OpenStreetMap

Lots of GPS traces!

Posted by Sam Wilson on 22 October 2010 in English.

I have recently been given permission from the company that I work for to upload the GPS traces from our fleet of vehicles. These are twenty or so trucks and 4WDs that travel the length and breadth of the south-west of Western Australia, often along small roads and farm tracks, etc. They each have a GPS tracker taking readings at 30s intervals and sending these (when possible; there's a delay when out of range) back to a central server via the GSM network.

I get hold of these traces as week-by-week NMEA files (containing all vehicles' data), and convert them to GPX with this gpsbabel command. Then I upload them. They're about 15000-20000 points each.

I'm going to try to get the sampling frequency increased, because there's lots of areas for which these points are too far apart. Although, I guess as the density of points increases (i.e. from multiple trips along the same roads) the topography will become clearer.

Now, the tracing begins! :-) If anyone wants to help....

Location: West End, Fremantle, City of Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia

Discussion

Comment from lebsanbe on 22 October 2010 at 10:51

Great! keep up the good work!

Comment from PurpleMustang on 22 October 2010 at 15:12

What type of highway classification would you prefer?

Comment from Sam Wilson on 22 October 2010 at 16:07

@PurpleMustang: I've just been doing highway=road, because really I haven't got any more of an idea of what the roads are like out there. What other options do you think would be appropriate?

Comment from malenki on 22 October 2010 at 20:04

A link to the account on which you upload the traces or a link to the traces itself would be helpful. So one would know where to start mapping.

Comment from dle0 on 22 October 2010 at 23:54

Many thanks to your company for letting you do this!
I see only a handful of traces at http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Sam%20Wilson/traces
Is this the right place to look?

Comment from WarrenP on 23 October 2010 at 00:57

Sam, I am happy to help. I also live in Perth (Sawyers Valley). I know the south west very well. I am new to OSM but it looks not that difficult.

Comment from Sam Wilson on 23 October 2010 at 01:29

@malenki, @David Leonard: Yes, I'm uploading them under this username. However, the ones I've done so far I did as private, but of course that's really not going to work is it? I've modified the timestamps, and removed a massive chunk of the Perth metro area (I figured on uploading as private before I'd sorted out how to do these things), so I'll change them to public (later; "The GPX file upload system is currently unavailable").

@WarrenP: Welcome! OSM is certainly not that difficult; it's local knowledge that makes all the difference, I think. Lots of the traces I'll be uploading will be for areas about which I know nothing, so your help will be great. What editor are you using? (May I recommend Merkaartor?)

Comment from WarrenP on 23 October 2010 at 05:18

I added a couple of roads in my area just using the online editor, seems fine but I can see a bit restricted. I have now downloaded Meraartor, seems fairly intuitive. It is certainly an advantage not having to upload the .gpx files. Especialy since there seems to be a problem at the moment, I just get a 404 error.
I am happy to help when I can, just need access to your .gpx data.

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