Yesterday we went for a stroll around the Banff centre and took some interesting GPS readings to get an idea of where and how certain GPS devices behave in a variety of surroundings. This was particularly relevant to my project, but it will take some real leg work today to get an idea of how well my own GPS device will behave on the ground. Yesterday was the first time I'd managed to acquire a KML file from a GPS device and map in on Google Maps.
This is a picture of me video taping the GPS as we were walking (thanks Nikki!).
For anyone interested in doing the same, (Mac OS X) after you've taken a stroll with your GPS device you simply hook it to your Mac, run Load My Tracks (which I've found to be very simple to use), and it will produce a Google Earth file (*.kml). Google Earth is free but if you'd rather use Google Maps for whatever reason you can host the .kml file on your own server and then simply type in the site address where the file is hosted (http://www.yourdomainhere.com/trackfile.kml). Be careful to edit out any spaces in the file name or, alternatively, replace the spaces with %20 in the Google Maps search bar.
Below is the route we took around the Banff centre, the white line is a little tricky to see but you can toggle it between the views to see it better.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment