Discussion: RouteGadget 3!

Well, not really. I last weekend began to play with idea of a kind of ad-hoc routegadget for personal or small training group use. For viewing locally stored maps and gpx tracks (your hard drive) by drag dropping them on browser. Half baked demo here:

Global:
http://routegadget.net/kartta/

Finland only (for O club Rastivarsat):
http://rastivarsat.fi/kartta/

You can geo-reference your map by panning & zooming to the place you map is from, drag drop there, drag corners until map fits right (you can drop gpx files to have better reference for calibration) then click on of the corner markers, copy text and use it to re-name the map file (jpg/png/gif) you calibrated on your had drive. Now every time you drop the file named with this funny name it goes straight to the right place, so it is easy to drop map and then pile of gpx files and see where they went. For ad-hoc personal or small training group use. None of the files gets uploaded to the web, map and gpx files stay on your own computer, so no need to worry about copyright/publish permissions if maps are not shared. No usernames, passwords, script installs or write permissions. And no need to show maps/tracks to anyone else. But you can share maps and gpx maps using shared cloud storage folders, so one (coach) can prepare training and map, kids upload their gpx tracks and everyone including coach can view and compare tracks. Or at least that's the idea. GPX animations and such are still missing, it now simply shows the track and nothing else.

To try it you can download this zip, extract files to your hard drive and from there drag-drop files to those yellow areas at top right corner of the page.
http://routegadget.net/misc/amyo2013.zip

Feel free to try it out in you own trainings and with your own map images.

Neat!!

You can now open it with a link to map image. Two examples (note two ways to define geo-referencing):

http://routegadget.net/kartta/?mapurl=http://www.w...

http://routegadget.net/kartta/?mapurl=http://www.y...

White text field is part of the tool for geo-referencing a map. Just paste URL to image there and press enter and continue just as with a drag-dropped map image.

Example of showing gpx tracks from a zip file.
http://routegadget.net/kartta/?zip=../misc/amyo201...

Zip file must be on same web site as the map page. But that's not much of a problem, since one can put this map page virtually anywhere, because these are just simple static files, no php or cgi scripts or anything like that needed.

Now there is rudimentary animation. So you should see the usual dot animation on O map or google imagery or what ever you put behind. (Unfortunately site is down or very slow for the hosting company apparently suffers DDoS attack. Or at least they tell so.)

This next one pretty neat feature. You can now make links with track & animation, link url itself contains compressed track as url parameter. So track is stored only in that link and the page you paste it. Got it?

Example. I opened http://routegadget.net/kartta/ and drag dropped my 2014 25-manna gpx track there. "Track link" button shows up, I click it and got long huge link text. I copied it and pasted here. Simple as that.

http://routegadget.net/kartta/??&step=3&ll=59.1649...

When you click it you should see track and get animation running on Google imagery. This all without storing your gox file anywhere other that huge long link. Should be great tool for sharing tracks on log/blogs facebook and where ever people share things like these nowadays. This does not work on IE and will not work because it can't handle long links seems to work with IE too.

That feature can be combined with the map image overlay feature.

Example. I uploaded blank 25-manna to Picasa and copied link to plain image. The I opened http://routegadget.net/kartta/ and dropped the same gpx file there, zoomed in, then pasted Picasa url to the input field below text "drop jpg/png map image here" and pressed enter. map appeared. I dragged corner markers to make it fit the Google's satellite/hybrid imagery. Then I clicked the "track link" button and copied link here:

http://routegadget.net/kartta/?&mapurl=https://lh3...

So what we have here is same track and animation, but now on map image stored at Picasa.

And if you prefer ahving short links, you can use a url shortener service and let them store the long url with track data. And get a nice short link like this http://goo.gl/OEkmpZ

So what if you have ran there too and want to compare your run against some of the runs posted like that? Easy. Drag-drop you gpx file there and there it is.

And what if you see two or several tracks posted like that, track as a link, how do you compare them. Easy, copy the URL of the map page containing the link open the other on and paste it to the text field below "drop gpx here" and press enter. You should have two tracks there.

Here is Hirppa's track as link
http://routegadget.net/kartta/??&step=3&ll=59.1651...

You should be able to merge it with my track and map, compare and animate us as a head to head dot race.

If you like to show your training or race and you have several gpx files, youcan place gpx files in a zip and place it at dropbox and give url to that zip to RG with url parameter "zipurl". And combine it with url parameter "mapurl" to get your own map to background - you can place that to dropbox too. Example:

http://routegadget.net/kartta/?
&zipurl=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73954258/adhocfiles/vierumaki24h2015.zip
&mapurl=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73954258/adhocfiles/vierumaki24h_61.121884_26.008872_61.119931_26.036737_61.108634_26.033964_61.110728_26.005678_.gif

Link.

Use cases, examples, download link here.
http://routegadget.net/RG3.html

Seems to be a great tool for quick analysis of a training group. Thank you!

When trying to place the map, I don't understand the behavior of the corner markers. As soon as I start to move them the map gets strangely distorted (and the corner markers are now longer at the map corner...). Any hints what I'm doing wrong?

there is two modes, rotate-scale around opposite corner and free dragging corner by corner. You can swap the mode by clicking the map and then clicking the rightmost icon. See this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIUSBaTj8kQ

Got it, thanks!

And I think I got now fixed to bug that caused map getting slightly distorted in rotate/scale mode. So not most maps should align easily in seconds just by adjusting two opposite corners in rotate/scale mode without having to iterate corners one by one.

I get 404 file not found when I try to get the map link after adjusting my image to google maps.

It gave me the link StreetScrambleAtTheMarket_47.640502_-122.373863_47.624803_-122.293666_47.584082_-122.311233_47.600054_-122.39139_.jpg

That I used for the full routegadget link:
http://routegadget.net/kartta/StreetScrambleAtTheM...

Not sure what/where I went wrong.

it is not link, it is file name. Rename your map file with that name. Then you can drag-drop it on RG and it gets aligned the way you positioned it. Like this you can have personal library of geo-referenced map images on your hard drive and use them easily as background maps of your gpx adventures, simply by dropping them there.

If you want to share file name named like that, you need to upload it with that name to your Dropbox public folder or your own web site. And use url parameters "?&mapurl=http://www.yourserver.org/anyfolder/StreetScrambleAtTheMarket_47.640502_-122.373863_47.624803_-122.293666_47.584082_-122.311233_47.600054_-122.39139_.jpg "

(pop up message still says something like "copy this link/url" but it gives file name instead, so no wonder you found it confusing)

routegadget-net site is not storing any of your images or gpx tracks. It just displays them.

--

If you want to georeference and share a map you already have shared (like Dropbox), just copy paste image url to the second text field and press enter, calibrate it and push map link button. Then it gives the kind of link instead of file name.

Thanks I got that far. Georeferenced an image and saved its link name.
Now I am able to build the image and gpx on my computer, but I am not able to use Dropbox, One Drive, google Pictures or Imgur to upload images. Only Dropbox gave me link with the full name containing the coordinates, but when using this link in Routegadget it could not be read. Routegadget site displayed a rotated and stretched image not found icon.
None of the other image sites gave me share link with the name of the image, just some randomized guid strings.

Can you recommend image sharing sites that will work with Routegadget?

It all is already sort of explained above.

There is two ways to give it geo-referencing coordinates. Either it is in the file name like this:

http://routegadget.net/kartta/?mapurl=https://dl.d...

note, you can get public link like that to dropbox, right click and "copy public link".

Or alternatively you give those coordinates after the map url just by adding add ? and coordinates like this:

http://routegadget.net/kartta/?mapurl=http://www.w...

You will also get this link by copying yout public image link to the second text field, pressing enter, calibrating and hitting "map link" button.


Note, the public link must be a link that gives anonymous user plain map image, not just a web page that shows that image or possibility to download that image by pressing button. You can try it with browser's private mode.

Here is my georeferenced image on Dropbox :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kedlxg3szttl4p8/StreetSc...

And here is when its used used on Routegadget with the mapurl parameter:
http://routegadget.net/kartta/?&mapurl=https://www...

Here is my GPS dropbox as well. Routegadget can't seem to recognize it either:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsy4qs4ifvi0jiu/NikolayN...

Could you try to build the RG link from those. Both image and gpx files should be publicly accessible.

Both of your link are not direct public links. Both give a web page with a download button, not the the file itself. Try yourself.

Put those files to your public folder, right click and select "copy public link", that will be the correct link you should use. Those link usually begin with "https://dl.dropb..." and not "https://www.dropb..." like yours. The kind of like you have is what you typically get when you select "share" instead of "copy public link".


In case you did not already figure these out hera are correct links you should get from Dropbox with that "copy public link" option.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/kedlxg3szttl4p...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hsy4qs4ifvi0ji...

http://routegadget.net/kartta/?mapurl=https://dl.d...

I don't have a public folder option. There is no public folder option in Dropbox for accounts created after 2012:
https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/16


Thank you for the link. I figured that your links are different format, bit did not see how to generate mine with the same structure :)

I wrote simple map and track archive script for storing RG geo-referenced maps and gpx files to be displayed on RG:

http://routegadget.net/archivedemo/

If you fancy setting up own archive for your training group, download is here:
http://routegadget.net/mata.php

Should be easy and fast to use. Event name is all you need to set event up. Map can be added later if needed. Maps need to be geo-referenced for RG, here is how-to video for geo-referencing: https://youtu.be/1S9Pg4I7r-0