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How to: Use a GPS watch, XML and Satellite photos
ptorrone writes "Engadget.com has a How-to article about using a Garmin Forerunner 201 watch and XML to export a runner's tracks and place them over Hi-Res Satellite photos. The author plans to run 10 miles, in 10 cities over the next 10 weeks and print out all the images."
...to ruin a good run. I find running to be a perfect time to check my type-A personality and my obsession for order and understanding at the door and get good and meditative. You can embrace your inner geek the other 23 hours of the day.
I used to sell GPS units at REI, and they are just about the most stupid things. people would take them into the back country, leaving a map at home, and then use their cell phone (they sometimes work) to get themselves rescued.
okay, so there are other uses. I'm not really meaning to troll, but GPS has stuck in my craw ever since.
Hey, how long before someone creates a video game with one of these things? That'd be a lot of fun to design.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
If the guy running is like the average geek, he's going to stop every 100 feet and get his heart started again. 10 miles? He'll need to be rebooted more often than Windows 95 with a bad video driver!
If it looks like Running for Geeks and smells like Running for Geeks then it must be a Running for Geeks reformatted dupe.
It would have taken all of 1.5 minutes to check that.
And I never usually bother, but when I saw the Engadget article myself a day ago I almost knew this would happen.
Give timothy a break tho...it *is* Saturday.
Mind the gap...
I can see a lot of benefit of using this on motorcycle trips. I often go riding with no destination in mind, taking randon turns, getting lost, then finding a familar main road and working way back again. I often wish I could retrace my route on a map later to find out exactly where I went.
We need somebody else to do the same exact thing in the same exact cities, but only have your trail surround his.
Then, you'll go down in history as the person who won the largest simulation of Tron light cycles ever!
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
What I really need is to be able to GPS my cat (who typically is a couple of feet away hiding under a bush contemplating whether or not to respond to my calls).
great. so, i can walk into any sports shop, buy one of these 'health-obsessed consumer' toys, strip it of all its livery down to bare silicon, bag it up in gummy and duct tape, and make myself an easy GPS logging device for application in any one of several hundred thousand different devious ways ...
cool. rock on Consumerica!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Because this device allows you to time your splits to make sure you're running at your target pace without "pre-measuring" your course. Granted, to some people this isn't important, they're just running of the joy of it. Others--while also running for the joy of it--are running to train for upcoming races, and making sure you're on pace become very important. However at the same time it's fun to run different routes so you don't get bored with the course. This let's you run any course (provided you can get Sat signal) and stay on pace.
Plus you can do all those other geeky things in the 23 other hours, like automatically download the XML tracks, and plot it on sattelite imagery.
This technique of overlaying GPS trails on maps are the basis of most moving map programs, e.g. Oziexplorer
I recommend Geocahing.com for more fun and games, as well as other games : GPSGames
My little yellow Garmin, my Palm m130 and I keep ourselves quite happy thanks... GPS has quite a following in NZ - GPS.org.nz
Most GPS units will stream their data to a standard format that can be captured with Hyperterminal or something similar. Writing a Python script that parses the data and converts the coordinates to Lat/Long decimal degrees is very easy. I wrote one for our Lowrance GPS/Depth Sounder to plot course, position, and depth data for our many small lakes. With a few control points to find the current water elevation before sounding the lake, a failry accurate digital terrain model can be generated using some good GIS software. I'm sure techiniques like this could be used in many situations; the XML output is a neat idea and something I'd like to look into. Since Python has great string manipulation capabilities however, its nice to use for the amount of customizing that can be done (the data string can carry rediculous amounts of information like depths (mentioned above), ground speed and lots of other stuff, depending on the type of GPS unit).
According to this I ran over my neighbours houses and over water. I'm good.
GTK-based program that will overlay tracks and waypoints onto TerraServer images. Development has been coming along nicely...
I've actually been onto PT's running page for a couple of weeks now, and his efforts (and combination of tech) have inspired me to start a running program of my own (that began this morning, actually). Cheers and thanks to PT!
There was a company that did this as long as 5 years ago in Vail, CO.
You'd wear a GPS antenna on your shoulder and a unit in your pocket would record where you were at what time. Then they'd print it on a topo map styilized for 3D and color code where you were going and at what speed. They'd also calculate your top speed, average speed, vertical feet, etc...
I think they're out of business now, sadly, but they were good people and it was a cool idea, for sure.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
It downloads Terraserver aerial photos for a selected region at two resolutions, the associated topo maps, and allows seamless zooming/switching between all images and topos.
Check out the Nevada testing grounds for some outstanding pics. I've used the system to plot all the missile silos in the western US: after a while, it's almost possible to guess where they'll be.
Another interesting route is the Ridge Route from Castaic.
A hobby seen in the UK (and I assume, therefore, elsewhere) is to define jogging and cycling routes that draw the outline of an animal or other object on an existing urban road network. Some people have way too much time.
There is a quirky mapping tool that will let you take GPS tracks and waypoints and plot them onto Terraserver aerial photos.
It's not open source and only for Windows, but it's free: USAPhotoMap
I wrote about it a couple monts ago in my blog. It may be better now...haven't had a chance to try it lately. My main complaint at the time was that the Terraserver maps were not publishable, legally speaking, but I later learned they are.
Any open source tools out there that do something similar? I'd love to build one myself if I had the time.
He seems to submit a lot of stories about himself to slashdot involving the merging existing gadgets for impractical, mundane or otherwise incidental uses.
Looks like there are not many GIS geeks in the /. Overlaying a GPS tracking on a map is routine work for many applications look this links,
ESRI
ERDAS
... the Degree Confluence Project.
Say I didn't want the watch (limited storage ...) and just a GPS device that sits in my backpack and does nothing but log data for later use - can someone recommend a good and inexpensive choice? Perhaps something that uses a CF/SM card? Ideally it doesn't even need LCD or any advanced features. I'd like to use it when travelling and recall the data when back home.
I use XML to scratch my itchy ass. XML is a non-Turing-complete, non-normalized poor cousin to Lisp S-expressions.
Run Logan, Run!
What's the use of this device for a runner, if it doesn't contain a heart-rate monitor?
This means you'll be carrying:
- A Polar (www.polar.fi) heart-rate monitor
- A GPS
- A cell phone
- And a mp3-player
That's a lot gadgets, just for a run. Mp3 & cellphone can be combined these days. What are the good combinations of heart-rate monitors & GPS out there?
If you have to process datasets like this I would say XML is a perfect fit. We use it at work all the time and it's just great. If you have to process satellite photos XML is great because it's extensible. If you running 10 miles than XML is perfect because of it's flexability. Can you imagine another technology that could help you with super imposing GPS telemetry and satellite photos? No! But XML is perfect for that. As an unexpected benifit because there are 10 cities you can use XML for all 10 and it works just the same. That's because it's an ideal solution that dovetails well with the extensible nature of this technology (moving forward that is).
Mentioned in the article's footnotes as "SVG web application": GPS Visualizer.
Its free, and platform-independent. (Unfortunately, Adobe's SVG Viewer doesn't get along well with Mozilla for Windows, but it's fine in WinIE or in any browser in OS X.)
Easier way to do all that in USAPhotoMaps:
1 - Go to GPS, Comm port, and select the com port your Forerunner is connected to,
2 - Go to GPS, Protocol, and select Garmin
3 - Go to GPS, Route, Receive
And that's it. You can import your waypoints that way also.
What's even cooler is that can even send locations that you can mark based on topgraphic maps that USAPhotoMaps can download for you if you switch to topographic mode by pressing T.
what linux software does everyone run for this?
i just got my gps and havent had time to make it work with my laptop yet. i look forward to netstumbler.
myren
He's got the stupidest combination of gadgets with no useful purpose, from his Segway to his butt plug that streams his core temperature to the internet.
It's good for knowing how far you really are running, too. I used to measure my routes by riding my bike over the same route (reversing direction, so that I ride on the same side of the road I run on). This saves me the trouble when I'm trying a new route, and I suspect it's more accurate, too.
Another nice features is the virtual partner -- you program a given pace, and it creates a virtual partner that maintains your pace and tells you whether you are ahead of or behind the virtual partner, and by how much.
It even senses when you've stopped, so that it stops the timer automatically (good for when your run is interrupted by a stop light).
And it estimates how many calories you burned.
There's nothing type-A about it, since you can wait until after you're done to see how well you did, although the first few times I found myself checking it more often than I needed to, just out of the novelty of it.
Yes, but USAPhotoMaps only has maps available for the US (as the name already suggests). GPS Visualizer has aerial photographs for the US and other parts of the world plus street maps for the US and also other parts of the US...
The author plans to run 10 miles, in 10 cities over the next 10 weeks and print out all the images.
If it was 8 miles in 16 cities over 32 weeks I might be interested. Decimal is so outdated...
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
What map are you using? And is your sister single?