OpenStreetMap logo OpenStreetMap

Alex-7's Diary

Recent diary entries

I shot and added as an experiment the aerial sphere 360 panorama to the OpenStreetMap for the lake Lac de Tseuzier: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1642268

The sphere panorama itself is located on the DJI’s website: https://www.skypixel.com/photo360s/spark-78d50747-504a-4a84-90c9-6a02357eb70e .

Here is the link to the same panorama on Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/GZjbKr1J7hy3WgYU7 , and in the Street-View mode it is shown on the map as a small blue circle.

The area of this lake is about one square kilometer. The size of the panorama file is 1.8 MB. It is created with the Spark quad-copter, which weighs less that 500 grams. Spark creates and publishes the aerial sphere 360 panoramas to the Skypixel website automatically from the DJI Go 4 app.

I added it with the “image” tag. In my opinion, it is time to introduce a new OSM tag for the aerial sphere panoramas.

Location: Armeillon, Ayent, Hérens, Wallis, 1966, Switzerland

Deep digital mapping

Posted by Alex-7 on 24 February 2017 in English.

Last weekend I went to map an archaeological site. I had read a couple of academic archeological papers on this excavation and knew the exact location of the site.

It is a Roman tiles, bricks and ceramic workshop near the town of Chancy which worked for eight hundred years, from 1st century BC till 7th century AD.

This archaeological site was excavated, and then it was covered with earth again for preservation. Still there are antique tiles everywhere around. At that epoch it was a hi-tech enterprise, a place where the Roman Empire was actually built. And it is not completely clear why it was closed after eight centuries of production (an interesting question for today’s reality too).

As a result:

I convert video to the open WEBM format, which is accepted by Wikimedia, with the command line tool ffmpeg. Some quality is always lost in conversion, but so far it is the best variant:

ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -c:v libvpx -crf 4 -b:v 18M -c:a libvorbis destination.webm

I used a free music with Creative Commons license for the video. But it is also possible to play yourself and record any music of any composer who died more than 70 years ago. For example, for these two videos I asked my spouse to play and record the musical themes:

Battle of Morgarten

The town of Zug

The idea of deep digital mapping is that reaching a remote destination takes time and effort. So being physically at the location allows not only to map an object on the OSM map, but also to film it, to record first hand impressions, perhaps to do some investigative journalism for a Wikipedia article, and link all this to the OSM map.

I realize by now that recording and editing a video is even more difficult than making good photos. Recording a musical theme is a world in itself too. It turns out that a digital piano does not record a MP3 file, but MIDI file (musical instrument digital interface), which should be exported to a computer first and then converted to an audio file with a program like the Logic Pro X.

If you have ideas or information on developing deep digital mapping, please, let me know.

Location: 46.133, 5.967

The addressable map of Geneva, Switzerland, project

Posted by Alex-7 on 13 March 2013 in English. Last updated on 14 March 2013.

Geneva is an international city. There are a lot of international organizations in the city: UN, UEFA, WTO, etc.

I am currently working on mapping Geneva with addresses. I use bicycle and [OSMpad] (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OsmPad) for iPhone 4S, and my own free time, mostly on Sundays.

If you want to join this project and do not know how then write me a message and I would provide some tips. To support the project visit my website [www.openbusinessmap.org] (http://www.openbusinessmap.org)

It would take about two years in my estimation to mark all house numbers in Geneva.

Location: 46.189, 6.154