Free Geocoding APIs?


#1

1) Give a description of the problem
I use the Presence tiles and I’d like something more useful than the closest location shown when the current location is blank, so was thinking of creating something to give a rough say town level value for sensor based on the lat/long info

2) What is the expected behavior?
when tiles are periodically updated, if the currentlocation is blank rather than show the previous location show a town from the lat/long info
I believe distance(a,b,unit) is a useable function to get a distance between two sensors or between a sensor and home, but is there a function to get a textual location e.g. town?

3) What is happening/not happening?
(PUT YOUR INFO HERE)
I haven’t attempted this yet as i’ve not found a free geocoding API

4) Post a Green Snapshot of the piston
n/a

5) Attach any logs (From ST IDE and by turning logging level to Full)
n/a

edit: changed from last to closest location shown when current location is blank


#2

Google maps api?


#3

Unfortunately, since November its not free any more…you need an account with billing enabled to use it


#4

The geocoding api is free as of now, I am still using it… however the maps, routes and places apis are billable as far as I can see.

Currently I am using the distance matrix api and the geocoding api


#5

You do need an account with billing enabled to use the Google Maps API, but you get a monthly credit of $200. At less than a penny per call, it would take a lot of calls to the API to use up that credit. So essentially still free …

Remember, the prices in columns 2 and 3 below are per 1000 calls.


#6

OK thanks @Gopack2, @bthrock. I’ll give it a bash and see what I can make work

Thanks again


#7

I’m using the Nominatim Reverse Geocoding API from OpenStreetMap and it appears to work just fine.
It’s free, seems uncomplicated (compared to the results I was seeing on the Google one) and doesn’t require an API Key…so I’ll see how it goes

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim

Thanks for your help guys

Now if only the web presence sensors were updating reliably…out of the 4 phones I’ve tried to install it on:
One, an iPhone SE - works faultlessly
Two, an iPhone SE and an iPhone 6 - work intermittently, but will generally update when running the webcore app manually
And finally, one, an iPhone 5 (running IOS 10) - doesn’t work at all…app works until its registered as a sensor, then crashes…presumably something to do with it trying to read the geoboundaries i Have set up? And then won’t load again until i reinstall it (and I need to delete the presence sensor it created previously in ST).