From the very beginning of my OSM journey, I loved the idea of playground maps. There are several reasons for this, but I won’t go into detail here. For example: open data, maps, FOSS, and, of course, the children and their joy (and… all the parents out there will surely appreciate it when their children play at a playground - ideally with plenty of other kids 😉).

There were already some playground maps available. Some were based on OpenStreetMap data, others were not, or used a mix of both. Some looked like they were designed in the 90s, while others did not. In many cases, users were required to create an account with the maintainer’s service—or, even worse, with Google 🙈. Additionally, in these cases, photos, comments, reviews, and so on were stored in their systems, and OSM was only used as a map layer to display playgrounds in general.

Even the city where I lived outsourced its playground map to a cloud service. Even though this one at least didn’t look terrible, it only included 9 of the ~250 playgrounds in the area…

I wasn’t satisfied with any of these solutions!

Then I discovered a promising project in Berlin: the “Berliner Spielplatzkarte” by Alex Seidel. I chatted with him, and it turned out that this project was essentially what I had been looking for.

If I recall correctly, it was a prototype to test the concept. There were still some features missing or blockers:

  • No picture support
  • No review support
  • Only included playgrounds in Berlin
  • No routing suggestions to POIs (from a playground visitor’s perspective)

Even though Alex shared my enthusiasm for playground maps, he ultimately didn’t have the time to continue working on the project.

A few months later, my journey began—I forked his project…

What is Spieli?

First of all: It’s a perfect domain name - easy to remember: spieli.eu

Special thanks to Ronny for helping shape the name of the project and some valuable input to several architectural discussions.

Linguistic Aspects

Pronunciation: [ˈʃpiːli]

Meaning/Definition: A German word typically used to describe an area for children, often equipped with various play facilities or devices. Usage: Children’s language.

Article/Gender: In German, the grammatical gender is masculine: „der Spieli.” In English, it is used as a neuter noun: “the spieli.”

General

A free, interactive web map for exploring playgrounds based on OpenStreetMap data.

This might not sound particularly groundbreaking, right? But I claim it is!

  1. It is designed for users - parents, grandparents. It has a clean, simple, and super user-friendly interface. No app required — just a website, and no logins are necessary.

  2. It’s not just a map. It is a federation project: It operates as a network of independent nodes (data-nodes) that contribute data to a central hub (hub mode). This allows decentralized hosting and scalability. It can operate in different modes:
    • A hub mode, which is just the web page/map.
    • A data-node mode, which provides OSM data for specific regions (e.g., relations).
  3. It only uses free and open data:
    • OSM data for playgrounds,
    • Panoramax for pictures,
    • Mangrove Reviews for ratings.

I often joke that the first point makes it unique… which is both a joke and not. In many open-source projects, you see this pattern: a fantastic backend, but no one can use it because of a missing or poorly designed frontend. This should n’t be the case here! But I think points 2 and 3 are also quite rare when it comes to playground maps.

💡 The reason for this decentralized setup is simple: I love the idea of collaboration and the “together we’re stronger” mentality. Plus, I didn’t have enough money to host the entire world map on my own 😅.

The spieli.eu instance hosts a hub with 16 data-nodes to cover all of Germany. The Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony data-nodes are hosted by other people on their own servers.

Features

User’s Perspective

  • Suggestions for nearby playgrounds
  • Filter playgrounds (e.g., by equipment, surface, or accessibility)
  • Suggest nearby POIs that might interest playground visitors (🍦!!!)
  • A data quality rating for each playground → Contribute with just one OSM account 💪
  • General information about playgrounds (surface, opening hours, operator, etc.)
  • Pictures of the playground and each piece of equipment
  • Mangrove Reviews and ratings
  • Support for sports pitches (e.g., soccer, basketball, skating) even outside playground areas
  • Support for fitness stations

OSM Contributors / Maintainers’ Perspective

  • Support for the common playground mapping rules
  • MapComplete 💖 links to add devices or pictures
  • Supports mapped devices both separately and within playground areas
  • Automatic app updates using Watchtower
  • Automatic database updates
  • Traefik, which handles SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt
  • Prometheus endpoint for monitoring
  • A straightforward solution for legal/imprint pages.
  • AI-supported development :see_no_evil: - A wide variety of AI systems can be used

Join the Spieli Community!

My VPS is running out of memory soon, as I’m currently hosting 14 backends on it 🤯. I would greatly appreciate if others were willing to host a backend for a German state. This would not only ease the load on my infrastructure but also strengthen the decentralized nature of the project.

I would also be thrilled to expand Spieli internationally. Want to include the playgrounds of your country? Interested in adding your country’s playgrounds? Let’s collaborate!

Alternatively, feel free to host it just for your country or region.