New obsession -- collecting GPS data for Canberra roads

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 19:35:00 GMT

I've been finding recently that I've been getting a bit bored with life recently. Only some bits of it though, like my daily commute. This maps nicely with my new obsession, which is collecting GPS data for Canberra's roads. I've therefore been doing funny things like driving home in different ways, and driving down every street in my suburb.

I have data for about half of the streets in my neighborhood now, and lots of the linking roads which join the various areas of Canberra together. Now I just need to work out what to do with this data. So far I graph it, but that's not very exciting. Any suggestions? Ultimately I'll make it available online for free, although I want more data before I make that step.

Speaking of which -- do you have data you would like to donate? I'll anonymize the data for you, so that your wife doesn't know why you were driving around Turner at 4am, and at what speed you specifically were travelling (although that is easy to infer, and my graphing app uses it at the moment to help you draw congestion conclusions), but no one will know it was you, so that's ok. I currently have a parser for NMEA commands, but I can work out other formats if you do want to donate.

If you're interested, drop me a line. Comment

stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

New obsession -- collecting GPS data for Canberra roads