[HN Gopher] Show HN: Optimule, a free vehicle routing platform b...
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       Show HN: Optimule, a free vehicle routing platform built with Open
       Route Service
        
       Author : yuppiepuppie
       Score  : 59 points
       Date   : 2021-09-19 11:19 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (optimule.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (optimule.com)
        
       | matkoniecz wrote:
       | free demo link leads to 404 page (
       | https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfy9tK5a9TZ4PtvGTCv... )
       | 
       | Also, why it would be form rather than a working page?
        
         | mtmail wrote:
         | I'd say 'free demo' here means the author contacts you for a
         | webinar or walk-through. The signup works.
        
           | yuppiepuppie wrote:
           | Yeah, that's right. I forgot to update the landing page. I'll
           | do that later today. I originally was thinking of monetizing
           | the platform somehow, and I thought I could walk potential
           | clients through it if they had any interest. However I have
           | since deleted the Google account associated with that form.
        
       | frob wrote:
       | Quick feedback: the text of the main button on the page to sign
       | up is too long on mobile. It wraps the button itself around (not
       | just the text inside the button) and partially renders over
       | itself on mobile, making it hard to read.
        
         | yuppiepuppie wrote:
         | Thanks! I'll fix that. I tried to do my best with css and
         | making its all mobile friendly, however styling is not my
         | forte.
        
       | deathanatos wrote:
       | A shout-out about the mentioned Open Route Service, which is IMO
       | fantastic.
       | 
       | I wrote a small mapping app to do navigation when we moved cross-
       | continent a few years back. I didn't want to have to worry about
       | trying to pull map data over the Internet, since I wasn't certain
       | that I would even _have_ Internet during the journey. I whipped
       | together a small app using map tile data from OSM (great
       | project), got the directions in a usable format (GeoJSON) from
       | Open Route Service (great project) and rendered the entire thing
       | with OpenLayers (https://openlayers.org/), a JS library (great
       | project). We had a USB GPS tracker1 hooked to a laptop that
       | tracked our route/position.
       | 
       | Open Route Service also includes other things in the data that
       | are nice, and given more time, probably worth taking advantage
       | of. E.g., there was road grade information, which is nice when
       | you're hauling your life behind you in a truck, since then I can
       | tell my driver what to expect.
       | 
       | (We also did occasionally use Google Maps on the phones, too. For
       | some tasks, that was easier.)
       | 
       | 1hardware GPS is _so_ much nicer than phone. Near instant fix,
       | vs. both our phone 's 30s to several minute fix times...
        
       | yuppiepuppie wrote:
       | Hey!
       | 
       | I built this app over the past couple of months as a side
       | project. I have been involved in the sector, and always thought
       | Open Route Service was a real cool project. However, there was no
       | nice UI over it. So I built one that's quite generic and allows
       | users to optimize routes free of charge.
       | 
       | If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
        
         | stncls wrote:
         | Very nice project!
         | 
         | > Optimule uses state-of-the-art routing algorithm's, run
         | thousands of times, which guarantees that the routes generated
         | are the fastest and shortest, while maintaining real-world
         | business and customer constraints.
         | 
         | Which algorithms do you use for routing? Without giving away
         | too much details (in case this is your secret sauce), what is
         | the general approach? From the "guarantees" "fastest and
         | shortest", I infer it's an exact approach rather than a
         | heuristic one. Is it integer programming-based VRP? I thought
         | the SOTA here was very hard to reach (column generation,
         | cutting planes, etc.).
        
           | skeeks wrote:
           | When he mentions Open route serice, I assume none of the
           | route calculations is done by himself, so Optimile is just an
           | UI for Open route service.
        
             | stncls wrote:
             | I see, thanks!
             | 
             | Open Route Service [1] uses Vroom [2] under the hood. It
             | seems to be based on local search with some "Solomon I1"
             | (?) heuristic. So good heuristic routes (obtained quickly),
             | not optimal ones.
             | 
             | [1] https://openrouteservice.org/
             | 
             | [2] https://github.com/VROOM-Project/vroom
        
               | yuppiepuppie wrote:
               | Exactly, the free version here uses Vroom under the hood
               | with ORS. However I do have a branch with other VEhicle
               | routing engines, but it wouldn't bring too much value
               | unless you had a very specific use case that I could
               | apply it too.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | karussell wrote:
           | OpenRouteService uses GraphHopper as library which uses exact
           | routing algorithms:
           | https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper (note: I'm one of
           | the co-founders of GraphHopper)
           | 
           | And then this A to B routing gives you the distance matrix
           | which is necessary as input for vehicle routing algorithms
           | (usually heuristics), see
           | https://www.graphhopper.com/blog/2017/09/18/route-
           | optimizati... for more details.
        
             | yuppiepuppie wrote:
             | Great to see you on here! Thanks so much for Jsprit. Its a
             | great tool that I used for many years.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-19 23:02 UTC)