Dowsing apps for your phone

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Grahame
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Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by Grahame »

I'm sure many people are familiar with the Dowsing Apps (link broken) software for IOS and Android smartphones, developed by Adrian Incledon-Webber. I've recently discovered that it doesn't seem to work properly on my Android phone (Galaxy S4), in that it doesn't store a list of sites visited and will overwrite any previous data unless you reboot the phone between surveys. I found this out by comparing it with an iPhone version (which seems to work fine). The app also has the red and green buttons reversed in my version.

I have emailed the technical support address about these issues but the emails are bouncing, so it seems they are no longer supporting this app (although they are still quite happy to sell it to you). I've also emailed Adrian, who promised "to get hold of the tech guys", but haven't heard anything back from that avenue either. Consequently I've stopped using it. Are there any other Android users who have noticed these issues, or does it work OK for you?

Fortunately, there is now another, better app for both IOS and Android on the market from Tim Bowles. Tim was at Conference this year talking about it, and I've been playing around with it a bit since then. It's called Dowsing Mapper, it has many more features including track recording, choice of markers, recording of line direction and strength, automatic uploading to a database at earthenergymap.com, and ability to export in gpx, kmz or csv formats. More importantly, it's free!

I'm still getting to grips with the functionality of it all, as it does take a bit of playing to get your head around how everything works, and it is still very much a work in progress, but already I'm finding it much more useful that the dowsing apps one. Tim is very amenable to suggestions and is very happy to help with any problems you have. Plus did I mention that it's free? Please do give it a try.
Last edited by Grahame on Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by Grahame »

Is anyone else using Tim's excellent 'Dowsing Mapper' app? Tim is planning an upgrade and would welcome any feedback from users.
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Re: Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by mike »

The UK has a huge amount of ancient sites and special places that people would find exciting to visit when in the area, so a dowsing app would appeal to countless folk who have a moment during a busy day to explore and wander around a local site where they were at the time. The UK is blessed more so than any other country with ancient sites and powerful places where Earth Forces still active today pulse across the ground, all of them offer something unique and very special to those people with open hearts and minds. A dowsing app sounds great fun, and being free who could ask for more,I will give this a try and see where it leads me, and with the Summer just around the corner as well. 8)
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Re: Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by EEL »

Being someone who leaves non -smart phone in glovebox in order to de-clutter head and enjoy dowsing in countryside locations in order to escape people that are stumbling about staring at little screens - I probably don't need app.......it is, however a very interesting progession in the development of dowsing tools. What would interest me more, would be a more dedicated device such as dowsing rods that incorperate gps and rod movement recording (plus usb) within the handles.....if there are any engineers out there that can make one -I will be be happy to test it out for them 8). In the future we might see the Cameron Aurameter Digi and possibly Electro Grahams for sale :P
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Re: Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by mike »

In future you will dowse with a chip in your hand sending back data to the office to print off when you return, with the boss asking you why you visited the pub during working hours mate. :lol: :lol:
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Re: Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by Grahame »

EEL wrote:What would interest me more, would be a more dedicated device such as dowsing rods that incorporates gps and rod movement recording (plus usb) within the handles
There is no reason why a smartphone app can't do this - I said as much at conference some years ago when Hugo Jenks was demonstrating his GPS-plotting rods. The phone can function as a dowsing rod perfectly well by recording small tweaks of the hand, and actually there are already a couple of 'novelty' apps that do just that. It's only a matter of time before that gets combined with track recording and plotting apps.

Speaking of which, Tim has just released version 2 of Dowsing Mapper and it's looking like a big improvement over the original one. It seems much more intuitive to use, although I've only had a brief play with it. Available for Android and IOS phones.
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Re: Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by Grahame »

Just bumping this thread to mention that there is an official 'Dowsing Mapper' website, which has a good 'how-to' video and instructions section.

The Earth Energy Map, the Google map which you can send your results to automatically, is currently not displaying any results. This is apparently due to Google changing their maps API for some reason, and Dowsing Mapper is not the only app that has fallen foul of this change. Naughty Google!
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Re: Dowsing apps for your phone

Post by Grahame »

I note that the 'Dowsing Apps'... err... app has been withdrawn, and the website has disappeared.

There are, however, several distinctly dodgy looking dowsing apps available in the Google Play store (I'm on Android), many from foreign parts, ranging from 'virtual pendulums' to water- and gold-detecting apps. Most of the latter sort have lots of obviously fake reviews and seem to be scams designed either to bombard you with advertising and/or harvest your phone data and are best avoided. And why would you want to use your phone as a pendulum, when it's easier just to use a pendulum?

I did find a map dowsing app that may have potential, although on my brief trial of it I can't see that it's any better than using paper or Google Earth.
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it - Terry Pratchett.
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