Risto H. Kurppa » openstreetmap

GPS (+Heart Rate) trackers for Linux

Risto H. Kurppa — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:34:15 +0000

I’ve been recently playing with GPS devices on Linux (for example i-gotU gt-120, and the linux software to download tracks). I’ve also been discussing gps+heart rate data storage options. The obvious choice is (ex-Nokia) Sports Tracker and it didn’t even cross my mind that you could do something like this with local Linux software.

But it’s useless to ever think like that – you’re surprised with the variety of apps that are available and developed for Linux.
I bumped to this blog post on Planet KDE: Sports Activity Tracking App: The Baby Needs a Name.

And it looks awesome.

Reading the comments I found some other apps that do more or less the same, and Google gave me even more. So here’s just a quick list of GPS / HRM apps you might want to have a look if they’d be useful for you:

Then Unnamed / Kardio / Kilometer / …
Sportstracker
Polarview
Sonicread
Polarscope
Pytrainer
Viking
Marble
FoxtrotGPS
OpenDMTP
GPX viewer
GPSBabel
QLandkarte M/GT
OpenGTS
and the list goes on….So far I’ve been using GPSBabel to convert and Viking to analyze and clean the data, but now I might find some new neat tools… I don’t have a HRM, only GPS (Openmoko Freerunner), so I’d like an app to be able to visualize the track on (OpenStreet)Map like Viking does, but then maybe also somehow store the tracks. It’s a pain to have hundreds of GPX files in folders, some kind of tool to search would be neat. Maybe KPhotoalbum will some day be extended to manage any data, not just photos and videos :)A great place to discuss free GPS software is the FOSS-GPS mailing list, you’re welcome to join!
Do you have any experience on some of these apps? What features they miss? What’s the coolest thing they can do?

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Uusi Fillarikanava – palautekanava Helsingin pyöräteistä

Risto H. Kurppa — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:41:31 +0000

Helsingin kaupunki on ottanut käyttöön openfeedback.org -pohjaisen Fillarikanavan. Työkalulla kaupunkilaiset voivat merkata karttaan kohdan ja liittää siihen kommentit tai huomautukset, esimerkiksi että ‘Asfaltti on tässä kohtaa rikki ollut jo pitkään’ tai ‘Sepeli tässä tuomaalla on rikkonut renkaat jo kahteen kertaan’. Muut käyttäjät voivat kommentoida huomautuksia, lisätä omia merkintöjän. Jonkinlainen näkymä tästä on myös kaupungin edustajille.

Tarkoitus on siis parantaa kommunikaatiota kaupungin ja pyöräilijöiden välillä. Saa nähdä onko tästä mitään iloa: tuntuu että kovasti kaupunkin julistaa olevansa pyöräilyn lisäämisen kannalla ja tekevänsä töitä sen eteen mutta tuolla pyöräteillä ajellessa sitä ei aina meinaa huomata.

Palvelun avoimmuus vaikuttaa hyvältä – he käyttävät myös yhteisöpohjaista palautekanavaa, kts fillarikanava.uservoice.com. Sinne voi jättää kommentteja ja ehdotuksia sivustoon liittyen ja jälleen muut voivat sitä äänestää ja kommentoida. Näyttääpä palvelun ylläpitäjät käyttävän samaa kanavaa omille suunnitelmilleen & muistiinpanoilleen.

Lisäsin oman ehdotukseni: Karttapohjaksi Openstreetmapi kartta. Google on ruotsinkielinen eikä tunne pyöräteitä lainkaan. Koska palvelu koskee nimenomaan pyöräilyväyliä, olisi mielestäni ensiarvoisen tärkeää että kartalla ne pyörätiet myös näkyisi. Openstreetmap.org hoitaa homman nätisti, käyttöönotto tapahtuu openlayersin kanssa. Eli käyppä antamassa äänesi ehdotukselleni: http://fillarikanava.uservoice.com/pages/19502-general/suggestions/231407-karttapohjaksi-openstreetmap-org-niin-n-kyisi-nuo-py-r-tietkin-google-ei-niit-osaa- (kirjautuminen onnistuu mm. gmail, facebook- ja openid -tunnareilla)

Eli hieno palvelu, toivotaan että tällä on jotain käytännön vaikutusta pyöräilyoloihin.

ps. serveri on nurin mm. Helsingin Sanomien uutisoitua siitä

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Suomi maailmankartalle

Risto H. Kurppa — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:23:44 +0000

Kyllähän sen kaikki tietävät että Suomi löytyy maailmankartalta. Mutta sitäpä ei kovinkaan moni taida tietää että sieltä löytyy myös Suomen muotoinen tekojärvi nimeltään Neitojärvi

Suurempi kartta

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Costa Rica & Openstreetmap

Risto H. Kurppa — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:01:19 +0000

I got some days ago GPS traces from Costa Rica. I’ve been there and know the roads but at the time I was there I wasn’t interested in Openstreetmap and didn’t have a GPS so I didn’t have any tracks to use to draw roads there until now. This is a short story of what these valuable tracks helped me to do. Sorry for the large images – you have to click to see the full size and quality.

All GPS tracks on Google aerial map

Openstreetmap is a community generated map that’s open and free, you can use it as you want with almost no limitations: the same data can be used for a bike, hike or ski piste map and used both for commercial and private use. For more information, see Openstreetmap Wiki. Drawing a map is fun and useful! You record a GPS track, upload it to the server. Draw roads on the GPS track (or a free map layer – you don’t have to have a GPS!) and tag the roads and points so that they can be generated to be part of the final map. Check the Beginners’ guide for map making.

Before

The capital San Jose and other cities of the Central Valley are quite well covered in Openstreetmap but only very little of other roads. Below you can see the OSM roads in Costa Rica and the province Guanacaste before the new tracks. As you see not much there outside the cities and I tell you, there are more roads than these :)

Northern Costa Rica in Openstreetmap before the new tracks

Tracks

I got two OziExplorer .plt files from two Garmin GPS devices. All together there were 84 saved tracks. Gpsbabel command gpsbabel -i ozi -o gpx inputfile.plt outputfile.gpx converted the files to .gpx tracks with 15606 points of Costa Rican roads and tracks. See the image below.

Process

Viking

I opened the gpx files with Viking to clean, compare to old Openstreetmap data and so on. In the end I found seven longer tracks that were missing from OSM, and exported one gpx file for each of these new roads. The ‘Carratera Interamerican’a highway earlier looked like it was drawn with a ruler and it didn’t have all the curves that are there when you drive it (check the image below and compater the green road and the GPS trace). I also exported all cleaned data to two gpx files that I also uploaded to OSM (see gpx1 and gpx2)

JOSM

Then I opened JOSM and opened all gpx files there. I converted the seven gpx files to OSM tracks, downloaded the OSM data for those areas and edited the new roads to join the roads that already were there. Then I replaced the Interamericana highway with the GPS data with all the curves and also draw some smaller roads mostly from Guanacaste according to the GPS tracks and saved it all to a local OSM file (just in case the upload fails or something like that..). Then I uploaded all the new nodes and roads with JOSM – it took a long time.

The seven new tracks covered 92km (1062 GPS points) of new road and the ‘Carratera Interamericana’ highway track that I used to replace an old route was 69km long (481 GPS points)

I confirmed with Potlatch (the online OSM editor) and informationfreeway (that lets you generate new tiles in minutes instead of waiting until next Thursday for the OSM to be redrawn) that everything looked OK.

All GPS tracks on Openstreetmap

After

It took two days for the OSM cycle to reach the end of the ‘once-in-a-week’ redraw cycle so that I was able to see the results. Click the image below to see an animation of the new roads. It’s not a radical change but still, almost 100km of new busy road and 70km of fixed highway! So just carrying a GPS device with you and recording tracks might make a difference to some others. You can see the current situation behind this link – I’m hoping to get some more tracks from Costa Rica soon to draw more roads.

Guanacaste animation before and after

So now all you have to do is get your GPS and have a look at the Beginner’s Guide. And you don’t even need a GPS device, you can still draw missing roads and buildings with the help of the map layer!

Costa Rica Tags: photo, travel...
Costa Rica 2 Tags: photo, travel...
Costa Rica 3 Tags: photo, travel...

Openstreetmap Kalevassa

Risto H. Kurppa — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:59:38 +0000

Finland@Openstreetmap

Oululainen Kaleva julkaisi jutun Openstreetmapista.

Hienoa että OSM saa näkyvyyttä, tätä kautta saadaan enemmän myös tekijöitä! Pitäisikin taas itse hieman kunnostautua keräilemään reittejä ja piirtelemään teitä..

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A mailing list for the FLOSS-GPS community?

Risto H. Kurppa — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:58:36 +0000

As far as I know, there isn’t any simple or single way to communicate with the people who use GPS devices with Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) or the developers of these programs. Maybe now it’s the time to start one when all kinds of positioning tools and services are becoming more and more popular.

My experience is that the community is widely spread: some get their FLOSS-GPS updates from Openstreetmap lists, some from Openmoko mailing lists. Some communicate directly with the developers, possible some hang around in the irc channels and forums.

I think there are many projects that would benefit from some common discussion. A common list would also help the users to contribute to the projects: translations, patches, testing and so on. Users could share their experiences, tips and hints. Developers could share their ‘best practices’. And you would have only one single mailing list and you’d stay updated about the FLOSS-GPS -world instead of needing to join to 10-15 different forums and lists. Share, communicate, centralize.

Here are some projects where we’d able to find people that could be interested:

Rana – no mailing list
Openstreetmap – lists focused on maps and mapping
Tangogps – no mailing list
Marble – some KDE mailing list covers this?
JOSM (of Openstreetmap) – has a developer mailing list
Gosmore
GpsMid
Traveling Salesman – no mailing list
OpenGTS – has a project forum
Navit – mailing list and forum
Some more listed at opensourceGIS or here or here

So does anyone know if there is already a mailing list that gathers gps-freaks and map/navigation software developers and could use some more traffic or is anyone willing to start & host a list or does anyone know who could be willing to host this? Maybe Openstreetmap or FSF(E)?

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OpenStreetMap beats commercial maps

Risto H. Kurppa — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:13:31 +0000

OpenStreetMap is a project to create an open and free map of the world. The idea is that people go to places, possibly record GPS-traces and make notes or take photos of road signs and the draw the map with this information. No copying from other maps is allowed.

And there’s a reason: First of all, it’s illegal. And they can be outdated, contain false information – some maps contain even ‘copyright easter eggs’ to make it possible to prove the map has been copied.

Aarne Arvosen kuja

OSM vs Google

There’s this finnish guy who was mapping in Järvenpää, a town some 40 km north from Helsinki. He finds a street that had a sign ‘Aarne Arvosen kuja’ (Aarne Arvonen’s alley or so..). Takes a photo, goes home and inputs the data to OpenStreetMap. Then he compares the newly generated OSM map to Google maps and finds that the name of the steet doesn’t match on the maps: the almighty Google called it ‘Hiskinkatu’. Some further surfing pointed out that both Karttapaikka (of National Land Survey of Finland) and the map the City of Järvenpää has on their web page both have the same name, Hiskinkatu.

Openstreetmap

He found this article in a local newspaper mentioning the street. Almost 10 years ago someone suggested that the street would be named after the oldest citizen of Järvenpää, 110 years old Aarne. And now in June 2008 the proposal was finally accepted.

So OpenStreetMap as a freely editable map can react to changes like this very fast: within hours (well, it can take up to week to re-render the map) the changes can be seen on the map. Having many eyes around to check the validity of the information and seeing and hearing about the changes should help fixing false or old information quickly. If they some day start paving a road on your way to work you can mark it paved the very same day. Of course this is not always the case but the concept of OpenStreetMap makes this possible. The more contributors the better the correctness and more up-to-date the map is. No-one gets paid, people do it to get a good, free, flexible map.

How about commercial maps? They don’t update constantly so they contain old data, as seen in the example above. Then, on the other hand, there are stories of roads or bridges that actually don’t exist yet but they have already been added in the maps because otherwise the map would be outdated right after the release. To produce quality maps you need a lot of money. To have them up-to-date you need a lot more money. And for this reason they want to make other people pay to use the maps.

And hey – don’t trust your GPS navigator too much, it can be fatal – I was told about a lady who was taken by the navigator to an unfinished bridge falling down in her expensive Mercedes.

New York car accidents caused by GPS devices
Bus driver chooses GPS over gigantic warning sign, plows into overpass

ps. got the nice image viewer finally working :)

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