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GPS maps

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Just got back from a week in St. Anton. I took my garmin GPS with me and logged a few runs. The mapsource topo I have of austria isn't really up to much, so am looking for a 'memory map' type product, which will allow me to view my downloaded routes in 3D. I've come across this http://www.magicmaps.de/shop/produktliste/kategorie/oesterreich.html but not speaking german not sure if it does what I want! Would appreciate any help or recommendations.
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
welshfella, I'm a bit of a GPS fiddler - for the 3D view I tend to export to KML (the Google Earth format) and view in Google Earth, or you can have a play with this site:
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ - which gives loads of options for displaying GPS tracks.

I've been playing around with Matlab for manipulating GPS tracks for skiing: at this very moment I'm tagging my photos with GPS data from my tracks... unfortunately Matlab isn't a handy language for distributing to others - I'm wondering whether to re-write in C# as a learning exercise.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Hoppo, Cheers for that. Will look into it this afternoon and let you know how I get on.
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Hoppo, Thanks for the link, gpsvisualizer is just what I have been looking for.
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
welshfella, check out Alpenvereinskarten Digital 2007 it has 3D and also has marked all the ski tours, it is in German.
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Hey chaps,
My wife has been a member of SH for a while but after seeing this post I had to join and reply Smile

I too am a GPS and IT geek who takes his GPS everywhere. I know you can rent GPS's in some resorts and get nice printouts of routes and KML for Google Earth etc, but I wanted more...

1) How much time do I spend on lifts versus actually skiing
2) what was my fastest speed
3) what was my fastest speed on each run
4) How far did I go each day/ on total
5) How long was that long blue run back to resort ?

etc etc etc

Since I'm a bit of a hacker I've written some perl which takes in a GPX (GPS Interchange Format) which can be exported from most GPS utils from the device.

Essentially you upload it to the server, it analyses your file and splits the whole file into a series of ascents and descents. Essentially in skiing, most ascents are lifts/drags/gondolas and most descents are runs, so once that is worked out its faily simple to get distance (some nice 3D trig) speed, etc etc etc.

Anyway, its a work in progress and the more GPX files I get through it the more I learn. I'm hoping to add graphical run profiles to each run shortly and a whole host of new features as people ask for them Smile
My ultimate aim was actually to get an online database of PisteMaps for Google Earth so you could see the runs/lifts etc all in 3D in GE, thats still my goal, but I got sidetracked in the script by adding more and more stats Smile

anyway, if you want to see what it currently does, heres some example output from a recent trip to Sainte Foy in the Tarentaise.

http://www.chuffnuts.com/pistemaps/KMZ/SainteFoy-Combined.kmz (the output can be a tad noisy, but just uncheck certain folders to remove detail etc.)

Click on the tracks in the left pane for the detail of each track, and click on the highest point location for totals calculated so far.

and heres a converted and named pistemap of La Rosiere from Januarys trip : http://www.chuffnuts.com/PisteMaps/pistemaps/LaRosierePistemap.kml

Its all free, no adverts etc etc etc. I'm doing this because I love analysing my tracks and love stats.

There are bugs (specifically around the highest speed) but most are actually due to a bad lock from the GPS and spurios points occuring. I'm adding some statistical analysis of the points soon which should help eradicate spurious trackpoints from the GPS (gondolas are also bad for GPS locks).

I'd be really very grateful if people try it out and let me know what they think + improvements etc etc etc.
(also, little known fact, you can import .GPX files straight into GoogleEarth directly if you just want to see where you've been etc).

Jus go here : http://www.chuffnuts.com/pistemaps and upload the GPX file to get the KMZ output.

Sorry my first post is a little long winded but hey ho Smile

Si
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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Forgot to mention - RED tracks are ascents and GREEN are descents
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
fishslice, welcome to snowHead 's - great first post for us boys and our toys Toofy Grin I'll try it out at the eothingy if I can figure what to do rolling eyes
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fishslice, welcome to snowHeads snowHead

Nice to see I'm not alone!

I've got some tracks from around the Sella Ronda and Val Thorens area which I can throw at your online solution (which looks rather nice) - so I'll give that a go over the next few days. I've been manually compiling the coordinates of lift stations (top and bottom) to help with identifying lifts.
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Having looked at the Sainte Foy example.. I thought those of you that had not tried it would like to see the results:

Here's the piste map for the Sainte Foy area:



Here's the GPS output converted to a Google Earth layer, and with me twisting and tilting to the same angle as the piste map:



Amazing to see how close the two map... and also nice to see which runs the GPS is referring to Smile
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Thanks for the post Smile Nice idea to post pics, I should have thought of that.

Everything is configurable, so if you think its noisy with the per track max speeds on, then you can just turn them off by unchecking the "Track Speeds" folder

Here are some more examples (now I know you can post pics Smile )...

(click on the small picture to get to the bigger one)



Si


Last edited by snowHeads are a friendly bunch. on Mon 7-04-08 21:48; edited 4 times in total
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
fishslice, amazing to see it all tracked out. You're not really supposed to add big images (should really be linked thumbnails) but they don't do the topic an justice... I'm sure admin will tell me off if I'm wrong on this one!
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So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
fishslice, 124.5mph??? Were you on twintips?
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
oh, ok thanks for the pointer Smile I'll put a thumbnail in linking to the bigger image.

Ta
Si
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
ski-finder wrote:
fishslice, 124.5mph??? Were you on twintips?


hehe no Smile Thats one of the "bugs" down to a bad gps fix I mentioned in the original post. I'm looking at adding some statistical distribution analysis of the points and speed data to enable the program to ignore those "spurious" gps points which result in bad data.

Si
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 Poster: A snowHead
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fishslice, This looks very very interesting, I'm at work just now but I'll have a play when I get home on the laptop.

I've got the nokia N95 8Gb, am I correct in thinking the onboard GPS should be able to gather this data with relative ease using sporttracker or another 3rd party symbian app??

joe
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joe1978, I beleive so yes. The input to the program is standard GPX format (its an xml file).

I just did a quick search and theres a program called "Sports Tracker" for the N95 which looks like it does similar things to my program (without all the ascent/descent run splits and calculations) but it does export to GPX format.

http://macsis.omenamehu.org/node/22
http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/SportsTracker/

Hope that helps.

By the way I should point out I'm no programmer Smile I just like solving problems and learning the tools to prove I can do things. This was a little project that got out of hand Smile

Si
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
fishslice,

Yep thats the one I've got on the phone. There's prob quite alot of apps that do just the collection and export of data but your solution seems pretty unique = pretty damn cool, in that it will differentiate between ascents and descents, and also the breakdown of info for each!!!

BTW I know nothing of the technicalities of such things merely an enthusiastic end-user!! Very Happy Very Happy

joe
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joe1978, yes you are right the ascent/descent thing is particular to my code because I'm a skiier and its a particularly focussed application (pistes versus lifts). It was a hard bit of code to write for a non-programmer, but luckily some of the chaps at work helped with the fine tuning (software company), which helped Smile

I've only been able to test it with my own limited set of tracks so the more people that use it, the better I can make it, also the more ideas people will come up with for additions to it Smile

Right now I want to add the following:

1) Altitude profile graphs per track and for the entirity of the uploaded GPX file (these will live in the per track info boxes as images)
2) Total distance travelled on pistes and lifts (already put the code in, just not using it atm) for the GPX file
3) Add things like avg and max vertical drop in m/s per track etc
4) Update the website (I can't do websites ! Smile ) and add pictures.
5) Statisical analysis (normal distribution) of the speeds between each point so I can determine with a fair degree of accuracy which ones are bad and ignore them
(this takes me back to A-level maths which is a long time ago and hurts my head already Smile ).
6) Split the KML up into individual folders of days of runs so its easily managable and viewble in Google Earth without looking too messy.

and theres probably loads of other things I can't think of which heopfully people will when they use it Smile

Thanks
Si
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
fishslice, I tried uploading a GPX file, but ended up at this page:

http://www.chuffnuts.com/pistemaps/process_upload.php

with no link to download the KML file. I'm using Firefox if that makes any difference... tested in IE7 and that didn't work either...
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Hoppo,
I got your PM and am looking at your GPX files, there seems to be something in the source file my program isn't expecting Smile I'm debugging it now.

I did have a productive day though. As I had a couple of long conf calls to sit through today I managed to scrub item 1) from my list above Smile it now has altitude profile images in the track properties.
Heres a screenshot, click on the thumbnail to see the bigger picture:




I'll let you know what I find with your GPX's...
Thanks for trying it though Smile the more files I get through the system to find bugs the better it gets Smile
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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
update: System now works with segment data in the GPX file and Hopo's file from around Selva looks awesome.

Thanks
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
fishslice, looking good - I uploaded a trip across the 3 vallees (KMZ/vt-fri-am-08.kmz). You might want to try adjusting the vertical scale of the altitude profile so the minimum is the minimum of the profile (rather than 0) - otherwise all our tracks will look a bit flat.

I'm rather proud of my top speed of 2464.6mph...
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Hoppo, 2464.6mph WOW! That is pretty impressive.. bet you felt the burn on that one!
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lmao, I'll checkout the raw GPX file but I'll bet its down to the gpx fix again...

Anyone know stats and how to do normal distribution analysis ? Toofy Grin Toofy Grin

Hoppo, yes I noticed that about the profiles, I'll work on understanding the graphing module better tonight.
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ski-finder, yes, I attribute it to my new skis Toofy Grin
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
I've redone the graph code and it looks heaps better thanks Hoppo, just reload your GPX files to checkout the new profile graphs.
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
fishslice, oooo.... that looks better!

I haven't checked but I suspect you can get away with some simpler checks to remove rogue points, for example you could remove points that were more than a certain distance from the previous point. My GPS tracks tend to be a bit messy at the beginning as the number of satellite locks increases, I'll try to have a look at this over the next few days...
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You know it makes sense.
Hoppo, Ooh thats an interesting idea. I'll have a think on that one this morning.

btw I've added total altitude profile graphs for the entire GPX file as well now, they live on the highest point placemark with the rest of the total summary info, (i've also coloured the graphs like their runs (green for down, red for up) until I can find somewhere better to keep this info. You might need to re-process your GPX files to get the latest output, but if you ran it this morning you should have all the new stuff in their as I finished coding at 12:30am last night.

Si
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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fishslice, which kmz files have the nice graphs?
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ski-finder, this one does : http://www.chuffnuts.com/PisteMaps/KMZ/681094_selva-mon-am.kmz (any with a timestamp after midnight last night should be fine, I hope Hoppo doesn't mind me using his as an example, but it looks soooo nice Smile

The latest screenshots are available here (did some work on the website) : http://www.chuffnuts.com/pistemaps/screenshots,

click on the thumbs for bigger pictures:


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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Excellent stuff this. What GPS devices do you guys use? Any recommendations? I can feel a purchase coming on... Toofy Grin
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
jonm, I use a Garmin GPS 60 https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=144&pID=6446 because its rugged and waterproof. Also the aerial can stick out of the top pocket on my Dakine backpack for a good lock when skiing.

I got it second hand from ebay for around 60quid I think. Any GPS should be fine to be perfectly honest. I'm a garmin fan so I use their kit, but other kit is also available Smile

Si
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fishslice, ta - will have a look. 60 quid sounds ideal Cool
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
fishslice, can you collect tracks throughout a week on that, without downloading?

I use a Dell Axim (which I have anyway) and a bluetooth GPS unit along with a piece of free software called NoniGPSPlot (http://aeguerre.free.fr/Public/PocketPC/NoniGPSPlot/), to be honest it isn't an ideal because it involves two units (and hence 2 chargers) instead of one and the battery life of the PDA is roughly one day, so I have to recharge it every evening. I generally save a track in the morning and a track in the afternoon.
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Hoppo, I was wondering about this as I wouldn't want to lug anything to download to (i.e. laptop) on holiday with me. The spec says 10,000 points/20 saved tracks so I guess that ought to cover a week but I've no idea how it actually works in practice.
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Guys, I skied with it in January for a week in LaRos and didn't run out of points. Same applied to the recent trip to SainteFoy. I think I totalled 6,000 points (as you can see from my SaintFoy_combined.gpx file for the whole week (GPS turned on and skiing from 9am until aroun 3:30pm each day) (sat to sat)

I used 4xAA batteries (it uses 2xAA at a time) for the week (decent quality ones and not rechargeable rubbish). I always carry a spare pair of AA's and check the battery most evenings, never been a problem.

Si
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
fishslice, that sounds rather more convenient than my current solution!
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Hoppo, I'm all for convenient Smile
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Hmmmm, new camera or new GPS? Decisions decisions!
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