Cannot download some tiles (often stamen maps)

[jiho]

Hi,

This is probably not related to ggmap itsefl but impairs its usage (and maybe you can work around it). Quite otfen, I cannot download a tile through R while using the address in a web browser works.

For example

qmap("new-york", zoom=13, source="stamen", maptype="watercolor")Error in download.file(urls[[k]], destfile = destfile, quiet = !messaging,  : 
  cannot open URL 'http://tile.stamen.com/watercolor/13/2411/3078.png'
In addition: Warning message:
In download.file(urls[[k]], destfile = destfile, quiet = !messaging,  :
  cannot open: HTTP status was '504 Gateway Time-out'

while immediately after, using http://tile.stamen.com/watercolor/13/2411/3078.png in chrome returns the map.

However, both curl and wget also get the 504 time out.

Is there a usage limit in stamen maps?

[jwhendy]

Just to chime in, I'm experiencing this quite a bit as well, though manual visiting in a browser is not seeming to work, either. I can view it in the Stamen map viewer and verify path as http://maps.stamen.com/watercolor/#zoom/lat/lon, which I thought would indicate that those options passed to get_map() would work.

They often won't, however. zoom = "auto" will work, even if no other zoom levels will result in getting the map.

Any way to track this down?

[scottmmjackson]

I imagine it's stamen usage limits. Doesn't feel great, but the alternative is using local databases.