TomTom

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

TomTom is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. The company was founded in Amsterdam in 1991.

TomTom has been making edits in OpenStreetMap through Organised Editing since 2021. In 2023, TomTom released its new TomTom Map that uses OSM data.

Contributions

TomTom contributes to OSM in a variety of ways, including supporting events and local OSM communities, educating new editors, releasing community tools, sharing editing projects and making edits in the OSM map.

Map Data Improvements

TomTom is making OSM map updates under its data improvements projects created for over 200 countries and contributes to other’s editing efforts by sharing possible issues or missing content via MapRoulette challenges or Tasking Managers.

For details about how TomTom makes map edits, see Organised Editing/Activities/TomTom, Organised Editing/Activities/TomTom Map Feedback and Automated edits/TTmechanicalupdates.

Sponsorships

TomTom provides sponsorship support to OSM in the following ways:

  • Organization and community sponsorships
    • OSMF Platinum Corporate Member (since 2023)
    • OpenStreetMap Belgium Corporate Member (since 2022)
  • Event sponsorships  
    • 2022
      • State of the Map (Florence, Italy)
      • State of the Map US (Tucson, Arizona)
    • 2023
      • State of the Map Europe (Antwerp, Belgium): Production Partner
      • State of the Map Africa (Yaounde, Cameroon)
      • State of the Map Asia & FOSS4G Thailand (Bangkok, Thailand)
      • FOSS4G Asia (Seoul, Korea)
      • FOSS4G State of the Map Oceania (Auckland, New Zealand)
      • State of the Map US (Richmond, Virginia)
      • State of the Map Baltics
    • 2024
      • State of the Map (Nairobi, Kenya)
      • State of the Map US (Salt Lake City, Utah)
  • Financial backer for MapRoulette. For details see: MapRoulette welcomes TomTom as a financial backer!

Community Tools

TomTom has created tools that use GPS data to identify potential problems in the map. These tools are at times made available to the community to use as resources when making edits to OSM.

MapMetrics

MapMetrics helps to identify routing issues in OSM.

Portions of the map can have bad routing for a variety of reasons, including missing roads, inaccurate one-way streets, and poorly drawn connections between roads. MapMetrics uses billions of GPS traces to assess how close drivers are to the route that the OSM engine suggests. When the tool identifies large deviations from the suggested route, it highlights those map areas with a red-to-green color scale, making it easier for map editors to identify and correct errors in the map.

To read more about MapMetrics, see Happy birthday, OpenStreetMap! and The battle for quality maps in the TomTom Newsroom.

RoadRunner

RoadRunner helps to improve the accuracy of the road network in OSM.

This tool uses vast amounts of GPS trace data to automatically generate a road network. The road centerlines that it generates can be loaded as a custom background in the OSM iD Editor. The centerlines can then be used to identify missing and misaligned roads in the map.

To read more about RoadRunner, see RoadRunner: Instant Maps in the TomTom Newsroom.

OSM and TomTom Devices

The Dutch company TomTom manufactures a range of Linux-based satellite navigation hardware, including a car navigation software and several streetmaps. In addition they have ported their software to several PDAs and mobile phones equipped with Bluetooth or built in GPS receivers.

The navigation units do not normally record tracks. However all recent TomTom units run Linux and allow other software to be installed and run, which extend the functionality of the original firmware. Some useful tools (to record tracks, and others) are listed below:

Using OSM maps with TomToms

Screenshot from a TomTom GO 910 running Navit.

Successful attempts were made with Navit software, see TomTom on their wiki.

Though TomTom's mapping format is a closely guarded secret, both for copy protection and because if you knew how they stored the maps, they would be giving away a lot of their navigation secrets. As a result there is no software to allow OSM mapping to be converted to the format the TomTom app uses, and unlikely to be any unless TomTom themselves make it.

  • ttMaps enables the display of raster maps (ECW format) for navigation. It can be used with downloaded OSM maps.
  • Another method to display OSM maps on TomTom could be porting Gosmore to OpenTom. (mail)

Tracking Tools

  • Le Web Bazar offers several add-on applications for TomTom units, including:
    • NMEALogger dumps the nmea output from the receiver into a log file on the memory card or internal FLASH memory. New logs can be automatically created when the unit is resumed.
    • Tripmaster is a more complex applet, with compass, GPS position and such. It can log directly to GPX or KML files. However, it is using the corrected (copyrighted) position from the TomTom software as default. Therefore it must be switched to "Real" coordinates for collecting tracks for OSM. As a downside of Tripmaster, the TomTom moving map is moving noticeably slower (sometimes even freezes for a few seconds) and the TomTom often crashes when selecting a new routing target. The recommended configuration settings (reachable by pressing the ][ button at the bottom right) are:
      • Setup: Coordinates "Real" - to get "uncorrected" GPS coordinates, this is important
  • Event Logger can produce GPX tracks. In early versions the produced GPX tracks were corrected by the TomTom's built-in Maps, and hence using them in OSM is not possible. Versions 6.4 and newer can make a GPX of the raw data from the GPS device. Note: The log interval should be something around 1 second and the Event Logger only logs your position every 10 seconds (?), this is enough to map straight streets but you'll not have enough data to map a turn or smaller details. See this page for more Information about installing Event_Logger on TomTom. --Cohort 2 June 2008 (UTC)
  • ttMaps enables the display of raster maps (ECW format) for navigation. While ttMaps can handle tiled maps, it's faster when using a single big image for each map set. Among the features which are most interesting for OSM users and mappers:
    • Track recording, import and export (GPX)
    • NMEA stream recording
    • Pedestrian mode to get smoother GPS coordinates (must be enabled for OSM data collection)
    • Back and forth switching between several sets of maps, at the touch of a button (installing several OSM map sets rendered at different zoom levels, this feature can be used as a slippy map zooming function)
    • Display of the current or of a stored track (great to visually check which parts have already been explored)
    • Route display (GPX)
    • POI management (GPX and OV2 formats), with position averaging function.
    • Switch off the display after a certain time (configurable) of non-use, for increased battery life. --Kaitu 12:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Comparison

Feature Tripmaster Event Logger NMEAlogger ttMaps
Save NMEA Stream yes no yes yes
Produce GPX files yes yes no yes
Coordinates not "corrected" (realigned) by TomTom Map Depends on setting Depends on setting/version yes yes
Maximum sample rate 1 sec 4 sec 1 sec 1 sec
System load medium medium fair replaces main application
Supports altitude yes yes yes yes
Supports geoid altitude correction yes yes no yes
Supports external SD-card
?
yes no yes
Supports local timezone no yes no yes
Supports compressed log files no yes no yes
Flexibility/settings high high low high
User interaction high high medium high
Shows the track over map no route display via .ITN files no yes
Raster maps display no no no ECW (*)
Automatic start at boot
?
Depends on setting no Depends on setting
Works on most recent (9.026) navcore version Depends on hook yes
?
yes
Can work also without TomTom's navigation application no no no yes
Open source (GPL) software no no[1] no no
(*):ECW is an image compression format, within which geographical referencing and map projection information can be embedded, suitable for very large images. --Kaitu 18:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

OpenTom

OpenTom was a center of 3rd party open-source development for the TomTom. There were two intentions of this project:

  1. One was to write and document the writing of add-ons for the normal TomTom software.
  2. The other was to write a new software stack from scratch. Currently, there are no maps or navigation facilities.

Using OSM POIs with TomToms

If you are using Linux, you can use osm-ov2 to download OpenStreetMap data from Geofabrik, extract points of interest and convert them to OV2 format for use in TomTom satnavs.

Using Osmosis with GPSBabel is also possible.

TomTom Users in the OpenStreetMap community

User Model Logger Comment
AlexZ ONE V3 NMEALogger
Bmarand ONE V1 TTTracklog
Christopher ONE V2 NMEALogger
Cimm only the Bluetooth receiver with 3rd party software
Christian Krützfeldt ONE V3
Clive
Cohort ONE V3 EventLogger v8.3
cputrdoc GO 920T EventLogger
eclispe ONE V2 NMEALogger
EmJay Navigator 6 on PalmOne TREO 650
farrpau ONE V3 EventLogger
Franc Carter GO 910 - experimenting with TripMaster, EventLogger and NMEALogger to see which I like
User:Gorn GO 910 EventLogger
HBR GO 720T EventLogger Just starting HBR 00:50, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
jcr83 ONE V1 ttMaps v0.7.0
Jean-Yves ONE V3 EventLogger v8.0
Joghurt several
Jon GO 510
Jonnybob ONE XL Tripmaster
kaitu ONE V2 ttMaps
Keichi ONE V3 EventLogger v8.0
user:kollokollo ONE V3 TTTracklog
Langläufer GO 930T NMEALogger 2.0 Tripmaster 3.1 also works fine, but I only want a small logger
user:la_poigne Start TTTracklog
Magne GO 910
Marc tried the cross compiler, want to compile extra stuff, people needed
Mercator GO 910 NMEALogger
mike alder GO 910 for mapping and OSM display on unit
Navisence Rider V2 EventLogger
NukSu ONE XL NMEALogger
phobie ONE V4 NMEALogger
Pjw1965 ONE V1 NMEALogger
Robert (Jamie) Munro
User:Rob Latham ONE Tripmaster
Rodrigo Moya
RWoelfel 510 Tripmaster
Sannifrosch ONE v3 TTTracklog successfully using TTTracklog on my device
Simone 300 NMEALogger
Thomas Petazzoni GO 920 Event Logger
Tor Harald Thorland GO 720T NMEALogger 1.5
ULFL Rider Tripmaster
Willi2006 Wireless GPS receiver (Bluetooth) using the Bluetooth receiver with JOSM on a netbook with Windows 7
Wookey have tomtoms, interested in improving software infrastructure for their use with OSM

Additional TomTom Pages

Organised Editing/Activities/TomTom

Organised Editing/Activities/TomTom Map Feedback

Automated edits/TTmechanicalupdates

Tom Tom Devices

References