Sharing GPS tracks from tangoGPS on Google Maps

Now that GPS is working on the FreeRunner I made a track log of my commute to test it out. It's pretty easy to get log data off of the FreeRunner and plot it on the web in a Google Map:

  1. First, install tangoGPS. The latest tangoGPS packages for the FreeRunner, and instructions for installing them, are available from this page. It usually takes my FreeRunner a couple of minutes to get its first fix. If you are having problems, OpenMoko's AGPS program may be able to give some debugging information.
  2. TangoGPS will appear as an application called "GPS & Map". To record tracks, go to the "Track" tab and click "Start" (and then "Stop", obviously, when you're done).
  3. TangoGPS will save the track log in /tmp (by default, but it's configurable) in a file with the extension .log and named after the current date/time. When you get back to a computer, scp that file over.
  4. GPX is a commonly used format for representing GPS track data. You will need to convert your log data to GPX using convert2gpx.pl, a script provided by TangoGPS. Download it, make it executable, and use it like so: ./convert2gpx.pl inputlogfile.log > outputfile.gpx.
  5. There are some web sites which will let you upload a GPX file and then plot it on a Google Map. gpsvisualizer.com is one of them. It will give your map a semi-persistent URL so you can show it to your friends for a short time.

5 comments:

  1. Take the GPX file, and go to http://openstreetmap.org/traces , create an account, and after the track is processed, simply open http://openstreetmap.org/traces/mine , and click 'edit' next to the trace.

    This lets you view your track (in turquise) overlaying the openstreetmap data. (note that this is the real data, and you can edit it)

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  2. How do you make convert2gpx.pl executable?

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  3. is there anyway to batch processes a folder?
    running convert2gpx manually on 40 some odd logs is a pain.

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  4. Possibly something like the following in bash:

    for file in *.log; do ./convert2gpx.pl $file > $file.gpx; done

    ReplyDelete