AVENZA Cell Phone GPS Mapping Project

The Oregon Country Fair GIS team, a part of the Cartography Crew, is welcoming the OCF Fair Family to participate in defining locations on-site of importance ... with GPS and smart phones. These include, but are not limited to, green zones, heritage trees, poison oak, and potential hazards. The problem that we have faced in the past is that mapping apps generally require Internet access to function, which is virtually unavailable on-site during our event.

We have investigated an app called AVENZA mapping. This app is available from your app store for Android, iOS, & Windows phones. They provide a free version for download {of course, the free version has limitations, but is very functional for our purposes}. The team is compiling instructions (which will be posted here) for downloading, installing, and “getting started” with AVENZA, which is available from your app store. The AVENZA app must be downloaded, installed, and registered when you are connected to Internet, but once registered, the app will work off-line.

AVENZA, a Canadian company, is in the business of selling maps for their app, but it can also be used with maps available, on-line, for free. The USGS Noti and Elmira quadrangles cover our site. They can be put into a "collection" to make it easy to switch from one map to the other. The team is currently building a map-image of the Fair site, which will be downloadable pre-Fair, and available on-site via BlueTooth.The GIS team will support the BlueTooth server on site both pre-Fair and during the Fair to collect data from Family using the AVENZA mapping tool.

The GIS team plans to offer workshops on-site June 30, July 1, 7 & 8, the two weekends before the Fair, on the use of AVENZA and non-internet-dependent file sharing between phones {BlueTooth stuff}. During these workshops we will address and share protocols that the team, the OCF Cartography Crew, and Site Management will find most useful.

Questions can be emailed to: ocf.gps.mapping@gmail.com

Learn more about Avenza maps on cell phones at https://www.avenza.com/avenza-maps/

To see tutorials on using Avenza on an iOS device, see http://help.avenzamaps.com/customer/en/portal/topics/950368-avenza-maps-for-ios/articles

For help with Android devices, see http://help.avenzamaps.com/customer/en/portal/topics/951155-avenza-maps-for-android/articles