[GIS] Simulate (Mock) GPS Tracks

geoprocessinggpsgpsbabelqgisqgis-plugins

I have the following scenario:

1) I need to create GPX files for use in testing of a mobile device.

2) The tracks to be described within will span large distances over long time periods (i.e. it's not practical to just go out and record a track).

3) The people performing the testing are not very GIS knowledgeable and will struggle with things like manual file conversion, etc.

I have in mind some simple application (it could easily be a QGIS python plugin) in which you set certain parameters (time, direction & speed of track "stages") and then generate a GPX file accordingly.

But before I throw myself into something like that, does anyone know of a simpler way to do this?

I've looked into various options (creating a tour in kml and then converting into gpx, manually cut-and-paste the xml together by hand, etc.) but it all seems like a lot of hard work for what I would have thought was quite a common use case…

Best Answer

If you want realistic data, then you might be able to make use of a solution that was posted over at Are the public domain vehicle tracks available?:

The OSM magicians have released a lot of GPS tracks - its "GPX Planet"

Note that there are two formats: just the points, and the GPX tracks. You presumably want GPX tracks.

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[GIS] good GPS track analysis library

Well, kinda depends on your programming-language of choice, but i've developed mineturer.org in Java (the site is essentially a site for uploading, analyzing and displaying GPX-data).

Iv'e used JAX-B (http://jaxb.java.net/) to read GPX files (based on the GPX schema) and JTS (http://www.vividsolutions.com/jts/) + own code for analyzing.

The source code for mineturer.org is available under a MIT-licence at https://bitbucket.org/atlefren/gpsorganizer/

I guess the code could give you some pointers at least?

Building a Geographic Database from GPS Logs – How to Guide

ptrv/gpx2spatialite does this remarkably well, saving timestamps for all points and deriving speed and length data for tracks. It also won't import duplicate tracks, so you can feed it a huge pile for GPX files and it will munge them appropriately.

Update: usage examples, as requested:

Initialize new database:

gpx2spatialite_create_db db.sqlite

Add a single gpx file:

gpx2spatialite -d db.sqlite -u user file.gpx

(If username user does not exist in the database, will query if you wish to create it. The database is built with tracks/waypoints/routes assigned to one or more users.)

Add all of the gpx files in folder/:

gpx2spatialite -d db.sqlite -u user folder/

Usage: it's a spatial database, with table tracklines holding the tracks as polylines, trackpoints containing the individual points (with time, elevation, etc), and waypoints for any defined waypoints. There are also numerous indices, some world city definitions and possibly also embedded SLD styling information I haven't yet explored. As a trivial example, here's a map of how my hometown (Toronto) is defined through ~7 years of track logs:

Toronto GPS logs

By using lines at 75% transparency, the most frequently-travelled routes become darker.

Best Answer

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[GIS] good GPS track analysis library

Building a Geographic Database from GPS Logs – How to Guide

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