I was not able to find any decent standalone GPS data logging software for Linux (for use in my car computer), so I decided to write my own — and it works pretty well for what I want to do. Of course, I’m not quite sure what the practical implications are, but I guess I’ll figure that out later (and post it here, of course!). Anyways…
geoHist is a (relatively) simple program I wrote to log GPS data retrieved from GPSD into a MySQL database. It is designed to meet the following requirements:
- Standalone
- Run from system startup to shutdown
- Small/fast, non-intrusive
- Robust
- Log data to an SQL database
geoHist will poll GPSD every 10 seconds and then send that data to a preconfigured MySQL database. It will attempt to detect if you are standing still, and if you are then it will NOT log the data. It decides this using a simple drift factor. It will always log position to the database at least once if there is a satellite fix.
All this program does is log your data into mysql. You will need to figure out what exactly you want to do with that data. At the moment, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with the data either, but if I figure something out I will surely include it in the next release.
I haven’t put it through a ton of use (yet), but it seems to be doing its job quite well. Now all I need to do is figure out a good practical application, and write some scripts to export the data from the database nicely.
Idiot noob comment warning!
This looks like a good pace to start on a module for a car computer that bills clients for windshield time, based upon Start LatLong, end LatLong. for example, any trip that starts or ends in one clients parking lot ends up as a line on the receipt for travel.
What do you think?
Todd Heffley
Ubuntu on PC’s.
Heh. It could log the data necessary to do such a thing, yes.
Would you be interested in developing this further? I have this idea to log wifi signals (strength, name) against gps coordinates and map the mysql data via the google maps api. I some programming ability in dealing with web applications and a good domain name.
Nate,
I actually just started using this program some more, since my carputer is now working correctly (need to rewrite the pages with that). One of my next focuses is how to export the SQL data into something thats usable by something like google maps or google earth — my current thought is exporting into GPX format, though I’m not quite sure what language I want to use to do it.
However, for your application, have you looked at Kismet? I understand that it does have GPS-based wireless network mapping functionality that may do exactly what you’re trying to do.
Dustin
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
I was about to sit down and right a very similar app with the intention of extracting any new routes from the database and uploading them to http://www.openstreetmap.org
Looks like you may have saved me a few hours work.