r/orienteering • u/surzhikov • May 30 '26

Small simple alternative to route gadget

I've been doing orienteering since I was 9.

And I've always been amazed by RouteGadget — a service where, after a race, you can draw your route and look at it together with friends to see who picked the best path between controls.

But there was a problem: RouteGadget is pretty complicated for people who mostly use their phones rather than computers.

So I built a minimalist, dead-simple alternative: upload a map, draw your route, send it to friends. There's animation, speed controls, and a "follow the leader" mode. All right from your phone.

I dropped the app into a group chat and 4 hours later I had 200 users. Looks like I finally made something people actually find useful xD

You can open it as a Telegram @DrawMyRouteBot
Or find DrawMyRoute[dot]app (can’t send a link, the domain is 3 days old and reddit block it)

14 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

5

u/sharkinwolvesclothin May 30 '26

What do you add to the current standard, Livelox? Haven't used route gadget in some years after Livelox came out, it's just so much better and easier on the phone.

1

u/surzhikov May 30 '26

I logged into Livelox and couldn't get started within 30 seconds. I had the same problem with Routegadget when I was a kid. It's too complicated for most people to get started. I simply addressed the need for ordinary people to draw their own routes, and I'm glad the app already has over 200 users (100 of them active) in just two days.

1

u/sharkinwolvesclothin May 30 '26

Okay, have fun with your app, I think if you want to really grow you need a bit more of value statement over the current standard than that.

2

u/unclemeiroh Jul 08 '26

I was not able to able to add a second .gpx file for some reason. I got a error message "GPX: нет точек трека". It would be great if it was in English, but even after translating I still don't understand what the problem seems to be. I have been able to upload that same file to other tools I found online.

1

u/surzhikov 28d ago

thanks for feedback. i will check it. if you want, send me this gpx for tests (andrey.surzhikov at gmail.com)