TL;DR is probably:
“What if Google Maps…but you hosted it yourself?”
Hullo.
I know folks here are concerned about privacy (me too), so as part of unfucking myself from big evil, I have started to host my own equivalent services.
You know the score. Swap Google Notes for self-hosted memos. Swap Google Photos for Immich. Etc, etc.
As a fun part of that, I decided to put together an equivalent-ish of Google Maps.
I made it for me, but folks over on !selfhosted asked me to release the source, so here it is.
Let me manage your expectations right away:
It’s clicked together from other things. I am not a singular genius and I stand on the shoulders of others.
No, it does not do live traffic conditions. There is no simple, open, global source for live traffic-flow data (that I know of).
In some places, government departments DO publish some live conditions. Mine provides things such as roadworks, incidents, slow-down zones, and speed limits. However, actual live traffic flow is very much case-by-case.
Re-routing. I have laid the groundwork, but I have not enabled it yet. Sorry. I need a little rest after going HAM at v1.0.0. If you want to jump the gun and fork/add it yourself, much of the groundwork is already there. I made a suggestion for how to do it here.
Spoken navigation: ditto. The groundwork exists. It just needs the last mile (ha).
No, it is not AI coded, though I used AI for documentation. See HERE for AI disclosure. Ipso facto, by the rules of !selfhosted, I have labelled it [AIP]. If that bothers you, don’t use it.
Yes it’s free / no subscriptions / I want nothing for it / maintained for self use / blah blah blah. Use it or don’t, entirely your call.
With all that out of the way, may I present Pi Maps.
Yes, it works entirely on your home LAN.
Yes, you can use it remotely from your phone. Tailscale Serve, or an equivalent private HTTPS setup, gives the browser the secure context that location access normally requires.
Grant location permission and Pi Maps can use your phone’s location. Boom - live routing.
Yes, it has points of interest. In FULL mode, those can link directly into an offline Wikipedia ZIM through Kiwix (for those not in the know, Kiwix
Yes, it does local driving routes. Other BRouter route profiles are possible, but v1.0.0 currently ships with driving only.
Yes, maps, search, and routing work locally after you install the regional data. Normal use does not depend on Google, a public geocoder, or a public map API.
Yes, it runs on a teeny, tiny Raspberry Pi. Takes up about 300-ism MB of RAM, so you don’t need a beefy rig of any kind for this.
- Yes, it is privacy-respecting. You host the service and the normal map, search, and route requests stay on your own system.
As I said, I made this for me. I have now, I think, sufficiently de-tangled it so that with some effort, and some documentation reading, you can make it work for you.
Understand that this is still very much a “roll up your sleeves” thing, though.
But if you are interested, please have it. Fork it, make it better and make it yours.
PS:
Boilerplate:“The repository is maintained for private use, but you are welcome to use it. Pull requests are not accepted. No support or compatibility guarantee is provided”.
PPS: The inspiration for this was Project Nomad.. They do good work, but I like my way better :)
