Introduction

Gaia GPS is an application that allows users to track GPS data while hiking, biking, walking, etc. This data can be exported in CSV format, and further post processed to produce the interractive visuals that are present on some of my hiking posts. The code to do this can be found here.

Software Used

• Mapquest API
  • Elevation API used to get surrounding altitude information
  • Static map API used to retrieve an image of the surrounding terrain
• Plotly
  • Create interractive surfaces that can be embedded in HTML
    • Note: Plotly supports certain necessary features in python better than Matlab, which is the cause for the split of languages for this project
• Matlab
  • Parse CSV data
  • Call the Mapquest API
  • Provide initial plots of path and terrain
    • Note: For someone that doesn’t have a Matlab licence, this code can easily be converted to python.
• Python
  • Interface with the Plotly API

Description of Methods

• Collect data using Gaia GPS

• Parse the CSV data to extract hiker’s location and altitude over the duration of the activity
• Use the Mapquest API to get surrounding altitude information

• Use the Mapquest API to get an image of the surrounding area

• Export this data as a plotly figure that can be used

---

• ← Previous Post
• Next Post →