[The Gazette]

An Interview with Villages GPS Founder “Eddie”More than a decade ago, Villages GPS began with a simple frustration familiar to almost every newcomer to The Villages: getting lost. What began as a simple way to navigate the beautiful and one-of-a-kind community known as The Villages grew into a mobile app that today has been downloaded

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[MSchad]

Very interesting and informative article. Thanks for posting the link.

[FredMitchell]

Other problems that plague mapping and navigation.

Addresses misplaced. Residences are usually accurate. Things like pickleball courts and pools and even businesses can often be quite misplaced.

Multiple maps - Google Maps, Waze maps (even though Google now owns Waze, they still require separate editing), Apple maps, Maps used by auto manufacturers, etc. Also emergency services has its own mapping and navigation system.

How to get there? Sometimes an address is not reachable from the closest road. This can involve leaving a road to get into a parking lot and other conditions. Maybe the address has heavy woods between it and a geographically nearby road. Being close to the destination may not be suitable for finding how to park once you reach the nearest point on the road.

Then you have sort of oddball situations like Okahumpka Recreation Center, whose address is on Okahumpka Road, but which is accessible from northbound Meggison Road. It has an entrance from Okahumpka Road. From that entrance there are four separate addresses - The mail center, an ATM, the recreation center, and a restaurant. The address NUMBER is plainly labelled on each of the first three, but the road name is NOT.

I wondered why I did not get notified of a Pulse Point CPR related 911 call a couple years back. The address on the call did not even exist, but the map placed it nearly a mile away on Meggison Road. Emergency services arrived at the right location, perhaps from a cell phone provided location (I don't know). The emergency was at the St. Johns mail center. With the correct address, I would have been notified.

Then you have locations with no address. How will emergency help reach you if you have an incident on a multi-use path?

We take a lot of things for granted when we use our devices for navigation.

[dtennent]

What a great story of service and persistence. A special thanks to Eddie for his work in this app.

[Bay Kid]

I still have several maps from back in the day. Some stop at Sumter Landing. They were very cool.

[sowtime444]

Originally Posted by The Gazette

An Interview with Villages GPS Founder “Eddie”More than a decade ago, Villages GPS began with a simple frustration familiar to almost every newcomer to The Villages: getting lost. What began as a simple way to navigate the beautiful and one-of-a-kind community known as The Villages grew into a mobile app that today has been downloaded

More...

Great story. The Villages has their own golf cart path navigation in the main Villages app. I met the person who works on it in the office above City Fire in Sumter Landing. I said to them: "Do you realize that your app has a big limitation - that you cannot pick a starting point that is not your current location?" They didn't know, because they only worked on the GPS side of it, not the front end. I said that the paid VillagesGPS app can do it, so I know it can be done!

[Altavia]

Originally Posted by sowtime444

Great story. The Villages has their own golf cart path navigation in the main Villages app. I met the person who works on it in the office above City Fire in Sumter Landing. I said to them: "Do you realize that your app has a big limitation - that you cannot pick a starting point that is not your current location?" They didn't know, because they only worked on the GPS side of it, not the front end. I said that the paid VillagesGPS app can do it, so I know it can be done!

Amazing labor of love for a small team indeed!

The recent update to support CarPlay makes Villages GPS my favorite navigation app in the golf cart.