Saturday, November 29, 2008

[off-topic] OpenStreetMap with my Geko 201

I'm now a big fan of OpenStreetMap. The speed of data creation is incredible: http://www.geofabrik.de/gallery/history/index.html. It will be soon a very good global geodata source... for free... Let me explain the steps I use to generate new data with my Geoko 201:
1. I ride my mountain bike (GPS acquisition interval is set to 5s) or I drive my car (acquisition interval: 1s)
2. I use EasyGps to create a gpx file (http://www.easygps.com/)
3. The gpx file is then uploaded into OpenStreetMap
4. Then potlatch is used to digitize the roads and to define the streets name
5. ... and I have to wait until next wednesday to see the data in OpenStreetMap...
That's it !

1 comment:

François Van Der Biest said...

Hi Cedric,

I'm pleased to hear you're an OSMer now !

Some hints though :

- gpsbabel is a very powerful and opensource software for creating GPX, from NMEA for instance (I guess you use easygps to do so). You should give it a try. It's available for linux, mac, win...

- DO NOT copy the street names from google maps ! This information is copyrighted too. There can be harmful easter eggs inside...

- if you can't wait to see your recent edits, you can go to zoom level 12 of http://www.informationfreeway.org and press 'r' when you mouse is above the tile you're interested in. You just have to wait 5 to 30 minutes to see it refreshed ! (hit reload, or disable browser cache)