MapRun Continues to Evolve
Already a very comprehensive, usable and generally valuable tool both for informal competitive running and for a host of other orienteering related activities – control checking, mapping survey support, and so on – far from sitting back and taking it easy, Peter Effeney in Australia continues to add functionality to the App, with a number of new enhancements published or following closely in the development pipeline.
Maprun6 6.3 introduced MapRun Link, which makes finding and downloading a course much simpler than trawling through a huge folder structure. It requires administrators to do a bit of set up when publishing a new event or course, but then you can just point your phone camera at the appropriate QR code, or enter the Maprun Link in a browser, and the course will be downloaded to your phone with no further effort involved. We have included the QR code for our forthcoming Battledown run in the event details, so give it a try there, and if you aren’t yet on Maprun6, this is another good reason to dump MaprunF and install MapRun6!
The imminent but not yet published MapRun6 6.5 then adds a number of further ease of use facilities:
- Event Information – MapRun can now provide access to related information about events (via links or PDF documents eg a link to a Club website or a PDF map to print)
- NFC tag punching – simple contact-less punching using inexpensive NFC tags
- “Any Track” to allow users to run with any GPS device and upload their track from Strava to create a result in a MapRun event
- Sound options for the sound that plays when punching a control
- User profiles of multiple users in the one phone (to allow easy switching of users for shared phones or shared Garmin Watches with MapRunG)
- Improvements to Location Pins – as typically used by mappers or those checking maps/course on site – text is now not shown on the map, but appears as a popup when tapped
If, like me, you use a non-Garmin GPS watch, then “Any Track” will be great to use. It does have the limitation that you don’t get a beep or anything to verify that you have visited a control – clearly the watch doesn’t know about MapRun – but you do get a chance to review your track, as in HITMO, so this should be a boon to us Suunto and other watch users. The other really helpful innovation is the introduction of a link from the course as loaded in your phone to supporting information. As soon as this is available we’ll be trying it out by providing a link to the google satellite view of the parking, start and finish area, as shown on the Courses pages of this website.
Finally, Peter is also upgrading Live Tracking, and its associated MaprunView, the admin only app that supports the Live Tracking function. Live Tracking is available but seldom used by us, except to track some individuals. MapRun View will be subscription based, with a facility to purchase a subscription for a limited period, for example to support a fell race or other higher risk event.
So lots to look out for. We will implement some of these facilities as they become available, so keep an eye out in the forthcoming Autumn and Winter programme, and check your phone to make sure auto-update is turned on for MapRun6, so that you can get the benefit of all the work that continues to go into MapRun6.
