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I work in the industry. On the electrical distribution side, there are a few things which may need internet connectivity. Getting map tiles for displays; havin
by DevoidSimo 7y ago
I work in the industry.
On the electrical distribution side, there are a few things which may need internet connectivity. Getting map tiles for displays; having an externally contracted call center integrate with the outage management; automatic vehicle location (painting crew vehicles on the displays).
Adding to the last point, something that is coming to the industry is read only access to the system from a mobile device. This requires internet or a private network across the bounds of your network.
I don't want to talk too much about company specifics, but typically modern systems will have servers dedicated to only internet related functions. They will be internally firewalled from any servers which could make changes on the network. These systems aren't cheap though, a lot of what we replace is 15-30 years old. As such, it may not be as secure as it could be.
I've mainly talked about distribution. Transmission and generation also have functionality which requires the internet, or at the least a very large private network.
- vasco 7y agoI can download a cache of a map on my phone from Google maps but a powerplant needs a constant internet connection for them?
- sargun 7y agoDo the google mobile APIs offer a way to run an offline version of them? Otherwise, if you want to do it fully offline, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to run something like ArcGIS on prem and license navteq data.
- sapilla 7y agoThe app has offline maps? And there are a few 3rd party "offline map" apps.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoGoogle does their best to make the app unusable off-line, but I hear there are alternatives (HERE Maps is a name I recall seeing on HN a few times).
- iserlohnmage 7y agomaps.me?
- sapilla 7y agoGoogle Maps for Android provides area-based offline maps, with a time limit that is not enforced. It's been very useful to me personally, not sure what's unusable about it. I find the online version less usable because it nags me about GPS and obstinately only stores search history online, coupling it to the global Google Activity History setting.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIs navigation working off-line now? Last time I checked, it didn't. And Google Maps, even on-line, are quite bad at being a map, with the completely unreliable way of rendering street labels. I've used Google Maps off-line in a pinch a few times, but it wasn't too pleasant of an experience. (Call me entitled, but I don't think it's too much to ask of an off-line map to offer point-by-point navigation and searching through the DB of addresses and POIs in the off-line map. When you can't do it, I get the feeling someone doesn't want you to use off-line mode, and is purposefully overcomplicating things.)
- nitrogen 7y agoAll those things (except display of some street names) work for me offline on my Android phone, but only for driving directions. You have to save an offline map manually first, somewhere in the settings or sidebar.
- samat 7y agoI was able to create usable offline navigation with OSM in a mobile app in a few weeeks. Sure this guys could afford that :)
- vetinari 7y agoBut only in the Google Maps app. Nowhere else. If you have a GIS system, that is able to use Google Maps as the basemap, you still don't have the ability to save it for offline use. The APIs/libraries/license agreement with Google that these GIS systems use won't allow that. Not that other providers (Bing, Here, etc) are any better. Your only way is to download OSM data/obtain local ortophoto and make your own tiles.
- butteroverflow 7y agoYou can always run your own OSM tile server. That's what they recommend instead of relying on the official server, actually, if you have any non-trivial load.
- DevoidSimo 7y agoNot constant, map tiles are downloded and cached. This one could be done manually, the others less so.
- ShorsHammer 7y agoConvenience over security is a choice not a necessity.