Open Denchargi, tap a charging point, and you’ll see a name, how many bikes fit, whether it’s sheltered, whether it costs anything. It looks like the sort of thing that arrives from a company somewhere.
It doesn’t. Someone stood in front of that charger — on a lunch break, or halfway through a ride — and typed it in. Possibly you. That’s worth explaining, because once you know how OpenStreetMap works you start noticing it underneath a lot of things you already use.
A map anyone can edit #
OpenStreetMap started in 2004, out of frustration that decent map data was locked away and expensive. The fix was almost naive: let anyone add to it. Twenty years and more than ten million contributors later, it’s a map of the world that nobody owns and everybody can use — as long as you credit the people who made it and keep what you build on it open.
The useful thing to understand is that it isn’t a picture. It’s more like a shared list of everything, with a location attached to each entry: this is a road, this is a bench, this is a bakery, this is a charging point for bikes. Because it’s a list rather than a finished image, anyone can ask it questions, and anyone can add the thing that’s missing.
Nobody had to get permission to start mapping e-bike chargers. People just began noting them down, agreed on how to describe them, and that became the standard. That’s the whole culture in one story.
What Denchargi does with it #
We could have kept charging points in our own database. We deliberately didn’t — that reasoning is in Hello, Denchargi. What it means in practice is that the app is a thin layer over the open map:
- The chargers come from OpenStreetMap. When you move the map, Denchargi asks the open map what’s nearby and remembers the answer, so an area you’ve already looked at loads instantly next time.
- So do the streets underneath. The background map is drawn from the same data by a free, open service — which is why the streets can look finished while the chargers are still arriving.
- So does search. Typing a town name asks OpenStreetMap where that is.
- And your additions go back. Sign in with a free OpenStreetMap account and what you add is filed under your name, in the public map, permanently. Not into a vault we own.
Two smaller things we’re quietly pleased with. When a charging point hasn’t been confirmed by anyone in about six months, the app stops claiming it’s reliable and offers you a Verify button instead — one tap that tells everyone else it’s still there. And if something’s wrong but you don’t know how to fix it, you can leave a note for local mappers to sort out, no account needed.
What else the same map does #
Here’s the part that makes open data fun. The map you just contributed to is running things that have nothing to do with e-bikes:
- Cycling navigation. OsmAnd, Organic Maps and Komoot all route on it — and for bikes it’s genuinely better than commercial maps, because volunteers bother to map the cycle paths, gates and gravel that car-first data skips.
- Pokémon GO. The world you walk around in that game is OpenStreetMap. So are the maps in a long list of apps you’d never guess.
- Wheelchair access. Apps like Wheelmap show which places you can actually get into, because someone thought to write that down.
- Disaster response. After earthquakes and floods, volunteers trace roads and buildings from satellite images and hand usable maps to rescue teams within days. That’s been happening since Haiti in 2010.
- Whatever you’re curious about. Every drinking fountain in your city. Every bench with a view. Every bakery open on Sunday. You can ask, and the answer is free.
If you’d like to add to it beyond chargers, StreetComplete is the friendliest way in: it turns mapping into small questions you answer while out walking. Is this bin still here? What’s this path made of?
Why this matters for an app this small #
Denchargi is a side project. Something you rely on will outlive it, or it’ll outlive something you rely on — either way, the charging points you add aren’t hostage to that. If this app disappeared tonight, every point contributed through it would still be on the map tomorrow, in every other app built on the same data.
That’s not a backup plan. It’s the point. A private list of charging locations is something to guard; an open one is shared ground, and it gets better every time somebody uses it well.
So if you pass a charger that isn’t on the map, add it. If you use one the app says is unverified, verify it. And while you’re in there, fix the café name next door — nobody’s stopping you.
Happy charging. 🚲⚡