Show HN: VeloPlanner – A cycling route planner focusing on official routes

Show HN: VeloPlanner – A cycling route planner focusing on official routes(veloplanner.com)

20 points by caspg 1 year ago | 9 comments

Hi HN! I'm an avid cyclist who took the leap a few months ago to quit my job and focus 100% on building VeloPlanner – a tool I wished existed for my own cycling adventures.

VeloPlanner helps cyclists plan routes by prioritizing official, signposted cycling paths across Europe, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

What makes this different:

- Focus on official cycling routes rather than just shortest path algorithms - Comprehensive POI integration (campings, hotels, attractions) - Detailed surface information (asphalt, gravel, forest trails)

This is a solo founder project that I'm now working on full-time after validating the initial concept. The decision to leave my job wasn't easy, but the enthusiastic response from early users convinced me it was worth the risk. It's still early days so hard to tell if that will pay off :)

I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

caspg 1 year ago |

For those interested in the technical implementation: I built VeloPlanner with my favorite tech stack: Elixir/Phoenix, React, and MapLibre GL JS. The architecture is a hybrid approach:

- Phoenix controllers for static content (route guides, listings)

- Phoenix LiveView for most of the forms

- React for the planner and interactive maps where high performance is critical

One of the bigger technical challenges was self-hosting all the infrastructure - I'm running my own map tile server and routing engine (Graphhopper) on beefy servers with lots of RAM to maintain full control over the cycling-specific routing algorithms. The memory requirements are substantial, especially for processing large-scale route data across multiple regions.

This approach lets me customize the routing to prioritize official cycling routes while still giving users flexibility when planning custom segments.

Happy to dive deeper into any specific aspect if there's interest!

fidalgo 1 year ago | |

Curious to understand what do you use, if any, for logging and observability!

caspg 1 year ago | | |

Well, not much at the moment :) It's still all very fresh and I guess logging and observability is afterthought. I'm hosting app on Heroku which provides some basics.

kfeeney 1 year ago |

This looks great, I've considered building something similar myself many times but won't have to anymore!

I like to stick to quiet backroads and nothing currently on the market does a good job of hinting at what will be a quiet/less traveled road.

Good luck!

caspg 1 year ago | |

Thank you. Touring profile tries to stick to the marked cycling trails so they should be quite roads.

jcmfernandes 1 year ago |

Cool stuff! What's your current focus on, and what are your plans for the near future?

And congrats on the jump. It takes courage to go solo :)

caspg 1 year ago | |

Thanks! I'm finalizing paid subscriptions and premium features. Then I will move my focus on mobile app which is kind of requirement for outdoor platform.

rodloboz 1 year ago |

Very cool and looks great. Good luck going forward!

caspg 1 year ago | |

Thank you