Maptime

Go for a hike|bike|ski|run and make a map

Dreaming of tacky trails.

February is around the time of year in Bend that I begin to get the itch to ride mtn bike trails and go for a hike. In fact my Garmin GPS unit has been collecting dust…

Hawaii Map

Today we will take some of your athletic pursuit data that you have collected and try to make a map using QGIS. We will focus on pulling down data from Strava and Garmin Connect since both offer a way to export GPS tracks to GPX and/or Google Earth KML format.

Pre-requisites

You will need GIS software such as Esri’s ArcGIS Pro or QGIS to make a map product. For today’s exercise we will use QGIS.

To install QGIS go to the home page and click on the “Download Now” button.

QGIS

NOTE: The file download is around 500 MB.

Once you have installed QGIS you should now have a fancy new application installed under Application or Program Files that awaits your mapping needs.

Boundless QGIS Installers

As Andy pointed out in the meetup announcement, another install route is to use the Boundless’s QGIS installers. Although their release is a couple versions behind the latest QGIS build, they include everything you’ll need to get started. Their site also requires you to enter your email address, and then they’ll email you a link to the installers. For your convenience, I’ve done that already and have linked directly to the ZIP archives here:

Windows installer: Download

Mac installer: Download

Extracting Data From Strava

Strava is used primarily by cyclists and runners to track activities. I am sure for most Strava users the mapping interface works well - but since it is MAPTIME we want to make our own maps.

  • Login to Strava Hey look at my Strava Dashboard
  • Strava lets you bulk download data for all your activities! Go to Settings -> ‘Download your data’ Hey look at my Strava Dashboard
  • Strava will send you an email to your account with a zip file of all your activities.

Extracting Data From Garmin Connect

For those of you using a Garmin device that is not linked to Strava, you can extract data from Garmin’s web-based system.

  • Login to Garmin Connect Hey look at my Garmin Dashboard
  • Navigate to the activity you want to extract. Export the activity as a GPX file. Hey look at my Garmin Data

Load data into QGIS

If you have made it here, you are successful! Unzip either your Strava or Garmin data.

  • Login to Garmin Connect Hey look at my Garmin Dashboard
  • Navigate to the activity you want to extract. Export the activity as a GPX file. Hey look at my Garmin Data

Add the Shapefile to QGIS

  • Launch QGIS
  • Click the “Add Vector Layer” button from the Data Toolbar
    QGIS FTW
  • Navigate to where you downloaded the City Limits shapefile and select the .shp file.
    QGIS FTW
  • Feel free to add tracks, waypoints, and or routes. QGIS FTW
  • You should see several GIS layers including points and lines. QGIS FTW

OH AWESOME! Zoom in on this data. Click the identify tool. Explore your first dataset you have added to QGIS.

Check out these awesome QGIS links and tutorials I am running time. We have been here before. You should check these links!!!

Added Bonus

Suppose you want to merge ALL of your tract data into one GIS feature (aka Shapefile)….

*Navigate to your uncompressed activities folder. (Must have gdal installed.)

for i in $( ls *.gpx ); do ogr2ogr final_gpx.shp -append $i tracks -fieldTypeToString DateTime; done

CONGRATS We are all winners today! Well done

Posted Feb 16 2017 by Blair Deaver

Update for the year of our Maplord 2016

Despite the lack of posts here, we’ve been quite busy here at Maptime Bend. It turns out that the Meetup page does most of the heavy lifting for organizing our meetups. We ended up not having meetups in December 2015 or January 2016, but we came back strong in February with an evening with POSTGIS.

March’s meetup, which is scheduled to start 5 minutes from the time of this post, stars Jereme Monteau from Trailhead Labs.

In April, we invite all mapheads to attend our Cartography Fair, where we’ll showcase some of the work of local mapmakers.

Join our Meetup group for more frequent updates.

Posted Mar 10 2016 by Andy Zeigert

Maps are pretty!

The next Maptime Bend meetup is scheduled for Thursday, June 4!

#Maps are a powerful tools, but sometimes they can be gosh-darn nice to look at, too

Join the Maptime Bend crew as we take a look at some of the more creative map styles developed using Mapbox Studio and CartoCSS!

We will:

  1. Take a quick look at Mapbox Studio (This will be review for those who remember our February meetup!)

  2. Download some example map styles and take a look at the file structure and how Studio uses the files

  3. Spend some time customizing our own maps!

###Important links

Mapbox Studio: mapbox.com/mapbox-studio

Some cool base styles: Woodcut Woodcut

Pirates Pirates

Super Mario Super Mario World

Wheatpaste Wheatpaste

Comic Comic

Pencil Pencil

Picture Book Picture Book

Space Station Picture Book

Winter Wonderland Winter Wonderland

Looseleaf Looseleaf

Those were all created by the Mapbox team, and they’ve made a bunch more than that. And there are so many more out there by folks like us!

###Where do I get the data???

Fortunately, Mapbox has taken the effort to provide users with what is arguably the only data set they’ll ever need. Mapbox constantly pulls the latest OpenStreetMap data and sorts it into handy classes for styling. They’ve also included their own Terrain styles, which include vector terrain information, hillshades and topo lines.

Want to use your own data? No problem. There’s a tutorial for that.

###Where do I start?!?

Not sure where to start? I’ve conveniently put all of the above map style documents (they end in .tm2) into a zip file that you can grab.

###OK, what do I do with my map?

You can upload your style to the Mapbox service and use it in your own projects. Because of the magic of vector tiles, you can style the entire earth with a pretty small style document.

You can also use the built-in static image export feature in Mapbox Studio to create static images for printing, if you so desire.

Join us: Thursday, Jun 04 2015

Crisis mapping support and OSM

The next Maptime Bend meetup is scheduled for Thursday, May 7!

#Get involved

Come join us this week for Maptime. We will be focusing on helping crisis mapping teams in Nepal with mapping efforts. We will be covering how to use the Red Cross Humanitarian OSM Tasking Management Tool to support mapping efforts in Nepal and future incidents which require mapping support.

##Important links

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team home page: hotosm.org

OSM tasking manager: http://tasks.hotosm.org

Create an OSM account: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/new

JOSM editor (not required; you can use the default iD editor in OSM): https://josm.openstreetmap.de

Join us: Thursday, May 07 2015

Level up your OSM skills

The next Maptime Bend meetup is scheduled for Thursday, April 2!

#Next level OSM

Join us for a special Field Trip edition of Maptime Bend! We’ll go outside (assuming the weather is nice) to collect some nearby path data with GPS handsets or smartphones, then bring that data back to the “lab” and use it to create new paths in OpenStreetMap.

##Recording GPS tracks

Most GPS handsets and many mobile phone apps allow you to capture tracks. Tracks are a series of points that are recorded in order. Most handsets and apps record a point per second or a point for every meter traveled. These tracks can then be downloaded to a computer and uploaded to OpenStreetMap, or, with some smartphone apps, uploaded directly.

Here’s the OSM wiki page about GPS tracks.

###Waypoints

Most GPS handsets and many apps also allow you to record waypoints, which are discrete records with a single x/y coordinate. These are useful for creating Points of Interest (POIs) in OSM.

##Using tracks in OSM

Once you’ve recorded some tracks, it’s time to upload to OpenStreetMap. Now, you (usually) don’t actually convert your GPS tracks directly to geometry in OSM. Instead, you use the tracks you’ve created to manually digitize the features you recorded. It probably seems a little silly to record GPS tracks, upload them and then trace them, but honestly trying to slice and dice GPS tracks into features would take nearly the same amount of time as simply creating new features via the iD editor.

OSM wiki page about uploading GPS tracks

OSM wiki page on smartphone apps for capturing tracks

##Our project

###Riverbend Park in Google Maps

Google

###Riverbend Park in OpenStreetMap

OSM

As a group, we’re going Riverbend Park to record some tracks and waypoints to improve OSM’s data. You’ll need:

Step 1

Walk to the park. It’s about 10 minutes from BendTech. Once at the park, we’ll divide up into pairs to record tracks and waypoints. (One track is fine, but two tracks are useful for determining accuracy). We’ll spend about 30 minutes recording data. Make sure to write down any important info about your tracks, such as surface type. If recording a waypoint, be sure to collect as much info as possible about it.

Step 2

Return to “the lab” to download our tracks from our handsets and upload them to OSM.

Step 3

Use the info we gathered and the tracks we’ve uploaded to vastly improve the OSM data for Riverbend Park!

Step 4

Drink beer and profit!

Bonus: Open Trails

If there’s time, we’ll go a little more indepth into the Open Trail System Specificiation, or OpenTrails, which is a way to record trail info in a standard, re-usable format.

Join us: Thursday, Apr 02 2015