Posts
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Tileserver-GL vs OpenMapTiles vs renderd
Vector vs raster tiles. MBTiles vs PostGIS-on-the-fly. Here's the actual storage and CPU cost of running each tile stack at home, with no marketing fluff.
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Nominatim Hardware Sizing
Real RAM, disk, and CPU numbers for self-hosted Nominatim. Planet vs region, mini PC vs server, what survives the import and what doesn't.
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BRouter: Cycling Routes That Don't Suck
Strava and Google route cyclists onto highways. BRouter's elevation-aware profiles know what a bike actually wants. Here's the self-hosted setup.
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Self-Hosted OSRM in Docker
Run OSRM in Docker with a regional OSM extract, compile a routing profile, and get your own /route endpoint live. Profile compilation gotchas included.
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OSRM vs Valhalla vs GraphHopper
Three open-source routing engines, three philosophies. OSRM is fast, Valhalla is flexible, GraphHopper is balanced. Here's how to actually pick one.
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Self-Hosted HA Reverse Geocoding
Wire local Nominatim into Home Assistant for reverse geocoding without leaking GPS coords to Google or Mapbox. Privacy-respecting smart home in 30 lines.
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Photo Libraries Without Google Lookups
Stop letting Google see where every photo was taken. Immich geocodes locally by default; PhotoPrism sends fuzzed coordinates to its own hosted service.
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libpostal: Address Parsing Done Right
Address strings are a mess. libpostal's CRF model parses '123 Main St Apt 4B, NYC' into structured fields without regex hell. Here's how to use it.
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Photon Deep Dive: Search That Forgives
Nominatim is great until your users typo. Photon adds OpenSearch-backed fuzzy geocoding on top of OSM data, here's when to deploy both, side by side.
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Nominatim vs Photon vs Pelias
Three self-hosted geocoders, very different tradeoffs. Pick Nominatim, Photon, or Pelias for your project without spending a weekend benchmarking.
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Nominatim Diff Replication
Imported OSM data goes stale fast. Run pyosmium and Nominatim's diff replication pipeline so your geocoder stays accurate without re-importing planet.
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osm2pgsql Tuning for Modest Hardware
Stop watching osm2pgsql crawl. Tune flex output, slim mode, --cache, and Postgres for OSM imports on hardware that isn't a hyperscaler.
12 min read
