what3words & Garmin Drive App

[guiri]

Options can be turned on or off, but include lat/long in various formats

I excitedly saw there is a Label option in the Share settings, but enabling this made no difference. The Navigate intent was still sent without the name label and therefore not accepted by Garmin Drive. I think this is because the Navigate intent (which is the geo URI) is completely separate from the Share option (which is meant to be human readable text).

[jfheath]

Not directly, but if you strip out the text and copy the lat/long, it can be pasted into drive. And that works as if you had typed it at the keyboard - so you have to press the enter or search icon on the keyboard to complete the process.

Its not what you want, but it works.,


Except now it doesn't.......Damn What happened ?

[guiri]

Its not what you want

In fairness it might be, as your workaround compared to mine avoids going via the Google geocoding API.

I'll contemplate a little intermediary app that will pass through latitude and longitude to what3words and add in the missing name label to keep Garmin Drive and Tread happy!

As an aside, I found a nice feature in the what3words Share settings, that outputs text with the UK National Grid reference.

[guiri]

Except now it doesn't.......Damn What happened ?

I believe Garmin do not want people sending coordinates to the XT from other apps. In this page https://support.garmin.com/en-GB/?faq=d ... oSGKzQIhGA, it mentions specifically that coordinates are not searchable.

[jfheath]

Ok. That would make sense. I was using places that I had just found on W3W - so it must have recognised the place name. Curiously though, it seems to work if you miss off some of the decimal places.

Ah well .... I thought I had an answer. I did have an answer, but it was wrong !!

[guiri]

... about a year ago, it was possible to share a location from Google maps to Garmin Drive. All of a sudden it stopped working. When I tried it a week or 2 ago it worked again. Can you verify that with your app?

The Share intent from Google Maps is different from the Navigate intent from what3words.

Specifically, Share is done with plain text, so you could see the result of the share by copying/pasting the link apart from sending it to an app like Garmin Drive.

However, I have added code to my test app to confirm this, by intercepting the plain text.

When you Share an established location like the Empire State Building, you get a Google web link. The exact text that gets passed to Garmin Drive (for example) is:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9LVrzcPZSUwYHnfx7

I believe Garmin Drive can make sense of this because it has the Google geocoding api available to call. If you try the Share from Google Maps to Garmin Drive, you'll see that Drive displays an actual embedded Google Map with a pin named Shared Location (that you can then Send to Device).

It doesn't work if you paste that web link into the Garmin Drive search box directly (it will say "No results found" and then display your current location).

[AugustFalcon]

FWIW, I just received a notification from W3W on my Android Phone showing how to display lat & long in any W3W address display as its shown when you search. [Settings: display settings: Decimal degrees]

If one then copies that to the clipboard, moves to the Tread App (in my case), pastes the clipboard into the search box, then moves the cursor to the left of the numbers and backspaces removing the pasted W3W word address, and then clicks on search the Tread App will come back with 2 suggestions. The first will be the actual location represented by the pasted coordinates and the second will be the nearest street address. They will be shown as numbered red pins on the map. Select one and "Bobs your uncle"

[guiri]

... the Tread App will come back with 2 suggestions. The first will be the actual location represented by the pasted coordinates and the second will be the nearest street address. They will be shown as numbered red pins on the map.

Thanks, this is useful to know. Since the latest update, Tread won't even accept an inter app location from iOverlander (which still works with Drive). But I still like Tread because you can save a pin as a waypoint (POI) for use in Explore (sync back to XT).

I will investigate in what format Tread accepts coordinates. It registers itself to receive the geo intent but maybe doesn't like coordinates!

I feel the need to make an Android app to do the following...
Receive a geo intent from what3words (Navigate) and parse out the latitude and longitude only
Provide an option to send those coordinates as an intent in the standard geo format (with name label) [for Drive]
Provide an option to put those coordinates on the clipboard [for Tread]

Any thoughts/suggestions?

[FrankB]

Any thoughts/suggestions?

- I like your Idea. I'm interested.

- How about the IPhone/IPad users? If I understand correctly your suggested solution will not work for them. Dont even know if they experience problems with what3words. I'm on the Android side, so cant help.

[jfheath]

FWIW, I just received a notification from W3W on my Android Phone showing how to display lat & long in any W3W address display as its shown when you search. [Settings: display settings: Decimal degrees]

If one then copies that to the clipboard, moves to the Tread App (in my case), pastes the clipboard into the search box, then moves the cursor to the left of the numbers and backspaces removing the pasted W3W word address, and then clicks on search the Tread App will come back with 2 suggestions. The first will be the actual location represented by the pasted coordinates and the second will be the nearest street address. They will be shown as numbered red pins on the map. Select one and "Bobs your uncle"

That was the route that I went down in an earlier post.

In fact there is another option in the W3W app - tested on Android.
When you have a location, tap Share.

(Sometimes - and I don't know why it sometimes appears and sometimes does not appear) - but sometimes after pressing 'Share' there is an option to customise the share settings. Customise Share Settings. It appears above the icons.

W3W Screen 0.jpg (81.94 KiB) Viewed 394 times

When you select this, you get sliders - as with the other method - but this time, you can select lat/long by itself.

W3W Screen 1.jpg (69.88 KiB) Viewed 394 times

But now, having just done that, I cannot make that top image appear again. I found it about 2 hours ago. Then went and did something else, and came back to it. The option was there again, (I'd closed the app down in between).

Even so - pasting the lat/long coordinates in Drive is hit and miss as well. Sometimes it works. Sometimes not. More often not.