MyFJCruiser Online Maps – How I make them

Being somewhat of a gadget freak, electronic mapping fits right in. With the on-board computer in our Toyota FJ Cruiser build, the GPS and mapping capability is built in.

I have a number of applications that I run on the PC for real time use; Garmin Routing Software, National Geo TOPO! maps, APRS (Ham Radio Location application), ARRL Repeater Location software. All these applications work well for their specific requirement and I run them only when needed. To feed these applications the live GPS data stream I use an application called GPSgate. GPSgate is a mux for the GPS data, it reads the input stream from the GPS and creates as many real time output streams as needed in either Garmin or native NMEA format.

For recording our trips I utilize the data logging feature of GPSgate. Once the computer is started GPSgate opens a log file and records the raw data stream. It is this log file that is then used to create the online maps that I include in the trip blog posts.

The first step is to copy the log files onto my home computer which is done using a thumb drive or by connecting to the home network from the FJ and copying them over the network.

Once I have the logs on the home computer I process each days log files through the application GPSBabel. This application is a post processor for GPS data and will read and write a large number of formats. When I process the log files I use GPSbabble to normalize the data points and produce a track for the day as a Google KML file.

The kml file is then read into Google Earth where I edit the path to clean up any problems. In google earth I also add any points of interest and our camp locations. With the days map complete  I then save the day as a kml file which is then uploaded to the blog site with the days post.

A small blog plug-in uses Google earth to create the interactive map.