Hiking Buddy LIGHT

Hiking buddy LIGHT is an offline hiking app that makes recording your hiking path easy and simple. The path is recorded in a standard GPX file and the user can send it to Gmail, Notepad, Google Drive or share it via bluetooth.

During a hike the app shows the typical, necessary statistics in imperial and metric systems:
- Duration of the hike
- Average and current speeds
- Steps
- Distance traveled

As a solo hiker myself I sometimes needed some tools that could help me in difficult situations and perhaps even save my life. This is one of the reasons for making this app, to transform the mobile phone into a useful, offline, hiking tool. In addition to monitoring and recording the hike, this app offers the following tools:

- A compass showing your bearing.

- A flashlight.

- A whistle. Can be used if user is lost.

- SOS signal in morse code using the phone's flashlight. You can tie your phone on the backpack and signal SOS while walking.

- Panic mode when encountering wild animals. In this mode, the phone emits loud noises at maximum volume on order to scare the animal away. In addition, the flash becomes a strobo light.

- Location coordinates and altitude.

The paid version has no ads and offers in addition the following:
- Coordinates (along with GPS accuracy) can be copied by the user from within the app and pasted in SMS or any other app, so as to be sent to rescue teams.

- Manual selection of GPS location updating frequency. More frequent updates discharge the battery faster but provide more detailed path recording.

- Selection of "hiking" mode. In this mode, the distance and speed are calculated only when walking is detected. In this way, the false traveling due to GPS drifting or jumping when the user is stationary is avoided. If "hiking" mode is deselected, the users can measure/record the distance/path/speed regardless of whether they are stationary, as is the case of traveling by car/boat etc.

- Path visualization with km markers. It is useful for tracing back the track in case user gets lost.

- Altitude profile graph.

—— IMPORTANT! ——
In order for the app to work properly remove any battery saving restrictions for the app. For example in MIUI (Xiaomi phones) long press the app icon, select “App info” and at “Battery saver” select “No restrictions”. Otherwise the battery saver will cause the app to stop recording when you switch off the phone.

Usage notes:

**Calibrate the phone's compass using the relevant app that came with your phone if available**

- Allow all required permissions as requested by the app:
- Camera permission is needed to access the flash
- Activity permission is needed for the step counter
- Location permission is needed for all app functions

- The location coordinates will appear after some seconds when the GPS signal is locked.



CREDITS:
Icons are modifications of the following free to use for commercial purposes icons:
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/sos title="sos icons" Sos icons created by Freepik - Flaticon
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/paw title="paw icons" Paw icons created by Freepik - Flaticon
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/whistles title="whistles icons" Whistles icons created by Flat Icons - Flaticon
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/flashlight title="flashlight icons" Flashlight icons created by DinosoftLabs - Flaticon
https://pngpart.com/png/compas-8.html Compass icon created by Chugooo - Pngpart
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/navigation title="navigation icons" Navigation icons created by Freepik - Flaticon