The node hunter and the LifeMap live are a huge help, but when you have been running for a while, maybe by night, in an unfamiliar neighborhood with many similar streets and no geometric structure, it is difficult to keep in mind where you have been or not.
My idea: the Live Trace
If the LifeMap live could display a trace of the current run (in a different color), I would know immediately where I have already been during my run and avoid:
to leave some nodes that will cost me a lot of time if I have to come back just for them
to run a street twice just because I was not sure if I had been there.
Is it feasible?
Pacman-style alternative: instead of a live trace, the nodes from the node hunter could change color live when caught. It would “gamify” CityStrides even more.
I understand that there could be some GPS tracking issues between the Live trace (on my phone) and the activity (tracked by my GPS watch) but it would work 99% of the time.
Really good ideas for improvement. But this is only needed if you run with only nodehunter as reference. And since one is looking on a mobile device anyway, i prefer to create strava tracks that i load based on the nodehunter functionallity prior to the actual run. I even have several runs waiting to cover the next parts i am aiming. But still, one of those 2 idea’s would making 100% node completion more real in ’ live’ mode.
I love this idea! Adding a “start run” button in LiveMap could then enable “breadcrumbs” on the route you run (in a different colour) to confirm you’ve run all the sections you intended to run. The catch for this feature is that the screen would need to stay on in some phones to be sure you’re getting the location status during the run otherwise your breadcrumbs would cease… I’m a new user to CS but I’m already planning on completing my city within the next few months
Today i used the breadcromb feature of the Sportstracker phone app to test this feature and i found it very useful to show your track and help to show where you have alteady been after lots of turns and turns.
Also I am less fan of automatic generated routes now
For what its worth most recent Garmin devices have breadcrumb trails and the expensive ones have maps as well. You can create a route in Garmin Connect and also send it to your watch and you can see your breadcrumb trail/trace over the route you design. Strava also has a route feature that will show you a live trace as you go. I often use one or the other or a combination to pre-plan my route. But I often go eschew of my route if I find trails or other things not considered “roads” lol. Seriously though one of the best tools I got for heatmapping was Fenix 6 Pro with maps, its so nice to see it on the watch instead of pulling out a phone and its also pretty fantastic with hiking as well.
I screen shot the nodes and georeference it as a layer in my maps app (Locus Pro)… then I use that to complete my route making sure to run past each node. Requires some technical know how, but it pains me to miss a node and have to go back.
I would love this. It’s turning into a lot of work to plan routes using node hunter every time I go out. I sometimes wind up toggling back and forth between 4 things while out running - node hunter or a screenshot, my garmin watch, google maps for navigation, and an activity tracking app (arc) to see where I’ve been in real time. It gets especially tricky if I diverge from a planned route. If I could see my current track and node hunter data in one place it would simplify things.
