Hi everyone 🙂
A couple of years ago I was cycling along the Baja Divide with my surfboard and realised how hard it was to find reliable information while touring.
That made me think – there isn’t really an app made by bikepackers, for bikepackers. So I built one called Rolling Around, and I’d love your honest feedback (it's the only way to make it better).
The main feature is a map that now has 10,000+ bikepacking specific waypoints, all added and verified by a global community of 7,000 bikepackers – no scraped data.
It also has a feature to find other people to cycle with (which I know is a community highlight in this subreddit), a database of 130 airlines with their bike policies, and tens of ready-to-navigate routes that sync automatically (if you add a waypoint or the GPX changes, everyone sees it immediately).
I've been building this over the past 2 years alongside my 9-5, and I just released a new free version on both the Play Store (Android) and App Store (iOS).
Looking forward to your feedback!
Have a great weekend,
Carlo
by DEng1neer
6 Comments
This is the exact moment I decide to build the app. Pushing my bike and surfboard on a road I wish I didn’t take XD
https://preview.redd.it/l9j7c77pg0tg1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9e37d49649b04c739326ea87a068825a6aaed13
https://preview.redd.it/tse2qy3ri0tg1.png?width=737&format=png&auto=webp&s=e5711186e4938620d26b32e0e9075ac09dd7490d
[*https://xkcd.com/1406/*](https://xkcd.com/1406/)
Carlo! The app is really good! It was great to meet at CyclingWorld!
Wow, this is amazing! Quick question/comment though: For things like free drinking water or toilets OSM already has datapoints, which are already shown on the map. It might be useful to be able to filter/search for these as well, since their database is much bigger. Of course it‘s very nice to have things like photos and comments on top of the OSM data (which this app is perfect for). So let‘s say I have a water fountain in my city, wouldn‘t be better to be able to „enhance“ the OSM data point that shows this fountain instead of creating a completely new datapoint? Maybe there is a way to somewhat fuze the OSM data with your database and make both searchable within the app. Really looking forward to using your app!
Community, beware that this app is not really free (in the sense of libre). The creator has been spamming it on the bicycle-travel WhatsApp groups for years, often without disclosing that he is the creator and has a vested interest in it, but he has not adequately assured people that community-contributed data will remain forever freely accessible to the community.
iOverlander started as a no-cost (but not FOSS) app, too, but eventually the creator locked down all the community’s hard work behind a subscription model. If an app isn’t FOSS from the start, I strongly recommend that you not contribute to it. There are other, more open venues for helping your fellow cyclists, like contributing to OSM.
Nice !!!