gus 1 #1 May 19, 2003 One of the projects I'm on at work has very kindly lent me a gps logger to 'evauluate' whilst flying birdman. It's literally a black box that logs your position etc onto an mmc card, no little screen, mapping software. So once I've figured out the format of the data on the card () I'll want to somehow plot it. I was thinking that VRML might work quite well since it's easy to create and there are a handful of free viewers out there. I've looked at GPS Drawing that Craig's brought up before but it doesn't look like their app is publically available. What are other people doing? Any good ideas? GusOutpatientsOnline.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 74 #2 May 19, 2003 I'm a total loser when it comes to programing or GPS, but here's my 10 cents. I use 3dsmax quite a lot. It's a commercialy available 3D program. You could write a MAX SCRIPT that would take numeric data, and transform it to points in 3D space (with a spline/path on top of the lines) From 3dsmax you could export it to anytning from vrml to dfx (autocad) or cool rendered animations (in 3dsmax itself)JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LouDiamond 1 #3 May 19, 2003 Without knowing what your system is using one can only guess what may or may not work. I can tell you what has worked for me and that is using a GArmin GPS V with software by garmin and by MS streets and trips. I posted a thread in this forum awhile back and there are a few screen captures of what the tracks looked like and so on. If your unit is capable of being downloaded I guess it wouldn't hurt to see if the Garmin or other software out there will recognize it and give you a read out. Best of luck and let us know what kind of data you were able to collect. FYI: http://www.gpsworld.com"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required" Some people dream about flying, I live my dream SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #4 May 19, 2003 ESRI's MapObjects has a beautiful example of capturing realitme GPS data... Messed with it and got it working myself... -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LouDiamond 1 #5 May 19, 2003 QuoteESRI's MapObjects has a beautiful example of capturing realitme GPS data... Messed with it and got it working myself... You have a link to the software or where to get it at?"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required" Some people dream about flying, I live my dream SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cpoxon 0 #6 May 20, 2003 Come on Lou?! A simple Google search on ESRI and MapObjects got me here Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LouDiamond 1 #7 May 20, 2003 Quote Come on Lou?! A simple Google search on ESRI and MapObjects got me here Check out the big brain on Brad!! Thanks for the link dude"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required" Some people dream about flying, I live my dream SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #8 May 20, 2003 Sorry - I'm a typical programmer - bait the student into searching for knowledge on their own... But seriously, I just got done completing a pretty large project for Rocky Flats Arsenal and if you (or anyone) has any questions regarding MO lemme know, I'd be more than happy to help you out... "So once I've figured out the format of the data on the card () I'll want to somehow plot it." How do you interface with the little black box now? Serial port?? I'm just thinking if it's currently interfaceable in some sort of way, thinking thinking thinking........ -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #9 May 20, 2003 QuoteHow do you interface with the little black box now? Serial port?? The gps unit stores its data in a file on an mmc card which then comes out and goes into a usb reader attached to my computer. GusOutpatientsOnline.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #10 May 20, 2003 I'll bet there isn't too tough of a way to access that data through a simple C program and port it over to a program like MO. **dood is getting intrigued** -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ManBird 0 #11 May 20, 2003 Would you please post or send me a sample. Sounds like a job for regular expressions."¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯" Click Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #12 May 20, 2003 I'll have to poke around on that one. The only live data I've ever read was through a serial port long long ago using C (and I haven't used my C skills in like five years). In MO though, they provide you with a good hefty set of built in objects to read GPS connections straight thru the serial port if I remember correctly. Here is a link to their examples page: http://www.esri.com/devsupport/devconn/mapobjects/samples/index.html#loc1 Its like the 10th one down. In order to read in data from that MMC card reader, one would have to lookup the data formatting table for the device and then read up on how to correctly read data streams... -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #13 May 21, 2003 Let me remind everyone of the original question: how to render GPS data. rendering it that I was interested in and how other people were doing it, eg importing into 3D Studio Max. Quote Would you please post or send me a sample. Sounds like a job for regular expressions, I can't really post any samples because it's not my format and not mine to share. Much as I like regular expressions it's more a case of deciding what byte the date is stored in, what byte the latitude is stored in etc. I still think VRML (virtual reality modelling/markup language) would work quite nicely and it would make it easy to share online. GusOutpatientsOnline.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #14 May 29, 2003 I made 2 jumps with the gps unit over the weekend and have plotted the latitude and longitude ie top down view. The original files are in svg (Adobe plugin here) but I've attached gifs too. The red line is the wingsuit part, the blue line is under canopy. ProTrack data for #476: Exit: 12200 Deploy: 3300 105 secs 55 mph ProTrack data for #477: Exit: 12500 Deploy: 3200 116 secs 52 mph I have 82 seconds of gps data for #466 (vs 105 seconds of freefall) and 111 seconds for #467 (vs 116 seconds of freefall). I was losing signal as soon as I got in the plane but it looks like it's capable of re-aquiring fairly quickly. For #476 I travelled 1891m across the ground in freefall and 1955m under canopy. That's an average groundspeed of 18m/s (65 kph) and 13m/s (49 kph). FOr #477 I travelled 2504m and 1703m, averaging 22m/s (78 kph) and 13m/s (46 kph). I will keep trying to extract the elevation data (or combine with ProTrack data) so I can plot these in 3d. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com 0477.svg 0476.svg Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites