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waze: Free Crowd-Sourced Traffic Phone Apps

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS. 0 Comments

From email comes a link to waze, a free mobile phone app (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry) that sends back real-time GPS-or-cell-tower-derived position/speed data from phones to determine where traffic problems might be occurring, and then alerts you to potential traffic issues. Here’s their video guided tour (click on “Go” to start):

Seems like a clever idea, but I see some problems:

  • Chicken-and-egg: the service only really becomes useful when lots of people use it in a specific area, but if they won’t use it until it become useful, it will never achieve critical mass. On the home page is a dropdown list of current areas at least partially covered by waze, and most of them show the project as being in the very earliest phase, with limited utility.
  • The business model relies on taking user-driving tracks, and using it to create updated navigation maps for sale; they also intend to rely on users to manually make road database updates. The OpenStreetMap project has already captured a large mind-share for this concept based on generating a freely-available database, and I wonder if people will do the same for a commercial service. They plan to offer rewards points and rankings to encourage this, but who knows?
  • The initial database is derived from US Census Tiger data, and doesn’t use OpenStreetMap data; they say it’s because of OSM’s data license, but I hear that may be in the process of changing. Tiger data isn’t bad, but OSM is better (since it’s Tiger data refined).
  • It’s not a navigation app, only a traffic app; this may put some people off since they may expect to nav app.
  • Finally, Google Maps, Bing Maps (and probably others) already offer real-time traffic data, although not with the same granularity as Waze might (i.e. local street data). But I don’t see why Google couldn’t add this particular feature to their Android navigation app fairly easily, and their large installed database would make it almost immediately useful.

But hey, it’s free – worth a look. Could be successful in the end.




Status Of The Garmin Map Compiler cgpsmapper – ?

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS and Garmin. 2 Comments

Both GPSTracklog and GPSFix link to a page on the cgpsmapper website that indicates development will be ceasing on that Garmin map compiler. This is a real shame; over the past decade, this compiler has driven the creation of thousands of freely-available maps for Garmin GPS units, as well as being a boon for creating your own personal custom maps. I use it all the time – just posted about it again recently. Even some international Garmin units have sold maps created with cgpsmapper.

In a more detailed post at the Yahoo Map Authors group, Stan Kozicki, the author of cgpsmapper, talks about this issue in greater detail. His biggest problem appears to be his inability to keep up with changes in the Garmin binary map format, since Garmin doesn’t formally document it; I know they recently made a change that broke map “locking” in his commercial version of the program. He’s apparently still talking to Garmin about some kind of continuation of the program for use in non-commercial independent map creation, with them possibly supplying more detailed information about the Garmin format. But Garmin appears to want the commercial versions of cgpsmapper to go away in favor of their commercial (and expensive) Map Product Creator.

I really hope that Stan and Garmin can come to some kind of agreement; I think the availability of cgpsmapper and the Garmin maps it creates helps drive commercial demand for Garmin units. Ten years ago, Garmin and Magellan had comparable market shares in the handheld GPS field; today, Garmin overwhelmingly dominates that arena, and is also far more popular than Magellan in the automotive arena as well. I don’t know how much the ability to create custom Garmin maps with free software had to do with that (creating custom Magellan maps is far more difficult, and requires proprietary software), but it certainly didn’t hurt.

In any case, there’s no indication from Stan that he will withdraw the last free version of cgpsmapper from availability anytime soon, and maps created with that version should work fine on most current Garmin models. Other free options for compiling Garmin map files include mkgmap, MapTk and MapDekode. I’ve been playing quite a bit with mkgmap recently, and am pretty impressed; it’s command-line only (like cgpsmapper), but I’m working on a GUI that  will support most of its features/options.




Removing Time Data Out Of A GPX Or KML File To Make It Work Right In Google Earth

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS, GPX, Google Earth and KML. 1 Comment

In the process of writing yesterday’s post on Garmin Basecamp, I found an annoying flaw on how Google Earth handles GPX files. In a recent GPS talk I gave, I surprised some people when I told them that Google Earth can open some GPS-related formats like GPX, LOC and others directly; you just need to select the type of files you want to open with the drop-down in the lower-right corner:

open_gpx

But if the waypoints in GPX files come time-stamped, either with the time you created them in the field or in a program, Google Earth assumes that you want to use this time-related data, and brings up a time slider in the upper-left-hand corner:

timeslider

The first time you open the file, the time slider will run from start to finish, with waypoints popping up and disappearing as the time indicator hits their creation time. You only see all the waypoints when the time slider has run all the way through to the end. Very annoying.

But it gets worse. If you uncheck the GPS data box in the Places pane to hide the data, then check it again, you’ll see nothing at all except the time slider:

timeslider1

Hitting the play button on the time slider will make the waypoints appear and disappear quickly, and at the end the only waypoint visible will be the last one created; the time slider will look like this:

timeslider2

To see all the waypoints, you’ll need to move the “start-time-extent” slider all the way to the left:

timeslider3

Same behavior if you save the data permanently to “My Places”. This is pretty retarded behavior; I hope Google adds the option to turn off time-related data display when it’s not wanted. Until then, I banged together a simple Windows-only program called GPXTimeStripper that will remove all time-related data from a GPX file (KML files, too, although this may not work in every case).  Download the file at this link; it’s a zipped stand-alone executable. Run the program (won’t win any interface awards):

Click on the main button, choose the GPX or KML file you want to process, and the program will remove the time data from the file, and save it with “_TS” appended to the filename. You’ll get a pop-up box with the name and location of the new file, which should always be the same location as the input file.  If the pop-up becomes annoying (which it will), check the box in the lower-left-hand corner to turn it off. Help button takes you to this page; Exit does what you’d expect.

No real checks for overwriting older files, and may not work on every file correctly (report bugs). Use at your own risk. BTW,  Google, would it kill you to have KML files created in Google Earth terminate in CR-LF instead of just LF?  It would simplify the job of reading them in correctly.




Garmin Basecamp Revisited

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS, GPX and Garmin. 0 Comments

It’s been a bit more than a year since I first looked at Garmin’s free Basecamp software, and wasn’t terribly impressed. I did say, “Hopefully future versions will be snappier, and add more features.”  I just did a GPS presentation to a local hiking group, and in preparation for that took a full look at the latest version of Basecamp (3.05). In short, it’s a major improvement over the first release; it’s now better than Garmin’s classic MapSource program for uploading/downloading/managing data. It’s so improved that it wouldn’t be a bad basic choice for creating data for use with non-Garmin GPS models; just export the data to GPX format, then use a program like EasyGPS to send it to your model. As an added bonus, it’s available in both PC and Mac versions.

Probably the most important addition is an associated tool called MapInstall, that lets you upload Garmin-compatible maps to your GPS unit. Prior to this, the only complete tool for doing this was Garmin’s MapSource program, only available if you purchased a Garmin mapset, or Garmin’s Trip and Waypoint Planner software, sold for $30. If you wanted to use free mapsets like those available at the GPS File Depot, you were out of luck; now, you’re not. MapInstall isn’t as good for uploading and managing maps as MapSource, but it should be good enough for most people:

mapinstall

But there are lots of other useful new features:

  • Faster and less buggy than earlier versions
  • Tiled (poster) printing of installed mapsets
  • Support for Garmin Custom Maps and Birdseye Imagery
  • Better route management
  • Conversion of tracks to simplified routes
  • Better waypoint, track and route management
  • Better export to Google Earth
  • Ability to import mapsets pre-installed on some GPS models

Still some issues left, some kind of weird:

  • Import of KML files is iffy
  • Help file is still incomplete
  • Only supports USB-interface models; older serial models are out of luck (though you can still export data and use EasyGPS to upload it
  • There are features listed on the update/download page that don’t seem to exists, e.g. “Added printing of USGS Quads and other public land survey areas.”
  • Be nice to be able to simplify tracks and still keep them as tracks; now, you can only save a simplified route.
  • Basecamp insists on exporting waypoints to GPX, Google Earth format with a timestamp even if you’ve created them in the program (and don’t want a timestamp).

I did some Basecamp demo videos as a reference to what I presented at my talk, and have put them up on YouTube; not terribly exciting, but maybe you’ll find them useful.




GPSBabel Hits Version 1.40

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS. 0 Comments

Via SlashGeo comes word that the multi-platform GPS format converter and GPS unit data uploader/downloader GPSBabel has hit version 1.40; unless I’m mistaken, this is the first official release in close to two years. (with lots of beta releases in between). Most obvious change is in the interface, which moves to a common Qt base for the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions. It’s not hugely different from the old interface in functionality:

Old Interface

gpsbabelold

But the new layout is far cleaner and easier to figure out:

New Interface

gpsbabelnew

The previous version of GPSBabel probably supported the largest number of GPS-related formats of any program, and version 1.40 adds even more; it’s so strong that some commercial programs use it as a base for their format importation. One commercial company even uses it despite not releasing the necessary information to let GPSBabel interface with some of their GPS units (rhymes with Flagellan). Clicking the “Options” button brings up data output options for the selected output format:

gpsbabeloptions

And you can filter/modify data before writing/uploading it:

gpsbabelfilters

Lots of additional features and power, but requires an effort to learn it all. No documentation up yet for Version 1.40, but there’s online documentation for version 1.36 still available, and you can download a PDF manual for version 1.35 from scribd.com. Information about the new formats and features can be found at this link.




UK Coordinate Converter

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS and coordinate conversion. 3 Comments

The UK’s Ordnance Survey has a free high-accuracy coordinate converter for transforming from GPS coordinates (latitude/longitude/WGS84) to OSGB National Grid (eastings and northings):

UKcoordconverter

In addition to this single-coordinate-set converter, there’s an online batch converter, and additional converter options for coordinates in the Irish Grid (good for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland). There’s supposedly a free Windows stand-alone converter that you can download after filling out registration info, but the registration form doesn’t like my US phone number, so I couldn’t check it out. The OS provides both a set of equations/parameters, and a free DLL, if you want to incorporate the coordinate converter in your own software. And there’s a page with more information on coordinate systems used in Great Britain, including their free “Guide to coordinate systems in Great Britain“.

Other free services at the Ordnance Survey website include a RINEX data server for GPS post-processing, and several searchable databases of assorted geodetic control points:

  • 900 GPS reference marks
  • 750,000 benchmarks
  • 21,000 horizontal control stations

HT to Malc.




Prune GPS/Geotagging Tool At Version 10

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS and geotagging. 2 Comments

Been a while since I last posted about Prune (version 6) (earlier posts about versions three and four), a GPS data manager, visualizer and photo geotagger. It’s Java-based, so it runs in Windows, Mac and Linux, not a common trait with GPS software. Just checked the website, and discoverd that Prune is at version 10 (!), and has progressively added features with every version. Current feature set (from the website) includes:

  • Loading of coordinate data from file in any text-based format, with any combination of fields and any separator, or in GPX or KML or KMZ or NMEA format. Xml files can be zipped or gzipped.
  • Loading of coordinate data from GPS receivers using gpsbabel.
  • Top-down, zoomable, draggable view of data points including map images from Openstreetmap or any similar map tile server (eg opencyclemap, openpistemap).
  • Caching of map tiles to disk for faster access and offline use.
  • Altitude profile view or speed profile view.
  • Selection of individual points and ranges to show details.
  • Deletion of duplicates and variable compression of track.
  • Deletion of selected points and ranges, and reversal of ranges.
  • Editing of point data, and creation of waypoints.
  • Re-ordering of waypoints within data set.
  • Saving of data in specified text format, XML format (GPX, KML, KMZ) or sending to GPS receiver.
  • Interactive 3d display of data.
  • Export to POV format for rendering of 3d model by Povray.
  • Loading of photos in jpeg format with or without coordinate data in exif tags.
  • Connection of photos to points, and saving of coordinates in exif tags. (requires exiftool)
  • Automatic correlation of photos with track points using each photo’s timestamp.
  • Inclusion of photo thumbnails in KMZ export.
  • Generation of charts (eg altitudes, speeds) either on screen or exported to SVG file.
  • Launch of browser showing area in various map websites such as Google Maps or Openstreetmap.
  • Multiple Undo.
  • Multiple language support – currently EN (English), DE (German), DE_ch (Swiss German), ES (Spanish), FR (French), IT (Italian), PL (Polish), ZH (simplified Chinese), JA (Japanese) and Portuguese (PT) are supported. Turkish (TR), Romanian (RO), Indonesian (ID) and Afrikaans (AF) are partially supported.

Screenshot (with 3D track window open):

prunefull

You’ll need to have Java installed on your system just to run the program. But full functionality requires download and installation of a number of needed software packages, as described on the “Dependencies” page; all are free and available for all OS platforms.




Draw GPX Data Directly On Web Maps Using The GPS Visualizer Freehand Drawing Tool

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in GPS, GPX and KML. 0 Comments

I’ve posted recently about ScribbleMaps and ScribbleMaps Pro, web apps that let you draw features on a number of web maps (like Google Maps, OSM, and ESRI), and export the data in GPX format for upload to a GPS. Stopped by the GPS Visualizer website the other day, and just noticed that they have a similar application now, the GPS Visualizer Freehand Drawing Tool. On the down side, it doesn’t have nearly as many tools, editing options and output options as ScribbleMaps; on the plus side, because it doesn’t have a large number of tools and options, it’s easy and intuitive to use. And in addition to Google Maps and OSM Maps, it offers a number of background map options that ScribbleMaps doesn’t:

Continue reading ‘Draw GPX Data Directly On Web Maps Using The GPS Visualizer Freehand Drawing Tool’




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