Glop

I used TrekBuddy to record my cycle home this evening, spewing out NMEA data every second. GPSBabel can then convert this NMEA data into the slightly more common GPX XML format. I had planned on taking the data from the GPX file, using a shell script, then drawing graphs from it in Matlab. Being lazy though, I googled first for alternative solutions and came across the excellent uTrack website. This site allows you to upload a GPX file, and then creates graphs and statistics about your route. It also plots your route on a Google Map.

There are one or two drawbacks with it though. It’s not very easy to then display this data on ones website. There is an export to PDF option, but the graph quality is not as good as the original output and it also does not include the Google Map route tracking. The second problem seems to be with the script itself. It introduces spikes in the speed graph for some reason. Apparently I was cycling at 227km/h at one point. While this is certainly achievable for me on a flat stretch of road with my complete spandex outfit, and aerodynamic helmet, not to mention motorcycle, it’s not too feasible going through Dublin with its abundant traffic lights.

As a temporary solution, I have copied some of the graphs, and also have the original PDf available. Hopefully the author of the script will make it public or configure a nice way of including the HTML output on an external website.

Route PDF File

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Cycling, GPS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.