Deb Bassett - Urbanwide

Snowboarding GPS Foo

After last year’s snowboarding GPS fun, I decided once again to carry a GPS for this year’s trip to St Anton, so I could keep a record of where we boarded.

Using Rob’s, now slightly battered, Garmin Etrex Legend C, I set the GPS to record our location every 2 seconds and put it in my jacket pocket for the day.

At the end of each day, I downloaded our traces from the GPS onto my laptop using GPSBabel, then at the end of the trip, loaded them all into Google Earth and munged them around a bit (mostly cosmetic) and saved them all into one KML file.

If you fancy having a look at where we boarded, download the KML file here (right click and save), and open it in Google Earth.

More detailed instructions here from last year’s trip to Obertauern

If you don’t feel like downloading Google Earth, here’s a less interesting 2D Google Maps version

Update: see our photos from the trip

Go mapping in Leeds this weekend!

I’ve enthused about mapping before, and now here’s your chance to help get Leeds on the map. This weekend, 15th and 16th September, sees Leeds’ first mapping party weekend and I’m really looking forward to going along to help fill in some of the gaps. The event is organised by local geo expert, Tim Waters, who presented at last month’s GeekUp and has also kindly offered to show us the results of the party at next month’s GeekUp.

Current Leeds Coverage:

Open Street Map aims to map the world in order to provide geographical data that is free for all to use. In the UK, mapping data is not free to use, even though the taxes we pay funds the mapping process.

Anyone is welcome to take part in the event providing they come armed with a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit, although some will be available to borrow - full training will be given. Even if you can only donate a couple of hours, you can still contribute to the project!

Walk, cycle and drive around the city, mapping the streets, points of interest, paths, parks, pubs, and whatever else you feel like doing!

For full details of this weekend’s event, see the upcoming page. Hope to see you there!

GeekUp Leeds needs your 20:20 talk (and wii sticks)!

GeekUp Leeds has a spare 20:20 slot this month - left open to all comers, so if you think you have something to talk about that fellow geeks might benefit from, then prepare it as a 20:20 style presentation, and the audience will be left to decide on the night which one they get to see. The 20:20 style format has been outlined on the GeekUp wiki, but it’s essentially 20 slides, with 20 seconds per slide. Please leave a comment if you’re planning on bringing one so I can get an idea of numbers.

In addition to this, there will be two confirmed 20:20 talks, Tim Waters will be talking about Open Street Map and Guy Redwood, Eye Tracking.

Ladies and Gents, bring your wii sticks! There’s rumour of some wii action later in the evening!

Do tell us if you’re coming.

Details:
* When: 6:00 PM Wednesday 15th August, 2007 (Talks start at 7:00PM)
* Where: The Lounge, St. Johns House, Merrion St, Leeds LS2 8JE
* Photo of the the Lounge
* GeekUp web site

Come snowboard with me

Call me a geek but I thought it would be cool to carry a GPS unit with me when snowboarding this year (Obertauern, Austria) so I could track where I boarded. So shiver-me-timbers when I realised that I could load my tracks (after a bit of munging) into Google Earth and re-visit my snowboarding journey from over the last few days in 3d.

A view of my journey taken from Google Earth:

The magic really starts when you view the whole thing in Google Earth.

1. Download my kml file and open it in Google Earth
2. In the places menu (under temporary places) you should now have “snowboarding in Obertauern”
3. The best way to view things is by completing a tour. Click on the “path” you would like to view and then click the play button below.
   
   

   googleearth
4. For best results, set the following options in google earth: top menu->tools->options->touring tab->Driving directions tool options: Camera tilt angle: 50, Camera range: 200, Speed: 100

Converting your gps data into something Google Earth can understand

To pull the tracklog off a garmin gps into a gpx file, use gpsbabel:

sudo gpsbabel -t -D9 -i garmin -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F tracklog.gpx

Then do some munging to merge all track segments together:

gpsbabel -i gpx -f tracklog.gpx -x track,pack -o gpx -F outfile.gpx

Then, to convert the file to kml (a Google Earth format):

gpsbabel -i gpx -f outfile.gpx -o kml,line_color=65660066 -F outfile.kml

I downloaded data from my gps after each morning or afternoon of boarding and ended up with 6 gpx files. To merge them all into one, I converted each one to kml (with different route colours), loaded them all into Google Earth and then saved them into one large file.

To be a bit smarter, all the above gpsbabel command lines can be merged into one, but for the purposes of clarity, they are left as individual steps.