Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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.
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).
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).