iOS Question What three words

[David Elkington]

Hi Everyone,

I have an app which at the moment works on Lat and Long, but the client would like to integrate What Three Words into the mix, has anyone done this or are there libraries I can hook into to do it?

 

[Erel]

They provide a REST API: https://developer.what3words.com/public-api

BTW, it is a very cool concept.

The simplest way to talk about location

Every 3 metre square has a unique 3 word address.

what3words.com

 

[David Elkington]

Great, thanks. Looks like all sorted for the Android app, will just have to work out the iOS version.

 

[agraham]

BTW, it is a very cool concept.

Maybe, but as well as being proprietary to a not very nice company and charging for its use there are problems with its implementation
See the criticism section here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words
Besides I fail to see any benefits for its use in the UK where we have both our National Grid system and GPS lat/long which is available on just about every mobile phone in the UK

 

[David Elkington]

Maybe, but as well as being proprietary to a not very nice company and charging for its use there are problems with its implementation
See the criticism section here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words
Besides I fail to see any benefits for its use in the UK where we have both our National Grid system and GPS lat/long which is available on just about every mobile phone in the UK

It will be very useful for my app, I am plotting 800,000+ trees in the app, the 1m granularity makes it very powerful when you have a lot of trees in the same area. I have no problem paying for a service if it works, after all, I would not expect to work for free myself.

 

[Sandman]

the 1m granularity makes it very powerful

Minor detail: it's 3 square meters, according to the Wikipedia page.

I have no problem paying for a service if it works, after all, I would not expect to work for free myself.

Agreed. I just can't see the benefit over a gps position.

 

[Alexander Stolte]

I just can't see the benefit over a gps position.

3 words can be remembered better than long coordinates.

 

[David Elkington]

Because I can send someone to do work on a tree with three words rather than trying to assume they can type in

example. 51.48658446036279,-0.09771245531737804 against ///lives.weedy.doing

 

[agraham]

Assuming they are using a mobile phone GNSS to find a location in the field then I would have thought that the 9m uncertainty from three words plus another up to 10m from the GPS means that you won't be able to identify individual trees in a wood or forest.

 

[Sandman]

3 words can be remembered better than long coordinates.

Fair enough. But I was mostly thinking about the tree use-case.

Because I can send someone to do work on a tree with three words

Also fair enough, assuming the instruction is given verbally, which I imagine is your situation.

 

[David Elkington]

Assuming they are using a mobile phone GNSS to find a location in the field then I would have thought that the 9m uncertainty from three words plus another up to 10m from the GPS means that you won't be able to identify individual trees in a wood or forest.

They can identify a tree from the satellite map... We have thought about things a bit, the development project has been running for the last 7 years and has a budget of more than £3 million.

 

[tchart]

You might want to read this;

Home

Open Location Code is a library to generate short codes, called "plus codes", that can be used as digital addresses where street addresses don't exist. - google/open-location-code

github.com

 

[ashchopra]

They provide a REST API: https://developer.what3words.com/public-api

BTW, it is a very cool concept.

The simplest way to talk about location

Every 3 metre square has a unique 3 word address.

what3words.com

Please correct me, as I understand the API needs to be used with internet access. Am I correct? Is there any way for a B4A program to access the API 'offline', i.e to generate the three words from Lat/Long using the API? If yes, how may this be done? Any code snippet will help me get to grips with this. (Plan is for implementation is an emergency tracking/transmission system when at regular intervals (say 10min) your position is called out in three words for transmission on a radio using VOX). Thanks

 

[Erel]

You should never post new questions in existing threads. Please start a new thread.