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Tagging Photos With GPS Coordinates
ptorrone writes "As part of a camera mod project to make a low-cost aerial photography device we started finding other uses for the camera hack. This first part of this series is tagging photos with GPS coordinates by automating a camera and GPS unit, it's a DIY Black Box for now with interesting applications and other uses. Ideally, this may encourage the next EXIF data schema to support GPS and other information."
This would be great if it also tagged the direction of the photo as well as the focal length.
That way some sort of virtual vacation wiki could be constructed from it.
It would also be nice to get altitude and the direction (in 3-D) the picture was taken.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Would be helpful for this http://www.confluence.org/
tagging photos with GPS coordinates
EXIF data schema
See exif.org for info.
Robophoto, OziExplorer support tagging the images from live GPS or from a log file.
But instead of a specific data source (the GPS unit), why not develop a standard and just have a data plug in the side of the cam to plug *whatever* data source into? GPS, keyboard, clock, speedometer, altimeter, whatever ...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'd love to see this kind of thing built into cameras in the same way that Kodak is known to symbolically code film they sell to indicate the manufacture date of the film.
High resolution? No need for that... it's just a nice little trap for people trying to say a staged photo proves something that it really doesn't. If the original film indicates a year after the date you're claiming or that you were nowhere near the place you claim the photo was taken, then you're a liar and we can forget everything you had to say...
I wrote an app that tags my images based on GPS coordinates from my Garmin Forerunner. If you look in the EXIF spec you'll find that there are tags for latitude, longitude, and altitude (all of which the Forerunner gives you).
.NET flavour.
If you're using GDI+ on a Windows machine you can add the tags into your image pretty easily using either native code or your favourite
Neil
Now my insurance company will be able to take a picture of me when their little black box in my car senses I'm doing something illegal. Two shots that are both location and time stamped will provide exact proof of how fast I was going, nevermind the fact that there was a dead hooker in the back seat...
I don't know if anyone remembers this, but there was a series of stories on Slashdot about a guy that was taking high-quality photos of the California coastline to study erosion. He was sued by Barbra Streissand or someone for taking photos of her house. Anyway, his camera system recorded the location that the photos were taken using GPS. You should talk to him to see what he did.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
This was done along time ago with Kodak cameras. The cameras actually run a scripting language. A script can be written to read from a serial port and superimpose the coordinates onto the picture much like the time/date stamps.
It worked well, but I was not able to get altitude nor direction data, I plan on the future hooking up two servos to allow for directional and azumuth data to be entered as well.
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All this did was record time and gps cordinates on the Garmin GPS unit, and have the camera continiously take pictures at a rate of 800 photos an hour. You still have to process the GPS data from the garmin unit and corrolate it with the app USAPhotoMaps to trace it out.
While new cameras offer GPS hookups, I imagine compatibility and logistics is a hassle.
Sometime, there'll be GPS in the camera, but then you have to take pictures with the camera itself in a position to receive GPS signal, and the long camera wakeup times will be even longer.
K I S S. Use a GPS that can be enhanced and specialized. Use a camera that is made for taking pictures. Correlate the data as convenient.
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This would be really slick for storm-chasing. Often times you find yourself in the middle of [some flat state] taking pictures of a storm, and once you go home you may very well forget exactly where you were.
Also, I recently saw a TV show where they had to track down a killer based off of some digital pictures a murder victim had snapped shortly before getting killed. This technology would have made that murder much easier to solve... of course this probably has never happened in real life.
The biggest problem I see with GPS and cameras [digital] right now is battery life. Get GPS fixes from the necessary satellites can really run down your batteries fast. This is one area where camera phone may have a advantage; if they are GPS enabled (i.e. motorla iDen, etc.) and can use AGPS from the phone network, it may help with battery life. Nevertheless, as GPS receivers become more efficient, I can see them being integerated in to cameras to provide this type of information. It would actually make for a great vacation application. Take photos with GPS coords, upload photos to computer, computer has an app that "maps" your photos to where they were taken on a global/regional map. Throw in the dates and the app could construct a trip timelime showing all the locations where you took your photos (all the while playing the Family Vacation theme song).
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
It seems that there is also a software based solution as well: http://www.inertia-llc.com/sandbox/topofusiontest/
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It's almost enough to make me give up my Canon. Almost, except for all those pesky Canon lenses I have... :)
i d=7-6459-7204-7205.
"External GPS units that adhere to the NMEA 0183 specification are supported (the new MC-35 adapter cable, which connects to the 10-pin remote port on the camera and provides both an RS-232 serial port and 10-pin remote port, is required); latitude, longitude and altitude can be stored in a photo's metadata. The D2X's date and time can also be set automatically when a GPS unit is connected"
Full walkthrough of the new features in the D2x at http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?c
Neil
Imagine thousands of Flightgear fans all taking pictures from hilltops and airplanes and submitting them to a server that performs geometric transformations on the images, per the location data, and adds to a downloadable database of free scenery.
There already is ... though they called it "float", don't ask me why.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
It was great for crime photos, surveying, construction, etc. IIRC they had a snap on module later.
a l/tib/tib7061.jhtml?id=0.1.14.34.5.110&lc=en
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/profession
They seem to hava abandoned it. Silly to do for such a simple and useful feature. Hope the new project takes off.
Firefox &
Um, my Kodak DC390 (and other Digita-based cameras) supported this ages ago. Someone wrote a Digita app that talked to a GPS via the serial port and added EXIF tags to the images. Heck, I think that Kodak even sold a Garmin GPS and a special bracket that screwed into the tripod hole to hold the GPS.
This isn't my web site but I wish it were:
http://www.geosnapper.com/
There exist Japan only (not ever marketed in the US) point and shoot cameras that already record GPS data directly. (Rioch... and some other brand I haven't heard of.)
And of course various Nikon pro models have this capacity, such as that used here:
http://www.californiacoastline.org/
In the same vein, check out:
http://apps.ecy.wa.gov/shorephotos/index.html
I haven't evaluated this: http://www.robogeo.com/home/
But I do own this, and it works well, as advertised to get a GPS read for each time at which you take a picture: http://www.geospatialexperts.com/
At the above location, they happen to sell the Ricoh model that can record GPS out of the box.
"...so you can tell where on the track the shot is...."
or, more precisely, where the camera was when the photo was taken.
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
In the past there was a kit for some Kodak cameras to connect a normal handheld GPS receiver with NEMA output to the serial port of the camera. I think they overlayed the coordiantes as text onto the picture. I doubt the newer cameras even have a serial port, but the old ones are dirt cheap now.
Here's an article on connecting a GPS to a Kodak digital SLR, and if you google a bit, you will find that most of the old digita-OS based cameras (e.g. DC290) support this.
This is not really a new way to do stuff, and as several other has pointed out, the EXIF-standard already has fields for geographical placement. A new dimension is provided in the data, and allows us to do a whole new range of applications. We've built a small application on Symbian OS (currently running under Personal Java, and another solution in development running under Symbian OS natively) which tags images, audio and other information on a cellular phone (we use the Ericsson P900) with location (provided by an gps with a bluetooth interface).
:)
We've done several interesting projects in relevance to this, and the probably biggest field of usage would be the utility and maintenance industry.
We're currently submitting the data from the phone, tagged with a location or a track, to a Java-based server. This server can in turn store the data locally to be retrieved from another phone with additional information (like a regular map) and/or pass the data on to a webserver where the repository can be browsed from a normal web browser. The application may be tested on The OneMap GeoMeta Browser Client. This is part of Project OneMap, a project where we aim to build a completly free and freely managed geodata repository.
There is still much work going on in this field, but the japanese are 2 years ahead of everyone else. Several of their phones already have built in GPS-receivers and tag the images they capture automagically (this was done as early as in 2002). There still isn't any regular consumer interest for this in Europe or the US, but we could all hope for a better future.
mats
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
During my last motorcycle trip (http://photos.innersource.com/group/9976) all photos were GPS tagged and afterwards linked to satellite images/maps (http://maps.innersource.com/) While a manual process today, it would be fairly easy to automate it.
My smartphone does E911, so it's got a minimal GPS receiver that can receive the raw GPS signal data at the time it snaps a picture. I'd love an app that added those coordinates to the JPG comment field, then sent them over its CDMA net connection for locating by higher-powered software at the server.
--
make install -not war
Didn't Microsoft already patent this? The patent mentions GPS data.
Does this mean I'm my own Big Brother?
"... and here's a picture of me in my tin-foil hat at coordinates XY..."
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Hate to be a "been there... done that" type but my Nikon Coolpix 950 has done that for years. If a GPS putting out NMEA is attached to the serial port it places that last lat/lon/alt in the EXIF data.
:}
Works great... and has for several years
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
It was a 2002 Toshiba model with au/KDDI service. I could tag any photo with the GPS coordinates and mail it off to let people know where I was. It's nice to look back at old shots and be able to find the location on a map, but I'm sure it can be used for many more practical purposes.
Check this out: http://www.redhensystems.com/products/multimedia_m apping_software/mediamapper/default.asp?sm=2
It records GPS coordinates to a video after it is encoded as sound. While playing it back, it deciphers the sound to obtain GPS coordinates, and geo-references entire video to a basemap as it was recorded.
Currently, you can get an rss feed for certain tags on publicly available photos. It would be interesting if they extended this feature for GPS coordinates. (ie, if you want to see what's going on in Central Park, at your college, at Mt Everest, or at Mardi Gras.)
... In summary; more meta-data = cooler searches.
e ?tags=decay&format=rss_200
...Computer generated images would need fake GPS coordinates, NASA would need some other form of GPS for space...
It also would make for some interesting searches. In theory, if they kept track of points, vectors, and times... and lets say that you kept track of the same info, then you could search for all photos that include you!! Also, depending on if they store other meta-data, sorta like ID3 tags for MP3s, you could look for a GPS coordinates that best match a set of keywords.
Example, if you did a search for Lego, the first result would probably be Lego land. (Lots and lots of vacation pics.) The next 2-5 would probably be big, famous Lego artworks that lots of people would take pictures of. You could do a search for waterfalls and find all the most picturesque waterfalls in your area.
http://flickr.com/services/feeds/
http://flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gn
On the downside, you have to be careful with your meta-data. I can only imagine stalkers having a field day once GPS coordinates are embedded into pictures.
The first thing I thought of when reading the article (I know.. I'm not supposed to read it before commenting...) was to imagine the chat-room housewife who doesn't realize that her camera is capturing her GPS coordinates as she does a strip show for the boys in a chatroom. Next thing you know, 100 local geeks converge on her house - "Is that your GPS in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
Or the pervert who captures kiddie porn has inadvertantly given his location when he posts it on the web.
It's a cool idea, and obviously could be spoofed to avoid such problems. I just don't look forward to the pop-ups on my camera telling me "Warning, your camera may be broadcasting your GPS coordinates".
and you can tag your pictures.
Here's a way cool example:
http://www.downgoesthesystem.com/devzone/exiftest/ final/