Free full screen topo maps & display GPS track
Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 12:49 am
Hello Everyone,
My name is Joseph Elfelt and I have a Thanksgiving Day present for you. I’ve written a map viewing program based on Google maps and including the detailed 7.5 minute topo maps from the MyTopo company. http://www.mytopo.com/ Here’s an example showing the visitor center at Mt. Rainier:
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?ll=46.785956,-121.737785&z=14
The topo maps include the USFS updates to the USGS topo maps. These updates cover many (but certainly not all) national forest areas and show USFS road numbers. The MyTopo maps are also better quality than the Terraserver maps and (I’m told) also better quality than the NG TOPO maps. I believe they include Canada.
The gmap4 map viewer understands these parameters:
q= http: pointer to a kml file anywhere online.
ll= map center. For North America use lat,-lon decimal degrees (same as Google, etc)
z= map zoom
t= map type
I’ve not implemented searching (yet). Use plain old Google maps to search. Once you have found whatever it is, get its latitude/longitude by doing the following: Point to what you found ==> right click ==> What’s this? ==> copy lat,lon from map search window.
Paste the lat/lon into the following line and then paste the entire line into your browser bar:
(Not a link)
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... t_lon_here
Here’s an example of using the q parameter to display GPS info on the map. I live near Redmond, WA and here’s a map showing my GPS track for a hike I’ve done in the Washington State Cascades. Note that the q parameter is pointing to a kml file.
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/kml_demo/county_line_trail_with_pic.kml
Did you notice the embedded picture link?
Here’s how to make a similar map showing GPS data:
1. Convert your GPS data to a kml file
2. Put your kml file online. Make sure other people have ‘read’ permission for the file.
3. The link to your map is: (Not a link) http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... _your_file
Here are some of the ways you can make a kml file containing your GPS and related data:
A. GPSBabel (http://www.gpsbabel.org/) They re-designed their website since I saw it last. Easily converts GPX to KML.
B. GPSVisualizer. (http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map_input?form=googleearth). The output includes a fair bit of clutter in the form of tags that are used by Google Earth but are ignored by Google maps.
C. By hand. Here is the documentation from Google (http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/) and there are examples in the tutorial. You must save a kml file with UTF-8 encoding. I use the free Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) for editing kml files. Since kml files are a type of xml file, it really helps a lot to use an editor designed for working with xml files.
See the kml source file I used in the above example map for one approach for organizing the contents of a kml file.
Oh, and anything you include in the <Document><description> tag is treated as a caption and gets welded to the top of the map. See my example source files.
To launch gmap4:
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php to see the default map (Google’s campus at Kirkland, WA)
or
(Not a link) http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?ll=lat,-lon
or
(Not a link) http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... o_kml_file
To fully specify a map, use all 4 parameters.
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/kml_demo/Johnson_Ridge.kml&ll=47.791883,-121.229658&z=14&t=t2
But what if you don’t have your own website for hosting your kml file online? No worries. You can store your kml file in the cloud as a Google Document txt file and read it with the gmap4 map viewer. Since I’ve already given you a bunch to think about in this post, I’ll save those details for later.
Teaser: If several people are working together to make a trail map for an area, everyone in that group can pool their data by directly editing the same file in the Google cloud.
Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving,
Joseph Elfelt
My name is Joseph Elfelt and I have a Thanksgiving Day present for you. I’ve written a map viewing program based on Google maps and including the detailed 7.5 minute topo maps from the MyTopo company. http://www.mytopo.com/ Here’s an example showing the visitor center at Mt. Rainier:
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?ll=46.785956,-121.737785&z=14
The topo maps include the USFS updates to the USGS topo maps. These updates cover many (but certainly not all) national forest areas and show USFS road numbers. The MyTopo maps are also better quality than the Terraserver maps and (I’m told) also better quality than the NG TOPO maps. I believe they include Canada.
The gmap4 map viewer understands these parameters:
q= http: pointer to a kml file anywhere online.
ll= map center. For North America use lat,-lon decimal degrees (same as Google, etc)
z= map zoom
t= map type
I’ve not implemented searching (yet). Use plain old Google maps to search. Once you have found whatever it is, get its latitude/longitude by doing the following: Point to what you found ==> right click ==> What’s this? ==> copy lat,lon from map search window.
Paste the lat/lon into the following line and then paste the entire line into your browser bar:
(Not a link)
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... t_lon_here
Here’s an example of using the q parameter to display GPS info on the map. I live near Redmond, WA and here’s a map showing my GPS track for a hike I’ve done in the Washington State Cascades. Note that the q parameter is pointing to a kml file.
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/kml_demo/county_line_trail_with_pic.kml
Did you notice the embedded picture link?
Here’s how to make a similar map showing GPS data:
1. Convert your GPS data to a kml file
2. Put your kml file online. Make sure other people have ‘read’ permission for the file.
3. The link to your map is: (Not a link) http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... _your_file
Here are some of the ways you can make a kml file containing your GPS and related data:
A. GPSBabel (http://www.gpsbabel.org/) They re-designed their website since I saw it last. Easily converts GPX to KML.
B. GPSVisualizer. (http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map_input?form=googleearth). The output includes a fair bit of clutter in the form of tags that are used by Google Earth but are ignored by Google maps.
C. By hand. Here is the documentation from Google (http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/) and there are examples in the tutorial. You must save a kml file with UTF-8 encoding. I use the free Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) for editing kml files. Since kml files are a type of xml file, it really helps a lot to use an editor designed for working with xml files.
See the kml source file I used in the above example map for one approach for organizing the contents of a kml file.
Oh, and anything you include in the <Document><description> tag is treated as a caption and gets welded to the top of the map. See my example source files.
To launch gmap4:
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php to see the default map (Google’s campus at Kirkland, WA)
or
(Not a link) http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?ll=lat,-lon
or
(Not a link) http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... o_kml_file
To fully specify a map, use all 4 parameters.
http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/kml_demo/Johnson_Ridge.kml&ll=47.791883,-121.229658&z=14&t=t2
But what if you don’t have your own website for hosting your kml file online? No worries. You can store your kml file in the cloud as a Google Document txt file and read it with the gmap4 map viewer. Since I’ve already given you a bunch to think about in this post, I’ll save those details for later.
Teaser: If several people are working together to make a trail map for an area, everyone in that group can pool their data by directly editing the same file in the Google cloud.
Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving,
Joseph Elfelt