Creating a farm navigation app
Steps
- Get a mapbox account here
- Download X Code from the App Store
- Get the shapefile that you want to overlay and upload to mapbox studio
- Install Carthage with homebrew with “ brew install carthage”
- Clone the mapbox navigation ios repo with “ git clone https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-navigation-ios.git”
- In the root folder edit the Cartfile and add “
github "mapbox/mapbox-navigation-ios" ~> 0.7.0" - Run “carthage update — platform iOS”
- Open the xcode project
- Get mapbox token and add the value to Info.plist in the value for MGLMapboxAccessToken
- Follow these directions to ensure the app will upload to app store
- Build and run!
After my first few weeks of working at Bowles Farming, I found myself having issues finding my way around the 11,000 acre farm. We currently have an app for entering data that has a map with all of our fields, however it takes about 5 menus to even turn on the field shapes not including labels. I decided that there must be a better way to navigate this farm.
I did my research and found that all of the ESRI products just cost too much and are not flexible enough for what I want to do. I have also never found any ESRI product to actually run smoothly so I ditched ESRI. After leaving the big player, I stumbled upon Mapbox and found exactly what I was looking for.
Doing a little more digging led me to find their incredible github page which has all of the code needed to get off the ground with a basic navigation app. All I had to do was import the field shapefile and labels into Mapbox studio and grab the map link to put in the app. After a few tweaks and configurations to get the app all linked up, I was able to push it to my phone and have a fully functioning map with navigation capabilities. The best part of the whole thing is that I finally know what is in each field and where everything is located!
Mapbox produces Google maps performance for your own custom maps with all of the help to get you to your end product. I was even able to toss up a drone scan of an area that loads as smooth as butter. I am fairly new to programming apps, however the process for making this incredible app was mostly straightforward and provides an incredibly powerful tool to the people who work and visit Bowles Farm.
If you are interested in building this app for yourself, check out the Mapbox IOS SDK Github example: https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-navigation-ios
