I have been giving some thought to making the process of creating maps form OpenStreetMap data easier. The problem is that to use the mapnik map renderer, you need to install quite a lot of tools and set different configuration files before you can even start to create a map.
This means you have to be pretty keen to persevere enough to get to an end result.
I am thinking of creating a service to allow you to bypass the tool installing bits, and concentrate on the setting up of the map configuration, so you can get to a result quicker - see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Grahamjones#Speciality%20Maps.
Quite a few of the responses that I got to that proposal were about the lack of good documentation to get people started on the process. I have had a go at addressing this by putting together a simple overview presentation to go through the main concepts and tools that you need to generate a map using mapnik. The presentation is on slideshare.net, and should be visible below:
Showing posts with label OpenStreetMap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OpenStreetMap. Show all posts
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Townguide - progress at last!
You can't beat some really bad weather to help make progress with my nerdy jobs.
I have got Waldemar's django front end to townguide working (http://dtownguide.webhop.net), and have managed to make a few changes, including adding fancy tab things to the main map selection form.
There are still a few things to sort out:
I have got Waldemar's django front end to townguide working (http://dtownguide.webhop.net), and have managed to make a few changes, including adding fancy tab things to the main map selection form.
There are still a few things to sort out:
- The area selection on the map does not align properly with the mouse pointer - not sure why - must be something to do with OpenLayers projections...
- Mapnik re-sizes the output map to match the bounding box, so townguide needs to check the actual map size to make sure the grid squares are right.
- There is something funny about the output resolution - need to see what it is using - the output looks much higher resolution than I asked for, so I suspect there is a sum wrong somewhere!
- Add the GPX track and waypoint plugins (they are just templates at the moment).
- Add an option to suppress un-named ways - the 'None' in the street index can confuse people.
- Reinstate other output formats - only 'poster' is working.
Townguide - progress at last!
You can't beat some really bad weather to help make progress with my nerdy jobs.
I have got Waldemar's django front end to townguide working (http://dtownguide.webhop.net), and have managed to make a few changes, including adding fancy tab things to the main map selection form.
There are still a few things to sort out:
I have got Waldemar's django front end to townguide working (http://dtownguide.webhop.net), and have managed to make a few changes, including adding fancy tab things to the main map selection form.
There are still a few things to sort out:
- The area selection on the map does not align properly with the mouse pointer - not sure why - must be something to do with OpenLayers projections...
- Mapnik re-sizes the output map to match the bounding box, so townguide needs to check the actual map size to make sure the grid squares are right.
- There is something funny about the output resolution - need to see what it is using - the output looks much higher resolution than I asked for, so I suspect there is a sum wrong somewhere!
- Add the GPX track and waypoint plugins (they are just templates at the moment).
- Add an option to suppress un-named ways - the 'None' in the street index can confuse people.
- Reinstate other output formats - only 'poster' is working.
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Reprojecting Ordnance Survey Raster Data
I have been looking at the Ordnance Survey StreetView data that was released to the public on 1st April.
This has got me thinking about a previous project that I failed to make work - I have some old maps of my home town and wanted to be able to display them on the web and switch between them so you can see what changes from year to year - I have maps from 1870 and 1914. I want to use OpenStreetMap as the recent data. Now StreetView is available I can use that too for comparison.
The problem is projecting them onto the same coordinate system - I failed miserably last time, but my two scanned old maps were on the same scale, so you can see them at (http://maps.webhop.net/oldmaps/openlayers.html).
The maps are in Ordnance Survey projection, which has the code EPSG:27700. The downloaded OS data has the origin specified in metres northings and eastings.
You can translate this into the same projection as OpenStreetMap (EPSG:900113) using:
This has got me thinking about a previous project that I failed to make work - I have some old maps of my home town and wanted to be able to display them on the web and switch between them so you can see what changes from year to year - I have maps from 1870 and 1914. I want to use OpenStreetMap as the recent data. Now StreetView is available I can use that too for comparison.
The problem is projecting them onto the same coordinate system - I failed miserably last time, but my two scanned old maps were on the same scale, so you can see them at (http://maps.webhop.net/oldmaps/openlayers.html).
The maps are in Ordnance Survey projection, which has the code EPSG:27700. The downloaded OS data has the origin specified in metres northings and eastings.
You can translate this into the same projection as OpenStreetMap (EPSG:900113) using:
gdalwarp -s_srs EPSG:27700 -t_srs EPSG:900913 *.TIF nz.tifCheck the projection information with
gdalinfo nz.tif | more
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Progress Mapping Hartlepool
Benjamin and I are making progress mapping Hartlepool for OpenStreetMap.
I have just run a query on my database to see how many kilometers we must have cycled to produce the map. I was really quite shocked that it was over 550 km! No wonder I am tired...
Progress with the map and the breakdown of the distances are shown on the Hartlepool OpenStreetMap page.
I have just run a query on my database to see how many kilometers we must have cycled to produce the map. I was really quite shocked that it was over 550 km! No wonder I am tired...
Progress with the map and the breakdown of the distances are shown on the Hartlepool OpenStreetMap page.
Progress Mapping Hartlepool
Benjamin and I are making progress mapping Hartlepool for OpenStreetMap.
I have just run a query on my database to see how many kilometers we must have cycled to produce the map. I was really quite shocked that it was over 550 km! No wonder I am tired...
Progress with the map and the breakdown of the distances are shown on the Hartlepool OpenStreetMap page.
I have just run a query on my database to see how many kilometers we must have cycled to produce the map. I was really quite shocked that it was over 550 km! No wonder I am tired...
Progress with the map and the breakdown of the distances are shown on the Hartlepool OpenStreetMap page.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Free Town Guide
For ages I have been intending to write a program to produce a nice guide to a town or area based on OpenStreetMap data.
I finally decided that I knew enough about postgresql and python to have a go.
The result is a program called townguide.py. The idea is that you load the openstreetmap data into a postgresql database (like you do if you want to render it using Mapnik), then produce an xml file to tell townguide.py what you want rendering. It then goes and produces the nice output for you.
Version 0.1 is working and is on SVN. At the moment it only produces html output (because that is easy), and it is not very pretty.
The next stage is to make it produce postscript to give nice printable output on a defined paper size.
An example of the html output is at http://hartlepoolmap.webhop.net.
Having looked at the output it looks like it will be quite useful from a mapping point of view - if you know the area you can review the features that are summarised and look for missing banks, supermarkets etc.
I finally decided that I knew enough about postgresql and python to have a go.
The result is a program called townguide.py. The idea is that you load the openstreetmap data into a postgresql database (like you do if you want to render it using Mapnik), then produce an xml file to tell townguide.py what you want rendering. It then goes and produces the nice output for you.
Version 0.1 is working and is on SVN. At the moment it only produces html output (because that is easy), and it is not very pretty.
The next stage is to make it produce postscript to give nice printable output on a defined paper size.
An example of the html output is at http://hartlepoolmap.webhop.net.
Having looked at the output it looks like it will be quite useful from a mapping point of view - if you know the area you can review the features that are summarised and look for missing banks, supermarkets etc.
Free Town Guide
For ages I have been intending to write a program to produce a nice guide to a town or area based on OpenStreetMap data.
I finally decided that I knew enough about postgresql and python to have a go.
The result is a program called townguide.py. The idea is that you load the openstreetmap data into a postgresql database (like you do if you want to render it using Mapnik), then produce an xml file to tell townguide.py what you want rendering. It then goes and produces the nice output for you.
Version 0.1 is working and is on SVN. At the moment it only produces html output (because that is easy), and it is not very pretty.
The next stage is to make it produce postscript to give nice printable output on a defined paper size.
An example of the html output is at http://hartlepoolmap.webhop.net.
Having looked at the output it looks like it will be quite useful from a mapping point of view - if you know the area you can review the features that are summarised and look for missing banks, supermarkets etc.
I finally decided that I knew enough about postgresql and python to have a go.
The result is a program called townguide.py. The idea is that you load the openstreetmap data into a postgresql database (like you do if you want to render it using Mapnik), then produce an xml file to tell townguide.py what you want rendering. It then goes and produces the nice output for you.
Version 0.1 is working and is on SVN. At the moment it only produces html output (because that is easy), and it is not very pretty.
The next stage is to make it produce postscript to give nice printable output on a defined paper size.
An example of the html output is at http://hartlepoolmap.webhop.net.
Having looked at the output it looks like it will be quite useful from a mapping point of view - if you know the area you can review the features that are summarised and look for missing banks, supermarkets etc.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
What has been happening?
I've been forgetting to update this with what has been happening.
WherewasI now has a Python/GTK front end that allows you to plot your GPX traces on a OpenStreetMap map to see where you were, as well as altitude profiles etc. It could still do with a few more features, but it does most of what I want at the moment.
I have decided to make a concerted effort to finish off mapping Hartlepool for OpenStreetMap. The main problem is that am better at cycling around collecting GPX traces than I am at recording the street names. This means I end up with lots of roads with no names - no use if anyone wants to search for an address....To do this I decided to use audio mapping by recording audio clips with my mobile phone. The clips are GeoTagged using data from a little bluetooth GPS receiver. I use GPSMid on the mobile phone. Unfortunately it does not produce the GPX file, or the audio clips in the correct format for the JOSM OpenStreetMap Editor. I wrote a little python script to do the conversion so you can see the positions of the audio clips in the JOSM Editor (See the OSM GPSMid Page for details.
WherewasI now has a Python/GTK front end that allows you to plot your GPX traces on a OpenStreetMap map to see where you were, as well as altitude profiles etc. It could still do with a few more features, but it does most of what I want at the moment.
I have decided to make a concerted effort to finish off mapping Hartlepool for OpenStreetMap. The main problem is that am better at cycling around collecting GPX traces than I am at recording the street names. This means I end up with lots of roads with no names - no use if anyone wants to search for an address....To do this I decided to use audio mapping by recording audio clips with my mobile phone. The clips are GeoTagged using data from a little bluetooth GPS receiver. I use GPSMid on the mobile phone. Unfortunately it does not produce the GPX file, or the audio clips in the correct format for the JOSM OpenStreetMap Editor. I wrote a little python script to do the conversion so you can see the positions of the audio clips in the JOSM Editor (See the OSM GPSMid Page for details.
What has been happening?
I've been forgetting to update this with what has been happening.
WherewasI now has a Python/GTK front end that allows you to plot your GPX traces on a OpenStreetMap map to see where you were, as well as altitude profiles etc. It could still do with a few more features, but it does most of what I want at the moment.
I have decided to make a concerted effort to finish off mapping Hartlepool for OpenStreetMap. The main problem is that am better at cycling around collecting GPX traces than I am at recording the street names. This means I end up with lots of roads with no names - no use if anyone wants to search for an address....To do this I decided to use audio mapping by recording audio clips with my mobile phone. The clips are GeoTagged using data from a little bluetooth GPS receiver. I use GPSMid on the mobile phone. Unfortunately it does not produce the GPX file, or the audio clips in the correct format for the JOSM OpenStreetMap Editor. I wrote a little python script to do the conversion so you can see the positions of the audio clips in the JOSM Editor (See the OSM GPSMid Page for details.
WherewasI now has a Python/GTK front end that allows you to plot your GPX traces on a OpenStreetMap map to see where you were, as well as altitude profiles etc. It could still do with a few more features, but it does most of what I want at the moment.
I have decided to make a concerted effort to finish off mapping Hartlepool for OpenStreetMap. The main problem is that am better at cycling around collecting GPX traces than I am at recording the street names. This means I end up with lots of roads with no names - no use if anyone wants to search for an address....To do this I decided to use audio mapping by recording audio clips with my mobile phone. The clips are GeoTagged using data from a little bluetooth GPS receiver. I use GPSMid on the mobile phone. Unfortunately it does not produce the GPX file, or the audio clips in the correct format for the JOSM OpenStreetMap Editor. I wrote a little python script to do the conversion so you can see the positions of the audio clips in the JOSM Editor (See the OSM GPSMid Page for details.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)