Viewing Global Positioning Data

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Sun, 03/27/2011 - 10:32 am

Hi, so I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to show a car's movement on a map within a window in igor. Basically, I have a kml file that can be opened in Google Earth and I also have an excel file with time stamps and their corresponding latitude and longitude. I would like a cursor (on top of a map of the area) to move along the path that the car traveled. I was wondering if anyone had ever done this or anything like it before. Also, does anyone have any suggestions? I thought of finding a general map of the area the car usually travels in and simply have the cursor move on top of this stationary picture, but I'm not exactly sure how I can get the coordinates I have to match up with particular locations on a random picture. Also, I saw some code for geocoding and one for pulling a streetmap off of openstreetmap.org, but I wasn't sure if it would be easier to just try to connect the latitudes and longitudes with a stable picture, or try to continually load something off of openstreetmap.org (although that could be very strenuous I feel like).

I was originally hoping maybe I could just load the kml file in somehow but it seems like that is just not an option. I'm not intensely familiar with kml files and I'm definitely not a pro programming with Igor, so any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
1) I'm guessing KML is an XML file, but you've got an Excel spreadsheet with locations and times anyway, so it would be easy to create a graph of the route followed (but I would convert to MGRS first, there is a snippet on IGORexchange to do that). longitude = xcoords, latitude = ycoords

2) You need to get a map where you can specify x + y grid coordinate points on. You then want to display that map as an image. Adjust the scales of the image until the known grid coords match the image. I believe you can do that via the export on openstreetmap

3) Overlay the route you travelled.

4) It would be possible to get the cursor to move as a function of (accelerated) time, or on button press, but that would be more effort.

March 27, 2011 at 04:56 pm - Permalink

cbeazley3 wrote:
I was originally hoping maybe I could just load the kml file in somehow but it seems like that is just not an option. I'm not intensely familiar with kml files and I'm definitely not a pro programming with Igor, so any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!


Not that I normally would be suggesting otherwise, however AFAIK, many excellent packages exist to read and work with KML files from GPS systems. One of the most widely stated is GPSBable ... http://www.gpsbabel.org/ ... and ... http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Prune ... and ... http://gebabbel.sourceforge.net/ ... and ... http://www.maps-gps-info.com/fgpfw.html

Would you have something specific that Igor Pro should be doing otherwise?

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAHuntsville

March 27, 2011 at 06:54 pm - Permalink

jjweimer wrote:
Not that I normally would be suggesting otherwise, however AFAIK, many excellent packages exist to read and work with KML files from GPS systems. One of the most widely stated is GPSBable ... http://www.gpsbabel.org/ ... and ... http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Prune ... and ... http://gebabbel.sourceforge.net/ ... and ... http://www.maps-gps-info.com/fgpfw.html

Would you have something specific that Igor Pro should be doing otherwise?


Great, actually I had no idea about those - thank you. I am trying to make my whole data analysis setup as user friendly as possible so I am not the only one who knows how to use it, however not everyone who might be using it is extremely tech-savvy. That's why I was hoping to keep everything within Igor (since the rest of my setup is in Igor). I was hoping to allow the view of the GPS data be just another window in my setup in Igor, however maybe this would be a decent option as an alternative if I don't have the time to invest in doing this in Igor as was described earlier. Thanks!

March 28, 2011 at 08:34 pm - Permalink