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I have a forest field, with paths and points of interest, and I would like to make a map of it. I cannot do it with a drone, because it's expensive and I will not see paths on pictures because of the trees.
So I thought about mapping it with my smartphone and its GPS sensor.

For example, I would walk on all the paths on my field, input to my smartphone that I am on the "Alpha point of interest"... And then I'd like to export data and get the map and its points on a map service like Google Maps.

I found some tracker apps, but it seems to be more for running or sport usages, and not for pure mapping.

I have both, Android and iOS devices – so an app for either of them would be fine.

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    For Android, you might wish to take a look at my list of tracking apps. I'm not sure about voice input ("say to my smartphone"); but if you're OK with manually setting such "waypoints", Locus Map and inViu routes sound like good candidates.
    – Izzy ♦
    Apr 11, 2016 at 6:15

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OsmAnd is a maps/GPS app that lets you place trackpoints manually.

Thanks to your phone's GPS, OsmAnd displays a red circle where you are. Because GPS is not perfect, if you zoom a lot you see the red circle shrinking/growing and moving a bit around all the time. Place the trackpoint in the middle when the red circle is stable.

Your trackpoints are stored in a GPX file on the SD card, so move that file to your computer, open it with QGIS and connect the dots.

OsmAnd and QGIS are free and open source.

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  • Ok thanks ! So you mean that I would have to set trackpoints every 5 meters for example and then link them with QGIS to make a path ?
    – maxime
    Apr 11, 2016 at 9:23
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    @maxime: Yes, or just the corners. But every 5 meters would give you a more exact approximation indeed, and allow you to judge the precision of the result.
    – Nicolas Raoul ♦
    Apr 11, 2016 at 9:51

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