Introduction

• Alpicola app for Android: for private use only
• Get Vice-County and Elevation tool and API
• Lichen Importance and SSSI Index calculator

Alpicola

Alpicola is an app for Android devices to help you record points and tracks while viewing a map of your location.

You must give Alpicola permission to access your location and enable your device GPS to get accurate readings. You will need to enable background location access if you want to store your track and receive updates as you move around.

Maps provided

Currently maps are only available for Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales). GB and Irish grid references are supported. The map tiles are provided by the Ordnance Survey OpenData in "Outdoor" style. Alpicola caches map tiles for offline use for a certain number of days. Alpicola's use of the map data is governed by these Ordnance Survey terms and conditions.

Copyright and data

Alpicola is provided by Chris Cant. Note that you can export points and tracks for use as you wish elsewhere. Please use this facility to backup your data.

Navigation and safety

Warning: To use Alpicola you should already be familiar with maps and you need to check how good your phone GPS is - and switch it on if need be. Some phones have a GPS that is accurate to a few metres; other may be way out. GPS devices will need to lock onto several satellites before an accurate position can be obtained.

In a similar vein, be careful about your phone's compass direction. This may also not be very accurate.

Please do not rely on this app for accurate navigation.

Terminology

• Points are locations with a name and a date/time.
• Points are not tied to a track that you are creating.

• Tracks record lines on a map where you have been.
• Tracks include date/time information while routes do not.
• Routes are lines on a map that you can follow.
• Alpicola does not have a facility to follow a route.
• Within Alpicola, routes and tracks are the same, with tracks having date/time information.

• Alpicola can import points, tracks and routes from GPX files.
• Alpicola can export points and tracks into GPX files.
• You can export all data, data for one day, or data for a date range.

Navigate to

gridref links

Alpicola handles "gridref" links when clicked on by the user when on their phone, eg in a web page or text message. The location given in the gridref links is added as point within the app and you are immediately set to navigate to that point, ie a new bar appears telling you the direction and the distance.

The gridref link has a location specified as two letters and two, four, six, eight or ten numbers in the UK - or one letter and 2 to 10 numbers for Irish gridrefs. The gridref location is optionally followed by a colon and the location name. The examples below show various valid (and one invalid) gridref links, along with links to a standard website map for each location at streetmap.co.uk.

• gridref://NC02       - streetmap
• gridref://NC02:Achmelvich
• gridref:NC02:Achmelvich
• gridref://NY5274719121
• gridref://NY5274719121:Knipe%20Scar
• gridref://ny5274719121
• gridref://NY52741912:8-digits
• gridref://NY527191:6-digits
• gridref://NY5219:4-digits
• gridref://TG2318608525       - streetmap
• gridref://TG2318608525:Norwich Castle
• gridref://ST5738573341:Bristol
• gridref://OV0023606196:Coast off Yorkshire - 500236,506196
• gridref://HY4491211335:Kirkwall - 344912,1011335
• gridref://J3480574825:SSE Arena Belfast
• gridref://O1588734657:Spire of Dublin
• gridref://Ny1:Duff gridref

Gridref accuracy: Like all grid references, the more digits they have the more accurate they will be. Ten figure grid references such as gridref://TG2318608525 give a location accurate to 1 metre. Your phone GPS may or may not be this accurate. A grid reference such as gridref://NC02 covers a 10km square area. Alpicola will show a point in the middle of this large square.