Thread: Crowdsourced Maps Project - mods help/thoughts

Originally Posted by Tidder

Also, if you guys are in touch with lambo for shooting ideas, those that do not have any type of internet/network access in the car, how about a how-to or easy way to pull the track files off the CarPC and throw them on a computer with internet access to upload them?

My app allows you to create an xml file for uploading to the ftp site if you want too (its just a button on the screen) although if you have wifi in the car that connects to your home network then it can be uploaded more easily that way.

I was wondering about having a seperate app that loads up the file to ftp on a home pc.

Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

we need to convince our buddy Curiosity to add logging to Xport. 90% of us use it already in the background there's no reason not to add to it. I kinda feel like it shouldnt be FE dependent as well. There's no GUI needed so there's no reason to have different FEs controlling it.

Thats a great idea but there is lots of stuff required to do it. I dont mind chipping in with code and ideas.

I agree with the not FE specific as well. It works well enough embeded if need be but it should just run hidden. You shouldn't need to interact at all. (I dont with mine now. Its all automatic!)

I didn't post screenshots as the app already has a post

its in my sig as GPSTracker. We can add screenshots but they're not very exciting for the client.

The client is all you see on your car PC. The server side is not required if you only want to map and not track.

This is a great Idea, but I don't think it is one that will really work unfortunately. I hate to say that, as it would be fantastic if something like this was possible!

I say this for a couple of reasons:

- There are probably hundreds of roads in your development / neighborhood alone. Now open this up to your town / city, your county, then your state.... and you get an idea of the amount of roads that we are talking about here. There are prob around 100,000 members on MP3Car forums, but there are literally millions of roads out there.

The United States highway network consists of 4 million miles of roads and streets. Highway bridges also make up a critical link in the Nation's infrastructure. At present,there are about 600,000 bridges on the entire highway network

Quoted from NationalAtlas.gov

The data collected would just be your track with Lat, Lon and probably speed. This is just not enough data. There is no way to tell a highway from a regular road for one thing.

- Even with all the raw data, it's not going to be much good without knowing the names of the streets/roads.highways that the track is for. Even if someone took the time to enter a street name every time they turned, address's are still needed for any type of point to point guidance.

- Data collected would include all driving, meaning, when you enter a shopping center / mall, how is that going to be parsed out of the data, and not determined to be a road?

- GPS can waiver a lot while you are driving. All modern GPS programs take this into account, and filter this to keep you on the same road. Raw data will bounce back and forth quite a bit while driving in a straight line. Roads drawn from that data would not be very accurate.

Again, I hate to be so negative, as I am all for something like this. I just do not feel it is really feasible at the time.

Originally Posted by JohnWPB

This is a great Idea, but I don't think it is one that will really work unfortunately. I hate to say that, as it would be fantastic if something like this was possible!

I say this for a couple of reasons:

- There are probably hundreds of roads in your development / neighborhood alone. Now open this up to your town / city, your county, then your state.... and you get an idea of the amount of roads that we are talking about here. There are prob around 100,000 members on MP3Car forums, but there are literally millions of roads out there.


Quoted from NationalAtlas.gov

The data collected would just be your track with Lat, Lon and probably speed. This is just not enough data. There is no way to tell a highway from a regular road for one thing.

- Even with all the raw data, it's not going to be much good without knowing the names of the streets/roads.highways that the track is for. Even if someone took the time to enter a street name every time they turned, address's are still needed for any type of point to point guidance.

- Data collected would include all driving, meaning, when you enter a shopping center / mall, how is that going to be parsed out of the data, and not determined to be a road?

- GPS can waiver a lot while you are driving. All modern GPS programs take this into account, and filter this to keep you on the same road. Raw data will bounce back and forth quite a bit while driving in a straight line. Roads drawn from that data would not be very accurate.

Again, I hate to be so negative, as I am all for something like this. I just do not feel it is really feasible at the time.

I agree that its a tall order but it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't.

I agree that you need to collect road data as well, by this I mean road names, numbers, speed limits but this is doable. I started researching this and road sign recognition is possible (might be hard but again hats the fun).

As for the number of roads and people collecting data well I think its the old 80 / 20 rule. Most of the roads collected early will be the ones most people use. The rest might be a pain for a few people but we have to start somewhere.

Accuracy of the gps track is actually mostly done by the reciever itsself so the level of accuracy can be set by our apps. My tracker already has this. When I check my track against virtual earth its almost spot on.

plus if you could integrate it in your skin distribution somehow we would hit alot of people fairly easily

Making a script to record the track using RR would be extremely easy actually. No additional com ports would be needed ect. Just read the Lat, Lon, speed and altitude from RR every x seconds, and save it to a log file.

It could be a program run in the background at system startup, and would never be seen. It would only record the track when it see's a good GPS lock.

In fact off the top of my head, would be something this simple....

PHP Code:

$rr = ObjCreate("RoadRunner.sdk")

While 1
sleep (5000) ;Wait for 5 seconds between updating the log file

$GPSLock = $MyLat = $RR.GetInfo("GPSSAT")

if  $GPSLock >=3 then ;If is 3 or better, we have a Good GPS lock and will grab the info.
     $MyLat = $RR.GetInfo("GPSLAT")
     $MyLon = $RR.GetInfo("GPSLON")
     $MyAlt = $RR.GetInfo("GPSALT")
     $MySpeed = $RR.GetInfo("GPSSPD")
     WriteToLogFile()
EndIf

Wend

Func WriteToTextFile()
     [INSERT CODE HERE TO APPEND TO THE TEXT FILE]
EndFunc 


Originally Posted by JohnWPB

Making a script to record the track using RR would be extremely easy actually. No additional com ports would be needed ect. Just read the Lat, Lon, speed and altitude from RR every x seconds, and save it to a log file.

It could be a program run in the background at system startup, and would never be seen. It would only record the track when it see's a good GPS lock.

In fact off the top of my head, would be something this simple....

PHP Code:

$rr = ObjCreate("RoadRunner.sdk")

While 1
sleep (5000) ;Wait for 5 seconds between updating the log file

$GPSLock = $MyLat = $RR.GetInfo("GPSSAT")

if  $GPSLock >=3 then ;If is 3 or better, we have a Good GPS lock and will grab the info.
     $MyLat = $RR.GetInfo("GPSLAT")
     $MyLon = $RR.GetInfo("GPSLON")
     $MyAlt = $RR.GetInfo("GPSALT")
     $MySpeed = $RR.GetInfo("GPSSPD")
     WriteToLogFile()
EndIf

Wend

Func WriteToTextFile()
     [INSERT CODE HERE TO APPEND TO THE TEXT FILE]
EndFunc 


Except thats missing quite a bit....
1. It doesn't add in the scrubbing of the first x points of the trip for privacy reasons.
2. It doesn't verify gps deviation to ensure its within the projects requirements (i think I heard 5meters?)
3. It doesn't take movement into account (aka your generating quite a few unnecessary points when stopped)

I have to agree. From my experiance of making my app the GPS data is simple , its all the other bits that have taken the time.

Besides I wasn't suggesting reinventing stuff, maybe just embedding my client app

Originally Posted by JohnWPB

This is a great Idea, but I don't think it is one that will really work unfortunately.

Not only is it possible, but it's been done before. Companies do it, so why can't we? There was a blog about a company that did just this not too long ago.