Sometimes there are situations when connecting to the Internet to download map and find your whereabouts is impossible or at least undesirable. You maybe be traveling abroad where roaming prices are pretty expensive. Or you may find yourself in an area with no coverage at all. In this case GPS in your phone becomes almost useless.
RMaps is a navigational tool that will help you to get around this situation. You can use it as online viewer for some popular map providers (like Google Maps, Microsoft Maps, OpenStreetMaps or Russian Yandex) or create your own “cached” maps on PC and upload them to your phone for offline usage.
- SummaryRMaps is the navigation tool for operation with popular on-line and off-line maps
- Application RMaps
- Developer Robert Developer
- Reviewed version 0.8.7
- Price Free!
Current version (0.8.7) of RMaps supports the following features:
- Auto rotate map in driving direction.
- Auto rotate map in the northern direction.
- Compass on the map.
- Auto-follow function.
- Online search.
- Full screen mode.
- GPS and wireless network mode.
- Indicator accuracy like on Google map.
- Import and export tracks from/to GPX, KML file.
- POI functionality, import POI from KML, GPX files.
- Installation to SD card.
How to create offline map for RMaps
Step 0. To create offline map you will need to download free open source Mobile Atlas Creator (MOBAC) tool with SQLite library. MOBAC is written in Java and requires Java Runtime Environment to be installed on your computer. You can download it for free from Oracle website.
Step 1. Run Mobile Atlas Creator and select map provider from the drop-down box in the left upper corner of the screen (OpenStreetMaps, Google, Microsoft etc.)
Step 2. select desired area of the map with mouse. Use mouse wheel to zoom in and out, right mouse button to scroll the map and left mouse button to select region.
Step 3. Choose zoom levels for you offline map. For Google maps levels 0-19 are available, where 0 is the entire world and 19 zoom down to individual houses. Please note that creating maps of a large area with high resolution will result creating data file several gigabytes in size.
Step 4. Enter the name of your map and click “Add selection” button. Note that you can create maps of several different areas within one file. If you want to add additional areas repeat steps 2-3.
Step 5. Select RMaps.SQLite format from “Atlas settings” drop-box.
Step 6. Press “Create atlas” button. Progress window will appear and maps downloading process will begin.
Step 7. Once completed, open the folder with your atlas file. You can rename the file if you like, but be sure to keep .sqlite extension. Copy the file on your Android device to /sdcard/rmaps/maps folder.
Step 8. On your phone start RMaps. Press Menu button and go to More > Settings > User defined maps. Select you map from the list and it will become active. That’s all!
Author of the RMaps has produces video tutorial on how to create offline maps with Mobile Atlas Creator:
Hi,
I did everything as tutorial showed, but on rmaps nothing happened, there is still loading icon. Do you know what could possibly be the problem?
Cheers buddy
Probably your map is centered at the point, for which you do not have cached map. You can try to zoom out the map to the levels around 1-5 and scroll the map to find cached region manually.
Mobile Atlas Creator:
Can’t find Google Maps in the “Map Source” drop-down box.
Has it gone ?
Thanks
By default Mobile Atlas Creator starts with ‘OpenStreetMap Mapnik’ selected as map source. Scroll up the listbox to select Google or Yahoo maps.
130220
Hi,
is it possible to show a loaded .GPX (route or track) in the
offline-map ?
So I could follow it when walking along.
Thanks !
Yes, there are options to create tracks, import and export them into GPX or KML formats. To manage tracks open application menu and select “More”, then “Tracks”.
I cant get any gpx files to be imported into RMaps, has anyone done this if so how?
If I start downloading a map of an area but it’s interrupted, I’ve not found a way to resume so I have to start all over again. e.g. If I’m downloading all levels but I lose Wi-Fi half through level 14, then it seems I have to start all over again, select an area, select levels starting from zero etc. A way to resume downloading for a user map file would be awesome!
Hi there,
I experience the same problem downloading via mobile app. Once I held the display on and it seemed to be finished, but there were a notifivation that some errors occured without more detailed information. However I had no downloaded maps for the region of my choice.
Trying Mobile Atlas Creator I experience a similar problem. The download starts quick and slows reproducable to much less than 20 KB/s. After 30 minutes it created only 30 MB and I don’t think it will finish ever, cause the speed slows continually.
Any idea how to solve this?
Greetings, Alex
I’ve used Rmaps a lot on my HTC legend, and had maps, created with mobile atlas creator, on the sd card. Thus I know how to do it.
Now I have a Samsung S4…. and now Rmaps does not show what is on the sd card! it only sees the phone memory! What do I do wrong?
jo
You have to change path to the folder where RMaps stores user maps. Go to Settings –> Directories –> User maps directory.
Thank you Alexey!
I tried that, and managed to change the directory. Now in Settings it says: “User defined maps : Maps from /sdcard/rmaps/maps”. (Note that I had to create a folder “rmaps” and subfolder “maps” on the sd card myself. Don’t remember if I’ve had to do that on the htc as wel). Stil, when I copy a sqlitedb file into this folder…. Rmaps doesn’t see it. When I copy the same file into the phone memory (phone>rmaps>maps) Hey presto!: in user defined maps: there it is, and I can activate it.
Strange. I don’t understand? That is filling up my phone memory! I have some pretty large maps, so, what am I doing wrong?!
Thanks, Jo
Updated;
I found it!
My error was, I had to go one more level up, i.e. one directory higher.
The correct place to define in the phone is: /storage/extSdCard/rmaps/maps. Rmaps, my favourite app, works again like I want!
Thanks very much & greetings from Belgium
Jo
My phone doesn’t have a settings button (neither physical nor touchscreen), usually the system puts a virtual button there, but in rMaps there is no button and I can’t use the app without it. Any ideas?