[OSM-talk] bike mapping setup idea

80n 80n80n at gmail.com
Sat Apr 14 11:11:11 BST 2007


Stefan
This is an interesting plan.

There are purpose built helmet cameras (eg
http://www.twenty20camera.com/helmetcamera.php) which might give better
results than a web-cam, but the are expensive and where's the fun in buying
rather than making ;)

You might find that the web-cam images are too blurry to be able to read the
street names, especially if they are at an angle and some distance away.  If
you have to stop long enough to get a posed shot of each street sign it will
slow you down significantly.

However, a stream of images would be useful, not just for street names, but
for recording the configuration of complex junctions, road types, landmarks
(pylons, churches, etc) and landuse (industrial, commercial, forest, park,
etc).

Several of us use a dictaphone to record street names.  This make it
possible to cycle at full tilt and still get the name of every street.  I
use the dictacm approach (search for dictacam on the wiki), which works very
well for me.

If you are prepared to cycle with a laptop then it might be worth
investigating the use of a voice activated bluetooth headset to log to a
sound file on the laptop.  Using this in addition to the web-cam might work
quite well.

80n


On 4/14/07, Stefan Holst <mail at s-holst.de> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I'm currently in the process to build a setup to map by bike. Since I'm
> new to this project and don't know about every piece of software
> available, I wanted to ask for pointers to existing sub-projects or if
> there are people with similar setups before I start hacking my own
> stand-alone tool or plug-in.
>
> The setup I'm planning is as follows:
>
> A Laptop in the backpack records gps data from an usb-attacked
> garmin-device. For each track point (so about every second), it
> retrieves an image from a webcam attached to the bike helmet. These
> images give information about the kind of the street and all signs I'm
> looking at for at least a second. Some buttons at the handle bar should
> give me some control over the recording (start/stop) and - most
> importantly - to place map nodes in-field at every crossing I encounter.
> The recording software will not only record raw gps data and webcam
> images but also the nodes I set and may even generate segments as I
> drive. The software should also give me feedback with tones or
> text-to-speech through an earphone. A beep for every track point /
> webcam photo, other beeps, if a re-approach previously set nodes and a
> new segment is generated, info about gps reception, battery state and so
> on.
>
> With the collected information even other persons should be able to
> complete the map (creating ways, classify and name them).
>
> The current status is:
>
> GPS connection works fine in java (using additional usb libs).
> Webcam works and is prepared to be attached to the helmet. I have to
> test, if the resolution (352x288) is sufficient and attach a filter to
> the camera to work outdoors. Webcam is accessible with java through JMF.
> For handlebar buttons I'll use a presenter or a slaughtered wireless
> mouse (work out-of-the-box).
>
> For postprocessing I would write a josm plugin that handles the picture
> "stream" well (scrolling through pictures, highlighting according track
> points etc.). For the in-field software I'm not yet sure whether to
> create a stand-alone application or also a josm plugin...
>
> Any thoughts, further ideas, experiences, pointers regarding these
> ideas?
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Stefan (Coomba)
>
>
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