we download 1 mile in each direction around the trail we choose. The base maps pre loaded is what we need. It's way to hard to use for the beginner.


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Topo USA does it and I have used it in the past. The main reason I use Gaia is for the ability to DL aerials sections.
 

zelatore

Explorer
My main issue is when I want to travel off road I have to try to find which map to download around the trail. Why can't someone give us a great base map of the whole USA? They are all the same in this regard. Also instead of having to pick a square to download, why can't we download 1 mile in each direction around the trail we choose. The base maps pre loaded is what we need. It's way to hard to use for the beginner.


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Gaia has a 'download along route' option.

As for a base map for the whole country that would be great - expect for 2 possible problems. First, sheer size. I have no idea how much that would eat up. Of course you could just dowenload your entire state or general area of travel - nothing's stopping you but memory. Second, what map? I haven't found one single map source that covers all my needs. 90% of the time I'm running USFS maps as they seem to be by far the best ... when you're on USFS land. Get very far off USFS land and the maps just disappear. They also aren't very good for major roads or highways/cities. Then I usually switch to Open Cycle or Open Street. I rarely use USGS Topo, at least not when USFS is available.
 

shane4x4

Supporting Sponsor
But it's still not fixed! You can change the directory and the tiles indeed save to the SD card but the displayed path doesn't reflect this change causing users to repeat the action. This should have been an easy bug to fix. I spent the better part of an hour yesterday proving to myself that the tile folder actually changed to the sdcard. I shouldn't have to do feature validation as a user on a $20 app!



The only option in the current Android version 1.0.0 under Settings>Units is to change the lat/long coordinate units.

Another unanticipated behavior: every time you launch the app it starts downloading the default Hema road maps. This was a complaint other users posted up on the Google Play store reviews. Annoying, time consuming, and it's consuming my data! I've seen it load the same dataset a dozen times since I bought the app yesterday.

I think there's good promise in the App. From limited experience it has a good UI on Android. Not as slick as the Motion X UI on IOS, but I'll gladly take the improved tile download speed. I do have two complaints though: 1) it's not ready for prime time. If Hema is going to advertise it all over the forums and facebook feeds they should have done their homework to ensure its completely bug free and sorted out. It's no coincidence that the reviews are at 2.8/5 on Google Play. 2) be up front that it's Gaia with a Hema wrapper. I was expecting a new product for my $20 not new packaging.

Heading out onto the trail for four days starting tomorrow. Will be running in parallel with MotionX to see how she performs in the wild.

Thanks for the great feedback OregonLC!
The units issue in Android will be fixed with the next update.
The SD Card map download is already in the feature-request queue.
I haven't witnessed the default download every time, it's only supposed to ask the very first time during startup, at which time you can choose to download NONE of the Hema Road Atlas. If you want to cancel any map download any time, simply go into my downloaded maps, swipe left and press cancel/delete.

Also, there's no such thing as bug free, despite months of testing =)

While the current look is similar to Gaia, Hema is committed to building THE platform for Global Vehicular Exploration. The 1.0 release is useful (I've been using it for months), but is definitely not feature complete.

Can't wait to hear your thoughts after your trip! You can also send feedback directly in the app via the Contact Us feature.
 

OregonLC

Observer
Was going to do a more thorough review but honestly I got part way into the trip and turned it off. Motion X is just so much better (with the exception of tile download speeds). The Hema Maps are good, but don't compare to the quality of Google Terrain on MotionX. I was excited to see what I thought was a new solid Android mapping platform, but this isn't it.
 

Airmapper

Inactive Member
Was going to do a more thorough review but honestly I got part way into the trip and turned it off. Motion X is just so much better (with the exception of tile download speeds). The Hema Maps are good, but don't compare to the quality of Google Terrain on MotionX. I was excited to see what I thought was a new solid Android mapping platform, but this isn't it.

I had a similar experience, I've really been wanting to find a reason to brag on HEMA especially after being critical of it initially, but I can't honestly do it yet.

I made a route within the app and saved it for later. The next day (yesterday) I called it up to run, it was some dirt roads that ran along a river. It went okay at first, I was following my route, until I came to a spot where the road shown on the map and the ground truth didn't line up, but no big deal that is common in rural areas.

Well since I by-passed a waypoint due to the mismatch, route navigation went to crap, as in the hard to see information was no longer giving any relevant data. It locked onto the passed waypoint and would not re-align despite passing over waypoints further into the route. I figured the interface was intuitive and tried to tap a waypoint further down the list hoping it would resume navigation to that point instead, but I never noticed that it did and I was enjoying my drive so I didn't take time to fool with it further.

It was more useful for glancing down and seeing I was over the line displayed on the map than actually navigating the route. That is basically what MotionX HD does, and OSM Topo looks better than Thunderforest. Again, the information displays were much to small to be useful while driving along at 15mph in the middle of nowhere.

I guess since I'm "invested" in it I'll keep trying. I was toying with the idea of using it for the KAT, at this point I'm fairly convinced I won't do that as it's just not going to work smoothly enough for me to trust it.

Oh, and cloud data still hasn't successfully synced, even after I went online and disabled sync on all my online data....
 

shane4x4

Supporting Sponsor
Was going to do a more thorough review but honestly I got part way into the trip and turned it off. Motion X is just so much better (with the exception of tile download speeds). The Hema Maps are good, but don't compare to the quality of Google Terrain on MotionX. I was excited to see what I thought was a new solid Android mapping platform, but this isn't it.

Trust me, I'm with you on the Android version. The current beta I'm testing has some bugs we need to fix. The cool thing is, our development team works while we sleep so when new issues are reported through the 'Contact Us' feature in the app, we can get them filed & in the queue quickly ;)
 

shane4x4

Supporting Sponsor
I had a similar experience, I've really been wanting to find a reason to brag on HEMA especially after being critical of it initially, but I can't honestly do it yet.

I made a route within the app and saved it for later. The next day (yesterday) I called it up to run, it was some dirt roads that ran along a river. It went okay at first, I was following my route, until I came to a spot where the road shown on the map and the ground truth didn't line up, but no big deal that is common in rural areas.

Well since I by-passed a waypoint due to the mismatch, route navigation went to crap, as in the hard to see information was no longer giving any relevant data. It locked onto the passed waypoint and would not re-align despite passing over waypoints further into the route. I figured the interface was intuitive and tried to tap a waypoint further down the list hoping it would resume navigation to that point instead, but I never noticed that it did and I was enjoying my drive so I didn't take time to fool with it further.

It was more useful for glancing down and seeing I was over the line displayed on the map than actually navigating the route. That is basically what MotionX HD does, and OSM Topo looks better than Thunderforest. Again, the information displays were much to small to be useful while driving along at 15mph in the middle of nowhere.

I guess since I'm "invested" in it I'll keep trying. I was toying with the idea of using it for the KAT, at this point I'm fairly convinced I won't do that as it's just not going to work smoothly enough for me to trust it.

Oh, and cloud data still hasn't successfully synced, even after I went online and disabled sync on all my online data....

First, thank you for investing early & going through some growing pains with us. The app (IMHO) is fairly rock solid for 90% of our 50k+ Aussie users & growing number of North American users, but we've always known that the more embedded GPS nav users would help clean things up.

The issue with route following has been noted & is in the works. I'm asking if we can add a setting so the user can adjust a buffer around route points for them to 'count' during 'guide me' mode.

Most users tend to use the guidance as more of a reference rather than point-by-point, but since the feature is there we should make it work properly =)

Adding a more useful trip computer display is also already in the queue for an upgraded feature. Unless you're on an iPad Pro the data on the bottom of the screen is not easy to see when driving.

I'll be putting together a video discussing the layer choices we've made soon. Obviously people will always have their favorites, and I'm working with the team to enhance our layer offering in the near future. For now though, I think our layers meet the needs of 'most' people.

The sync issue on iOS devices is odd. I have 4 iOS test devices and 2 always sync just fine, 2 show 'Sync Incomplete' even though the data has actually synchronized properly. Have you noticed whether data is syncing OK even though it says 'Sync Incomplete'?

Safe journeys :)
 

Airmapper

Inactive Member
Thanks for the feedback Shane and being a good sport while I nitpick. :sombrero:

The issue with route following has been noted & is in the works. I'm asking if we can add a setting so the user can adjust a buffer around route points for them to 'count' during 'guide me' mode.

Most users tend to use the guidance as more of a reference rather than point-by-point, but since the feature is there we should make it work properly =)

I like that method of solving the route following if it can be implemented. Approaching a waypoint further down the route could work, but if you really wanted to visit a prior waypoint and didn't notice you passed it, some users might find that annoying. To me the definable range to 'count' seems like a good way to handle that. For the most part I would have it set fairly loose, unless I had known data that was precise.

I still think picking another waypoint in the list might have worked, if I get an opportunity to pay more attention to it I will explore it further.

What is most important to me when using a route is usually the total distance remaining. When I'm using a feature like that I'm wanting info on how far to the end of the trail, to the end of the trip, or to the main road, however I have the route set up. Given I can create a route in app (which is wonderful) it might mean I'm wanting to glance down and see how many miles remaining on my spur of the moment detour until I'm back on my planned course, or to a fuel stop for example.

Obviously people will always have their favorites, and I'm working with the team to enhance our layer offering in the near future. For now though, I think our layers meet the needs of 'most' people.

I agree, I can work with what is available. Just if it gets down to other features being equal, then map preference might override. Thunderforest doesn't seem to be too much of a memory hog offline, I set max zoom to 15 and it worked well.

The sync issue on iOS devices is odd. I have 4 iOS test devices and 2 always sync just fine, 2 show 'Sync Incomplete' even though the data has actually synchronized properly. Have you noticed whether data is syncing OK even though it says 'Sync Incomplete'?

I have the "sync incomplete" message, but I don't have any data from this week on the cloud app (accessing via PC) I should have a new route and a new track. That is displaying "Archived" and "Filed" as well just in case.

First time I tried it with 1 waypoint, it worked. Later I uploaded a GPX to the cloud, and I believe it got the incomplete message at that time, but it pulled down the data to the iPad anyway. I deleted all that data from the iPad and it hasn't seemed to work well since, so I went in and turned off sync on all the cloud data so it wouldn't try to download it again, but I haven't had much luck with transferring in either direction since. I'd rather not take what I have off the cloud as I have it published to the gallery, although there are a few things I could clean up about it.

I do not have auto publish selected.
 

The_Dude

Adventurer
Anyone having issues downloading the gpx file of the alpine loop off the cloud? I am experimenting with the app and can't seem to get it to add to my tracks or download the gpx file.

Also how many map layers are necessary to down load to make a good offline map? I am new to all this.


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Last edited:

The_Dude

Adventurer
Another question:

Better to download a huge map or a smaller map focused on the area you will be visiting? How do you get the detail to remain sharp on the highest zoom in?


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