Veloviewer. Who is using it, and what do you get from it?

[Solocle]

yellowjack said:

ZetecTDCI said:

Yes I understand that, but why is a low or high ratio bad ?

I don't think it's either good or bad. It's just an observation, and perhaps unusual among "tilers" because for a time there was only the 'Max Square' to aim for. The 'Max Cluster' came along later to cater for folk who have difficulty in building a square. Think about riders in Cornwall, for instance. Or Canada, where huge areas of wilderness and lakes galore interrupt a square. And riders who live near conflict zones, or borders with unfriendly countries. I've got issues with a number of 'Strictly No Access' MOD sites. Others have issues with oil refineries. I think there's at least one 'Impossible Tile' entirely on a USAF base in the UK.

Sometimes we're guilty of taking it a bit too seriously, but I think this is just a turn of phrase, not a judgement. I'm annoyed that I didn't find VeloViewer until after I'd moved house from Farnborough to Bournemouth. I had to go back a couple of times to mop up single tiles and small groups here and there. Or I didn't have to but I wanted to. It frustrates me that it was easier to expand my Max Square up there, but now I'm within a couple of tiles of the coast it's more difficult because I'm limited by the sea.

I'm struggling anyway at the moment. Very little cycling means I've only picked up the odd single tile here and there on walks. A 26 new tile return since September 2022 isn't exactly setting the world of Tiling alight. I keep telling myself I'll get back to it, (both cycling and tiling) but there's always some excuse not to. Currently it's being a bike down, and the weather at the top of the excuse list. Whatever, though. Overthinking it is my worst enemy if I'm honest, and because there are no prizes I probably should just get a bike out and get out there, even if the nearest unridden tile for me is at least a 60 mile (round trip) ride away.

Ultimately it's no big deal. It's up to you how you use VeloViewer and "do tiling" if you're into that. Comparing yourself to others? Do it if you you want to, and although I do pay some attention to folk with more impressive tile tallies, I'm into it more for the spur it gives (gave?) me to explore routes and areas I'd never gone down or into before. I like the data, and "colouring in" the tile map. It's also a great tool for finding segments and old rides/walks/runs, especially when I haven't got many rides in a more distant area. Much easier than trying to sift through years of activites on Strava.

Exactly. It's just a metric, sort of how straggly your rides are. If you went bike touring all over the place without a mind for tiling, you could have 10s of thousands of tiles, but a 4x4 square and not much bigger cluster.

Just noting that my cluster looks quite straggly, but I don't have a gagillion rides zipping all over the place, so the ratio is brought up somewhat.

[ukbabz]

ZetecTDCI said:

Yes I understand that, but why is a low or high ratio bad ?

Sorry if my comment came across negative, it was not my intention I just wanted to check that you'd not added a zero :-)

I'm finding the tiling trickier to do these days, mainly as my longer rides are club rides but I did manage to do a longer ride on Saturday to add a few more to my cluster (8). I'm 1 tile away from increasing max cluster to 26x26 which is going to be tricky due to roads near brize norton but should be doable.

Current scores:
5502 tiles, average of 7.028 km per tile
Max square 25x25
Max Cluster: 968

[emicen]

Its another layer of stats and numbers to geek out on I guess.

For me, starting using Veloviewer has helped stop things from getting stale. I find it’s far too easy to fall in to just riding the same routes over and over and that gets boring and difficult for motivation in mid-winter. Conversely, the problem I now face is, I need at least 2 hours on the bike to stand a chance of getting any new tiles and back to base! The km per tile is an interesting measure, but unless you know the riding habits it really doesn’t tell you much. You might go out and strike new tiles every Sunday, but if you commute the same route Mon-Fri, that’s going to ramp up the km per tile.

Also depends what you’re trying to achieve, I’ve been working on colouring in to make my cluster as a big a blob as possible, others might be looking for as long a blob as possible. Start of the summer my max cluster was about 10% of my total tiles, it’s now over 30%

Date	4th June	21st July	28th Aug	1st Sept	17th Sept	15th Nov
Tiles	812	848	917	925	943	983
km/square	6.702	7.200	7.519	7.552	7.572	7.553
Max Square	7x7	9x9	10x10	11x11	11x11	11x11
Max Cluster	87	145	195	240	257	323

Aim is 1000 tiles / 350 cluster by year end. Things were going well until I lost motivation towards the end of September and then got hit with another dosing of covid in mid-October.

Think I’ve figured out the solution to my first impossible tile, which may not actually be impossible after all. The one that I will encounter at 13x13 is tougher though. Fields with no paths and a large section fenced off due to hosting the central Scotland TV transmitter tower

[ZetecTDCI]

No apols needed, I was curious on what you meant is all
Yes it’s just a metric, and I know loads of people like to get a big square and cluster but I’m not very bothered about that. I do like going new places though.

Agreed, it’s a great visual way to see where all you have ridden. I love VV for that. It’s pretty much the only reason I use Strava tbh. I’m not a premium Strava user

[Solocle]

Some Watling Street action

[emicen]

emicen said:

Start of the summer my max cluster was about 10% of my total tiles, it’s now over 30%

Date	4th June	21st July	28th Aug	1st Sept	17th Sept	15th Nov
Tiles	812	848	917	925	943	983
km/square	6.702	7.200	7.519	7.552	7.572	7.553
Max Square	7x7	9x9	10x10	11x11	11x11	11x11
Max Cluster	87	145	195	240	257	323

Aim is 1000 tiles / 350 cluster by year end. Things were going well until I lost motivation towards the end of September and then got hit with another dosing of covid in mid-October.

Partial fail.

31st Dec, 994 tiles, 366 max cluster. Found a whole load of new quieter roads to ride in the process.



(Hit the 1000 tiles mark on 3rd January and got the max cluster to 382)

[Solocle]

Started on the IOW

[Solocle]

Made a few advances.

A couple of evening rides in the New Forest after work filling out that area nicely. A couple of rides in the Bath-Bristol area joined up the wodge of tiles I had around there.

Max cluster is up to 2370.

[yellowjack]

Solocle said:

Made a few advances.

A couple of evening rides in the New Forest after work filling out that area nicely. A couple of rides in the Bath-Bristol area joined up the wodge of tiles I had around there.

Max cluster is up to 2370.

I think I snagged about 4 new tiles north of Bridport today. I was at my limit of available time, so that was all I could manage. It won't do much for my Max Cluster, and even less for my Max Square, but it's the first time I've actually set out to grab tiles by bicycle for an absolute age. Hopefully I can get back into the "tiling malarkey" more regularly now...

[ukbabz]

Solocle said:

Made a few advances.

A couple of evening rides in the New Forest after work filling out that area nicely. A couple of rides in the Bath-Bristol area joined up the wodge of tiles I had around there.

Max cluster is up to 2370.

Very tidy!

I've got 5584 tiles, with a max cluster of 994 and max square of 26x26 and a bit more sprawling. I've been focusing on club rides so lots of riding around the big blue patch in the middle!

[Solocle]

ukbabz said:

Very tidy!

I've got 5584 tiles, with a max cluster of 994 and max square of 26x26 and a bit more sprawling. I've been focusing on club rides so lots of riding around the big blue patch in the middle!

My max square is 26x26 too, 6206 tiles

I feel like mine is a sprawling mess tbh, but at least I've got some decent sprawl with my max cluster too now. I've got the shotgun effect going on in the Oxford periphery from past club rides.

My next major goal is probably the Isle of Wight. I just need one very tricky tile

I've already done a bit of practice for it, back in May.

Edited by Solocle on Wednesday 17th July 10:58

[Harpoon]

Strava yesterday announced a raft of a changes to their API policy and the general take appears to be it kills off lots of third party apps like Veloviewer, plus coaching apps

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/11/stravas-change...



https://road.cc/content/news/strava-users-cant-pub...

I've just cancelled my automatic Strava renewal for next year, just a bonkers policy IMO. Thirty days notice to rewrite or remove functionality going into a holiday period which will probably have a change freeze...

I already use RideWithGPS for route planning, so may well upgrade my subscription there for some of the extra features.

[emicen]

I doubt Strava will care as much about my membership seeing as I have never entertained their premium offering, but equally, veloviewer is the only reason I allow them to mine my data.

If there’s no quid-pro-quo, that’s the end of that.

[J886ATV]

Squadrats (a similar platform) already has a direct link from Garmin (or Strava)

I'm a cheap (read free) Strava user - it's useful as it aggregates the data and sends it back out to Veloviewer / Squadrats. If I have to change the way I do it, I will and I'll simply cut out Strava

[yellowjack]

I'm going to wait and see what the fallout actually is, from the Strava API announcement. It's a bit off, though, considering a lot of "Strava's" data is actually generated by users outside of "their" platform. Mine is all created in Garmin Connect, for instance. Imagine if Garmin said Strava were forbidden from processing, aggragating, or otherwise re-presenting the data generated by Garmin users. Hey-ho. It's their trainset, but the track will be no use if we all put our carriages back in their boxes, or move them to another trainset.

In other news, yesterday I took a drive north to get "above the weather" down on the coast. I ended up on the RIdgeway, starting from Barbury Castle, just south of Swindon. Every last yard was ridden on "new" Wandrer.earth roads, byways and bridleways. This, in turn, meant 39 new VeloViewer tiles from 33 miles ridden. Only +5 on my Max Cluster, and no change to my Max Square, mainly because I ran out of time and failed to "fill in" the loop I rode. It was a disappointing day on the bike. Way too much mud, and a double puncture from bramble thorns on a downhill bridleway section where hedges had been cut. Start to finish I recorded two more hours elapsed than moving. Then I found another puncture this morning when I dragged the bike out of my car to wash it. I dread to think how much extra wear I've put on a brand new cassette and chain. I fitted new brake pads today as part of the cleaning and checking process. Perhaps I will ride the gravel bike more on properly surfaced roads, at least until the weather improves. Still, it's my first significant VeloViewer tiles improvement since I've forgotten when, so really good from that point of view.

[emicen]

J886ATV said:

Squadrats (a similar platform) already has a direct link from Garmin (or Strava)

I'm a cheap (read free) Strava user - it's useful as it aggregates the data and sends it back out to Veloviewer / Squadrats. If I have to change the way I do it, I will and I'll simply cut out Strava

Do you not beed to bounce the activity through Strava to get it in to Squadrats?

[J886ATV]

emicen said:

Do you not beed to bounce the activity through Strava to get it in to Squadrats?

Doesn't look like it now - looks like they've set up an API to go direct from Garmin

[mooseracer]

With luck that is what Veloviewer - and others - will do as well

[Johno]

Veloviewer Blog update

Summary - Crack on, occasionally click on consent when requested more regularly than before.

“Update on Strava API use and the implications for VeloViewer

Posted on November 27, 2024 | by Lucy Sibbald

Thank you once again for all the support you have shown recently, we know we are incredibly lucky to have such loyal users.

We have been working closely with the team at Strava and are appreciative of their partnership. At this time, we fully understand the implications and will be making a subtle adjustment to make sure that we continue to uphold the highest standards of data security and to ensure that we fully align with Strava’s API agreement.

The single change is that users who choose to share their data publicly within VeloViewer will now be asked to confirm consent regularly. Visibility will default back to ‘private’ if consent is not reconfirmed. Previously, it was a ‘one & done’ consent process, this change will help users to be fully aware of the data sharing that they have agreed to.

This change will be released in the next couple of weeks and all other functionality will remain unchanged. We hope that you will continue to enjoy exploring your data and planning your adventures with VeloViewer.

Posted in Data, News, Update”

[yellowjack]

OK. So I'm a fraud!

Veloviewer has been telling me since 2022 that my Max Square is 36×36.

Squadrats disagrees, telling me my "UberSquadrat" is an entirely separate 33×33.

I presumed that Squadrats had missed an activity, perhaps due to privacy permissions, and that VeloViewer was correct. But I did some digging into the disputed tile, and it turns out that the Squadrats site has processed two rides more accurately than VeloViewer has.

The tile in question is just NE of Mortimer Station, near Stratfield Mortimer. The rides were in 2016 and 2019, and looking at the VeloViewer map there is a slightly curved road that remains outside of the SW corner of the tile, but the GPS trace has "straightened" the road enough that it just, and only just, clips the tile.

Frustrating, but I can't seem to "force correct" the GPS data on VeloViewer. And in any case, the only way to get Squadrats and VeloViewer to concur is to ride through the actual tile. So I'm going to have to ride up that way again at some point.

On the subject of 'Tiling'? I've done a couple of rides with the stated aim of "bagging tiles" recently.

One × 107 miler that passed through 126 tiles and claimed 11 new ones, along with a 16 tile increase in my Max Cluster.
One × 19 miler that passed through 18 tiles, claimed 3 fresh ones, but closed two holes in my Max Cluster and increased it by 11 tiles.

Apart from the odd few here and there, it's my first deliberate attempt at 'Tiling' since the RIdgeway debacle in November 2024. It's good to be "back in the game", but I really need to start my rides earlier in the day to get the most out of my opportunities.

Eta:


A screenshot of the "offending" tile. Digging into the individual activities on VV shows the correct route on the road in front of a row of houses, yet on the larger activity map the line is straightened to run behind the gardens of the houses, crediting me with a tile I didn't ride through.

I know it's very much a "first world problem", but it's one I feel I must fix. Probably by riding that SW/NE road through the tile in order to claim it legitimately.

Edited by yellowjack on Friday 18th April 11:47