[aprssig] Simple mapping - NMEA

[Stephen H. Smith]

On 4/18/2011 8:13 PM, Andrew Rich wrote:
> Hello
> Going on a boat - have road maps but no internetr access
> What is the best option ? Maybe jsut record NMEA and convert when i get back ?
> Need a simple mapping solution - made up a map for UI-VIEW
> Coral sea - east of Australia
>


Use UIview as a "map player" rather than as an APRS client.    Any map image 
(scanned/photographed with a high-res digital camera/downloaded from the 
Internet) in GIF, BMP or PNG format with a pair of known lat/long calibration 
points on it can be displayed inside UIview. You can cause a cross-hairs to be 
displayed at your own position from a local GPS.

A useful tool to download already calibrated images from Google Maps, Yahoo 
Maps or Microsoft Bing is "Universal Maps Downloader".  This shareware utility 
can download any number of map images to cover a specified lat/long-bounded 
box, and then stitch them together to form a far larger single image, ready to 
use in UIivew.  You can create images far larger than the small window you see 
online on Google and Yahoo maps.  I have created large-area hi-res maps that 
involved over a thousand tiles!

UIview can handle images far larger (in terms of pixels) than the size of the 
window displaying them on your PC.   UIview then becomes a scrollable viewport 
showing part of a far larger image.       I have used maps of over 2500 x 3500 
pixels in UIview.  The key is to reduce the number of colors in the image to 
only 256 or even 16 colors.

A review of "Universal Maps Downloader" with many samples is here on my website:

. <http://wa8lmf.net/MapCaptureTool>

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Stephen H. Smith    wa8lmf (at) aol.com
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=====  Vista & Win7 Install Issues for UI-View and Precision Mapping =====
     http://wa8lmf.net/aprs/UIview_Notes.htm#VistaWin7

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   http://wa8lmf.net/DigiPaths





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