My PINS bug or corrupt data

[Terry Hunefeld]

Is there a known limit to the number of Pins? I have more than 1500 of them and everything was working fine, but lately the program has been crashing every 10 POI entries or so… and when I do a search of “My Pins” using the search field, the moment I enter a character into the search field it crashes – every time. This isssue is duplicated on both my iPhone and my iPad. As a test, I deleted, then reinstalled, Pocket Earth from my iPhone and imported a two week old exported/imported file and that works fine. So I sense the issue is one of two things: (1) I’ve hit a Pin limit or (2) some recently entered Pin data was corrupted. Any thoughts? (I have attached the crashing file)

[BuckyE]

Dear Terry,

With 1,500 or 2,000 Pins you can’t have hit the limit. I have probably 10,000 Pins in my PE Pro and no problems (so far!).

I have imported several huge CSVs of historic and prehistoric sites. It’s an obsession of mine. I asked a similar question a while ago and I think my problem turned out to be a corrupted Pin. I’ll try to find that thread and report back.

In the meantime, I also would like to ask the developers if there IS a Theoretical Pin Limit. I’ve got several more CSVs to import which would put my Pin count about 20,000. Or more! It would be just like my life to be the first person to actually hit the TPL.

Yours,
Bucky Edgett

(iPad 2, 32gb, iOS 7.1; PE Pro 2.4)

[Terry Hunefeld]

Dear Bucky

Thanks for the info. I am manually entering my Pins so when the file became wonky I reloaded my last saved (emailed to myself) version… but lost and had to recreate 8 hours of previously stored data. Lesson learned — now I am sending backups to myself every 30 minutes of data entry. So far… so good.

Best I can figger it was a corruption somewhere in a Pin, but not due to importing data, but perhaps some electrons flew to the wrong circuits on the crashes that still randomly occur.

I have a new iPad Air enroute from Apple and we will see if it may have been my iPad. Will report back at that time.

Terry

[BuckyE]

Dear Terry,

OK, found the thread: http://pocketearth.com/forums/topic/v-1-7-21-will-not-import-an-archive/ .

Hope that sheds at least some light! Please note that in my case, I was beta-testing and that may have had some bearing.

But in any case, yes, when doing a lot of work in anything on the computer, periodic saving and backing-up is essential! If you’re having a lot of crashing problems, please post about them in the Bugs forum. I use PE for hours a day for days and weeks without any problems. You shouldn’t be having them!

Yours,
Bucky

[GeoMagik]

@Terry Hunefeld:

Sorry for the late reply, if you are still having this issue, it could potentially be corrupt data. If you can email us an export in Pocket Earth Archive format, we can take a look (can help us to prevent this issue in future, and perhaps we can recover your favorites). (Settings > Export > Pocket Earth Archive > Export All Data)

[GeVaSta]

I have the same issue with large numbers of POI’s (>15000).
When I try to search in the pins, the app crashes.
When I browse the Pin’s, everything is accesible but is is very diffucult ofcourse to find the wanted pin. Some time ago I already have reported this bug.
I then suggested to send a testfile so it would be reproducable but did not hear something back.

[BuckyE]

@GeVaSta

Dear GeVaSta,

I feel kind of responsible for these threads about numbers of Pins/POI! Please see:
http://pocketearth.com/forums/topic/limit-to-number-of-pins/

“When I browse the Pin’s, everything is accesible but is is very diffucult of course to find the wanted pin.”

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “…browse the Pins…” but in general, the best thing to do in PE is set up Groups, and classify your Pins and/or POIs as belonging to Groups. There are several threads here about that, and I’d be happy to discuss it with you.

Yours,

Bucky Edgett

[GeVaSta]

Hi Bucky Edgett,

Thanks for your reaction.

Bij browsing the Pins I meand NOT searching in the searchfield but sliding/swiping the listed Pins up until I see the wanted.

I have already organized my Pins in groups like you suggested.
I have however 17000 European campsites in one group. I can’t split this up.

It would be nice if the app could handle this number of Pins in one file.
Have you read the Post about deleting this number of Pins takes about 4 hours? Not good either.

Regards,

Geert

[Terry Hunefeld]

Well, I started this thread and feel a bit responsible, too, so as a way of giving back to a wonderful product I will share what I’ve learned through the school of hard knocks and trial and error.

I am a heavy user of Pocket Earth (PE). I am retired and travel extensively with an interest in little known, off the track, archaeological ruins (castle ruins, standing stones, henges, stone rows, stone circles). When I travel, I love the ability to have an off-line map that shows me in real time exactly where I am in relation to POIs and MyPins.

My wife and I have navigated all over rural Germany and Netherlands, the back roads of Ireland and dirt trails and jungle lanes on the Mayan Trail in Yucatan Mexico finding old ruins in the bush using only PE. We’ve needed no maps other than PE because PE renders all other maps unnecessary (although I do now have the Ordance Survey Maps on iPad for Britain).

I enter all of my POIs and Pins manually because I have been unable to find any databases to download the type of things that interest me. (If you know of any, please let me know!). The manual data entry process is at once tedious and captivating, like creating a treasure map. After I input my Pins and POIs for a region, only then select my lodging based on the beautiful visual I have of thousands of color coded PINs of where everything is in relation to everything else. It takes time, but I like to say that if I am not traveling, I am preparing for travel.

What I have learned is that when manually entering data, the entire GPX file can become corrupt in the wink of an eye, without me knowing it, and cause the program to crash when using the POI/PIN search function. The first time it happened, I had not exported myself a backup file for 20 hours of work – and had to recreate it all.

I have found only TWO solutions to a data corruption issue: (1) live without the search field function or (2) delete the entire corrupt file and import a clean backup saved version of the PIN/POI GPX data and start from that point. AS Bucky recommended, IT’S CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO CREATE BACKUPS OF YOU DATA ROUTINELY AND REGULARLY as your POI/PIN files grow.

If a POI/Pin file becomes corrupt, you cannot just go back and delete recent entries one by one until the search function works again (I tried). Once a file is corrupt and your search engine crashes, it will ALWAYS be corrupt until you delete THE ENTIRE FILE. Like I said above, school of hard knocks.

To save my work in progress, I export a full copy of the GPX file every 20 to 30 minutes. I now have more than 250 “backups” of GPX files just for the data entry I am doing for the UK – but that represents perhaps 150 hours of data entry. It seems that I tend to corrupt my PIN/POI file about once every 10,000 keystrokes. I suspect it has something to do with inadvertently touching two commands simultaneously thereby creating a conflict and a “glitch” in the internal data which affects only the search field feature.

There is no way to know that data have become corrupt without regularly testing the POI/PIN search field to ensure it does not crash the program (I do it every 20 minutes or so). Testing the “search field” and exporting the GPX file to myself every 20-30 minutes is good insurance – something as simple as typing “castle” will tell me the data are okay – because if the file is corrupt, it will crash before I type the second letter. I now have 2500 manually entered POI/PINs — weeks of data entry. It takes me so long because I am a heavy user in the “notes” fields of each entry. I have experienced the “corrupt data search crash” issue 4 times in 4 weeks — about once a week. I simply delete all POI/PIN data from the program (takes me only 60 seconds to delete 2500 PIN/POIs) and import my last “exported-saved” file and start from there.

Yes, this is a work-around, but it is no different than saving a Word.doc of Excel.xls file as you work except there are a few more keystrokes involved. For the enormous benefits the program gives me for (only $10? is that really all I paid?) it’s worth it 10,000 times over.

If you are importing new data from another user or database, I recommend that you backup (export) your current data (GPX file) first with an export to yourself by email, then after the import of the new data immediately test the search function. All my past backups/exports are saved in my gmail account forever – it’s a reassuring feeling.

By the way, in my original posting I mentioned that I was getting a new iPad to see if that cured the problem. I received a new iPad Air that I now use exclusively for PE. It is much faster than my old data-filled early iPad generation model, and it reduced — but did not eliminate — the crashes, just made them less frequent.<br />
Hope this help.

From the Anza-Borrego desert in Southern California (but 13 weeks next summer in the UK)

Terry Hunefeld
Bio: http://tinyurl.com/Terry-Bio
http://www.tripadvisor.com/members/thunefeld

[BuckyE]

@GeVaSta

Dear Geert,

A few reactions…

“I have however 17000 European campsites in one group. I can’t split this up.”
Please look at the attached JPEG. I know it’s not a great way to work, but don’t know of any map app that will allow me to get this close to really good! It’s just not possible to organize 17,000 Pins/POI Favorites in one group. Sorry!

Have you read the Post about deleting this number of Pins takes about 4 hours? Not good either.

No, that I haven’t seen. I do know that with my set-up (iPad 2, iOS 7.1) I can delete Groups of about 3 or 4,000 Pins in 20-30 seconds. More or less. I would suspect that the time to delete a Group also depends on the total number of Pins/POI Favorites.

Yours,

Bucky edgett

[GeVaSta]

@Terry
I don’t think the way you use should be the way to go. It is a workaround yes, but I hope very temporarily.
My opinion is the crashes are mostly caused by a timeout (too long search timeout) and Apple policy throwing the app out. This is what I read in the CrashLogs fro Apple.

@Bucky,
Sorry Buckey, I don;t see a JPEG.
Sure, deleting depends on the number of Pins. But 4 hours for only deleting a group of Pins is very very very long! This should be fixed.

You say 17000 Pins is too much and not possible. Are you involved in the development of the App so you know for sure it is not possible or is it only what you think?

[GeoMagik]

Hey guys, just want to chime in with a few comments:

1. There is no technical limit to the number of pins, but a practical one limited by the specific device model, and by our current internal format choices. We hope to revamp this in the near future which should allow a much larger number of pins. We are aware of the very slow deletion issue and hope to resolve this as well.

2. If you keep exported backups of your data, please use the Pocket Earth Archive format, as this retains the full information of your data including pin colors and shape. GPX format was designed primarily for holding tracks, and while we support it, it does not support the extra information that PE Archive stores.

3. If you think you have corrupt data, feel free to email us a Pocket Earth Archive export and we can take a look at it.

4. We have submitted our next update PE 2.5 to Apple and it should be available next week. It includes over 50 bug and crash fixes, rendering issue fixes, and minor enhancements. I am not sure if it will fix any of the issues specifically related to Pins, but its possible. There was a large number of new bugs and crash cases caused since recent Apple changes in iOS 8 (regardless of weather you are using iOS 8 or 7). And we have been swamped with work trying to correct these. This update is primarily aimed to correct these issues.

[BuckyE]

@GeVaSta

Dear Geert,

Sorry for not including the JPEG of my Groups! That’s what comes of going too fast too late at night!

As for my knowledge, no, gosh, I’m just a user. (I seem to be listed as a Moderator. I assume because the Forum software thinks my number of posts makes me one? But I assure you I have no official standing here; other than perhaps as a big-mouth. ;^) )

in a post above, I included a link to a post where this topic was being discussed. In that thread, GeoMagik stated they “do not recommend having over 5,000 favorites…” And now GeoMagik has clarified for us, so I hope that helps.

@Terry Hunefeld

Dear Terry,

Thanks for your excellent work-around notes. Hope you see GeoMagik’s comment on saving as Pocket Earth Archive, not just GPX. And I hope you won’t mind a big-mouth comment from me!

I’d recommend not relying on Google to store the only copy(ies) of your data. Just my paranoia showing!

<hr />

A little comment on the topic in general…

Has anyone been investigating the new Google My Maps? (Formerly know as Maps Lite?) Have a look at https://support.google.com/mymaps/answer/3370982 . Hah!

“Map layers” (= PE Groups, kind of), 5 per map. PE, unlimited Groups?

“Features (points, lines, shapes),” 2,500 per map. PE, 5,000.

“Spreadsheet/CSV file import,” 500 rows. I imported a 7,000 row CSV into PE.

PE rocks, and it’s getting better all the time!

Yours,
Bucky

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[GeVaSta]

Thanks guys for trying to help; I appreciate.
Afterall I think I will wait for a future update for making the use of large numbers of pins possible.

[Terry Hunefeld]

Hey GeoMagik Guys:

You guys ROCK! Thanks for working so hard on an upgrade.

Duh…. it never occurred to me that my crashes could be an Apple iOS8 issue, but now that you mention it my crashes did not begin to occur until in installed iOS8 on my first generation iPad. I can’t recall these issues when inputting my Netherlands, Germany, Mexico or Ireland data on earlier iOS versions. Sheesh!

I will patiently wait for PE 2.5, install it — and see if that cures my crash ills. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Thanks for all the work you do to create an invaluable tool that accomplishes so much, so easily, so intuitively.

Oh, and by the way, thanks for correcting my typo/brainfade slip on exporting backups. I do save the Pocket Earth Archive file to retain all the data — but inadvertently typed GPX. Yes, saving PE Archive files by exporting them regularly is the safe way to go. I like the comfort of knowing that I can lose my iPad or iPhone while traveling and have new PE maps with all my data up and running within 5 minutes of obtaining a replacement device.

Terry Hunefeld, California

[BuckyE]

@Terry Hunefeld

Dear Terry,

You know, I’m such an offline fanatic it never occurred to me to store PE backups in the cloud. Huh. Or replace maps on the go.

I’m just too cheap to be online. But a wifi spot would help. We usually have some kind of Wifi in the gite or hotel. Interesting! Thanks for the tip!

Yours,

Bucky Edgett

[Author]

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