Crowdsourced Maps Project - mods help/thoughts

Heather · 10-01-2009, 10:58 AM

Guys

I think we have a great opportunity and we need to seize the moment.

These forums could really get free maps going, because of our large community of car computer users. If we were to get thousands of people uploading GPS tracks, this could really fuel the creation of free maps. It seems like this is an excellent opportunity for us to distinguish ourselves.

Do you think that this is realistic? RR people - can you integrate lambospirit's code and allow RR users to opt into uploading their tracks? Rob is going to do an informational video - what issues should he address?

What do you think?

Tidder · 10-01-2009, 11:38 AM

A stand-alone app that everyone could use with ease would be the best way to get it going I think.

I see no screenshots of lambo's program, I see no how-to, nothing to make me feel good about downloading and installing it.

If RR integrates it and then the program needs changing for some reason, all the RR users will have to wait for an update to their plugin. I think it would be better to keep it as a separate program, coming from one person/group.

Heather · 10-01-2009, 11:55 AM

thanks

ok -

1. we need a clear how to...Rob will providing and we will make sure to have screen shots.
2. ideally a stand alone app that can be integrated in fo front ends.

Tidder · 10-01-2009, 12:29 PM

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?

malcom2073 · 10-01-2009, 01:02 PM

Some kind of auto-detect USB stick entry so it will automatically transfer the files, then when you put them on the PC another program automatically uploads them. The easier it is, the more likely you will get more people to do it. I think this point needs to be emphasized.

durwood · 10-01-2009, 01:36 PM

If it is just gps logging coordinates in the background, does it even need the option to be integrated into a front end? Would the app disrupt the regular GPS program communication or would you have to setup xport to split the port data?

I have no problem taking part in this, but how many people and how long would it take to generate map data? It's not as if I am taking different roads to work everyday as I would imagine the bulk of the people would also be the same. For example , how many full time people does google/navteq have working on their maps and what was their timeframe? I would think this would take an extremely long time.

Motivation would be a key factor in getting this off the ground.

Tidder · 10-01-2009, 01:40 PM

More than likely you'll need xPort. Most everyone running windows and doing GPS will likely have xPort installed anyway I'd hope.

Sonicxtacy02 · 10-01-2009, 02:11 PM

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.

Heather · 10-01-2009, 05:01 PM

that sounds like a great idea - does anyone want to ask him about this?

malcom2073 · 10-01-2009, 06:47 PM

I'm trying to get a hold of him on AIM for an unrelated topic, I'll mention it to him if I talk to him tonight... but I thought xport already supported logging?

Heather · 10-02-2009, 09:27 AM

Copied this thread to the crowdsourcing section - let's continue this conversation there. thanks

lambosprit · 10-02-2009, 12:04 PM

Quote: 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.

lambosprit · 10-02-2009, 12:07 PM

Quote: 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!)

lambosprit · 10-02-2009, 12:09 PM

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.

JohnWPB · 10-03-2009, 02:09 AM

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.

Quote:

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.

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