GPX Import Extensions

[darkm20]

Hi!

I have bought Locus Pro and I should say it's a wonderful product!
I'm an Android developer too and I would like to use Locus for aviation purposes.

I've tried to import a GPX file which contains "extensions" in the schema downloaded off the widely used "http://navaid.com/GPX/"
Unfortunately they provide the ICAO ID of the airport as name so it's quite difficult to find an airport by remembering this code, the full name is indicated in the <cmt> field.

Is there any way to switch some information ? Also will be useful to import the extended data (frequencies - runway orientation and so on..), this is a piece of xml:

Code Select Expand

<wpt lat="46.031889" lon="12.596472">
<ele>124.968</ele>
<magvar>358.2</magvar>
<name>LIYW</name>
<cmt>PAGLIANO E GORI,IT</cmt>
<type>AIRPORT</type>
<extensions>
<navaid:name>PAGLIANO E GORI</navaid:name>
<navaid:country>IT</navaid:country>
<navaid:lastupdate>2008-08-12</navaid:lastupdate>
<navaid:frequencies>
<navaid:frequency type="APP" frequency="120.125M" name="APP"/>
<navaid:frequency type="CLD" frequency="122.100M" name="CLNC DEL"/>
<navaid:frequency type="GND" frequency="122.100M" name="GND"/>
<navaid:frequency type="ATIS" frequency="129.300M" name="ATIS"/>
</navaid:frequencies>
<navaid:runways>
<navaid:runway designation="05/23" length="8551" width="144" surface="ASP">
<navaid:beginning lat="46.023333" lon="12.583889">
<navaid:heading>48.0</navaid:heading>
<navaid:elev>323</navaid:elev>
</navaid:beginning>
<navaid:ending lat="46.038889" lon="12.608889">
<navaid:heading>228.0</navaid:heading>
<navaid:elev>410</navaid:elev>
</navaid:ending>
</navaid:runway>
</navaid:runways>
<navaid:magvar>-1.87</navaid:magvar>
</extensions>
</wpt>

Thanks anyone for any help!

[Menion]

Hello,
  I'm glad you like it. Seems many people use locus last days for aviation. Interesting. Do you know OpenAir format? Locus have support for this, so maybe it should be interesting for you.

  anyway about supported tags. Best way now, how to get some specific data into locus is by creating html table in description tag I think. Locus will then show this table in point screen. I plan to add some support for some extra point parameters but this will take some time.

  so are you doing some pre-processing of these files before import? If so, you can just merge all navaid tags into html table. Hmm maybe I should do this directly in Locus when I think about it. Are these information only useful as a description or you want to do with them something more (like some drawing extra lines on map, etc...)?

[darkm20]

Hi!

Thanks for your answer! I actually don't know anything about OpenAir. Going to google it!
Anyway I don't do any pre-processing, maybe I should try processing them a place the HTML table as you explain. Pilots don't need any other information to be shown on the map, but it's important that when I click on a point I can get more infos about them (frequencies, services) and maybe if you want pilots happier you can show the orientation of the runway (but I think it's going to be tricky), since this informations are all inside the GPX from navaid.com.

I also have all airspaces (they are very important to be shown as overlays in Locus), DEM elevation, VFR reporting points for Italy available and I really would like to contribute with my help to the community by uploading them to the OpenAviationMap project so that aviators can use them in Locus.

Thank you!

[darkm20]

Update:

I was able to load openair Italian airspaces in Locus. Wonderful!
Also as you pointed, I put HTML comments so now I have full informations inside any waypoint.
Now I'm preparing a customized layout for both tablet and my GN so that I will use on the aircraft.

Just one more question: when I move the cross over any point on the map is there any chance to have heading and ETA calculated on the last GPS positions ?

Thanks and again compliments for the high quality product!

P.s.: I found some missing translations in Italian, maybe I can help contributing ?

[Menion]

ah perfect,

  about OpenAir format. I added support for this about a two months before (just for your info, best is to place these files in Locus/mapItems and use feature "Map item manager") thanks to request and help from on Spanish guy. Anyway he's not communicating now and he also don't give me much quality feedback. I personally do not have any experience with flying, this format, needs during flight etc, so for me, will be more then welcome if you can give me some feedback on OpenAir format support. About colors, about filling areas, about texts and descriptions and so on ...

  you can enable line from your current location (GPS) to map center in menu > setings > map > line to GPS. Then you'll see distance and heading on map ... this is partially what you want right? I was thinking about making these texts (along line) customizable ... but this is not yet done

  and finally about translation. If you want correct or add some translation, this is of course welcome. Translation may be done here http://crowdin.net/group/Locus+%26+Wher ... tion+group

[darkm20]

Hi,

Please feel free to ask me whatever about aviation if I can help. Actually could be interesting to have also the ETA to the cursor position since pilots should report frequently to the control towers on ground their positions related to near point (interesting to have time related to actual time or estimated time / minutes if you want to make this customizable). Then I think that all the rest can be useful for a pilot can be simply done with customizable layouts.

[attachment=0:20po113n]Screenshot_2012-03-16-15-38-53.png[/attachment:20po113n]

As you can see I have filled in some airspaces the area to green by simply using "SB 0,200,0" as a tag and Locus rocks!  Text and descriptions sometimes overlaps if they are near, but it's not a big problem.

I'm actually using vector OSM maps but I should find something better since this doesn't have any elevation, I know I can also geo-reference maps but I prefer something ready - I will find something. I know that a DEM overlay would be too heavy for the system.

About the translation -> Going to complete them!

In the next few days I will also contribute a new layout for aviators

[ehansen]

Hi guys,
Very new Locus Pro user here! (In fact I purchased it last week, set settings the way I liked for starters, and then my SD card on my Note II decided to no longer respond to any machine.  New card installed but it appears the backup I made was also on the SD so I'm re-setting up...hopefully this second go will be better since I did learn some things...)

My question is regarding GPX import, like Darkm20 I am a private pilot and am also trying to import data from NavAid.com and found this discussion when I was trying to solve the same issue of getting all of the extra data like:

<navaid:frequency type="APP" frequency="120.125M" name="APP"/>
<navaid:frequency type="CLD" frequency="122.100M" name="CLNC DEL"/>
<navaid:frequency type="GND" frequency="122.100M" name="GND"/>
<navaid:frequency type="ATIS" frequency="129.300M" name="ATIS"/>

I see that you suggest modifying the XML to contain a table, but am not very familiar with XML so I wondered if perhaps one of you could give an example and perhaps suggest something with which to do the pre-processing (maybe DarkM20 has already solved this in some way?).

Any help would be appreciated!

[Menion]

Hi ehansen,
  so something like this?

  I've added support for these frequency values and this will be available in next version

[ehansen]

Hello Menion!

Yes sir, that would be awesome!  Is this version update coming sometime fairly soon? (if you let me know when it's out I can try an import right away with it).

Out of curiosity are you a primary developer on Locus?  

Thanks!

[ehansen]

Have the new version and the import looks great!  Thanks!

[Menion]

you're fast

sure, you're welcome. I wasn't sure if some other information are also useful, so just frequency for start

[ehansen]

Actually, you're fast!  I just happened to notice that I had a new version as of yesterday so I re-imported my old data to see if it included you're new work , and it did.  And then I actually just logged back in to mention the other data which I just found time to investigate and find missing, and to which you've already responded!  (I wasn't sure if I lead you to believe that I only wanted the frequencies earlier, I actually just included the snippet for them because darkm20 had included the whole thing). So:
I cannot speak for all pilots of course, but I can give you some basic info and you can maybe tell me what works from your side.  I've just started trying to use Locus in place of a full Aviation GPS in some of the smaller aircraft I fly (I think your interface is hands-down better than what the older GPS offerings have, and I can use it for hiking etc).  I have several comments about interface items in general, but I'm not very familiar with Locus yet and I feel that you may have covered many of them in features I've not yet explored so I'll stick with this importing for now.  

Looks like you have this already:
<navaid:name>ABRAMS MUNI</navaid:name>  


These two would be very useful:
<navaid:hasfuel>true</navaid:hasfuel>
One of the nicest things this data is gaining us is the ability to tell if an airport is an option to land at and get fuel.  If a pilot is using the aviation charts Locus can read they'll already know if fuel services are available, but it's also nice to overlay these points on a cleaner (Mapquest roads) map at times.  If you find in-flight that your fuel gauges are somehow inaccurate, or you've had to alter your flight plan, knowing where you can get fuel is quite convenient (especially since landing to find out wastes so much time and fuel).

Again, useful:
<navaid:lastupdate>2013-04-30</navaid:lastupdate>
Pilots in the us are required to have a current (annual) airport directory with them, the database that we download from for this data is at least nice enough to tell us when something was last updated.  This won't meet standards to allow us not to carry the Airport Directory, but knowing that the info is over a year old would be quite helpful (and extra nice if there were some way to highlight the date in red if it were old, but I think this is probably not so useful for generic data importing so may not work so well unless you are converting the data to HTML or similar as you import it).

Useful:
<navaid:runways>
<navaid:runway designation="09/27" length="3199" width="75" surface="ASPH-G">
Knowing you can get fuel etc is nice, but knowing the length of the runway is just as important in deciding if you should/can land and take back off safely.


Less useful, lower priority from my standpoint:
<navaid:beginning lat="42.775284" lon="-84.735962">
<navaid:heading>85.0</navaid:heading>
<navaid:elev>830.5</navaid:elev>
</navaid:beginning>
<navaid:ending lat="42.775961" lon="-84.724082">
<navaid:heading>265.0</navaid:heading>
<navaid:elev>839.9</navaid:elev>
</navaid:ending>
</navaid:runway>
The problem is that this data is included for the beginning and ending of each runway, useful, but sort of makes you import all of it for only small gains (headings are approximated by runway numbers 09 = approx 90, 27 = approx 270 etc). I suppose if you're willing to import it that's great, but its' not as important as the other stuff.  Knowing that a runway has a large slope is nice, but I'm not sure that seeing these numbers will help that be easily noticed anyway.


Useful:
<navaid:frequencies>
<navaid:frequency type="MISC" frequency="118.650" name="APCH/PDEP/P"/>
<navaid:frequency type="OPS" frequency="122.700" name="OPNS"/>
<navaid:frequency type="UNIC" frequency="122.700" name="UNICOM"/>
</navaid:frequencies>
You've already done these (thanks again!).  Before landing, and really when in the vicinity, it's customery for VFR pilots to announce their positions on the CTAF or unicom frequency.  Airport tend to have more planes around than areas without airports and it help everyone to find eachother.  The other frequencies are useful too and I can explain them if you're interested, but you've already imported them in a very useful way so I won't go further for now.


Okay, that' sit for now, out of time.  As I get better with Locus I'll try to give you more information about my other ideas where they apply to flying and other hobbies for which maps are useful. I don't see where darkm20 gave you general thought about Locus for aviation, if he's done so already and there is somewhere I can see it I'd be interested to way in and also not to duplicate his work.

As a side note I'm the head of a small software team (3 of us, mostly windows development and our own PLC-like hardware for controls) we'll be working on Android apps for our customers within the next year or so.  At which that I become more familiar with Android I'd be happy to help on this project if there is anyway I can be of use.  I had actually planned on writing a mapping application which would allow taking a photo of a topo or any to-scale map and then mapping it to gps coordinates, which it appears Locus already does so you've already saved me some work on 1 hobby project anyway!

Best Regards.

[ehansen]

Sorry for so many typos above, lots to describe and I was low on time.  I worked with Locus a bit more this morning comparing it again to a dedicated Aviation GPS.  Typical usage for many pilots is a "Go to Airport" type of entry.  Most of the GPS's allow typing the 3-digit airport identifier and then routing to it. What I noticed was that you are now displaying the "navAid:Name" not the "name".  This also leads to another problem with this data-set, which is that multiple items have the same "navAid:Name", resulting in needing to ignore some of the items and not knowing which one you get (the duplicates are that some airports have a VOR nearby with the same name).

What I was thinking was perhaps combining the two such that they are NavAid:Name (Name).  So: "ABRAMS MUNI (4D0)" for the data below:
<name>4D0</name>
<cmt>ABRAMS MUNI,GRAND LEDGE,MI,US</cmt>
<type>AIRPORT</type>
<extensions>
<navaid:name>ABRAMS MUNI</navaid:name>

This would eliminate all 26 duplicates found in my 1034 item import from the test-case I'm verifying your new import with.  It would also (I think) allow your search option to find airports and VORs by their identifier.

Notes:
A VOR (VHF omnidirectional radio range) if you aren't familiar is a radio transmitter which basically rotates and sends out the radial it's at on a particular freq as it rotates.  Airplane equipment can then pick these up and tell you what radial you are "from" or "to" with relation to the VOR you are reading.  Using two or more VORs a pilot can then fairly accurately determine their position.


Thanks again for your interest and willingness to adapt Locus for pilots!

[Menion]

hi,
  quite long and useful post. thank you!

  I'm for some time think more about special version of locus just for pilots. There is many users like you, who appreciate it. Currently I'm quite busy with some stuff around locus for common usage, so there is not much time for specialities. Anyway I have one private page where all interesting information, useful for Locus AIR are listed, so I'll for sure use your post to implement better support for this kind of GPX extension

[ehansen]

Thanks for the update, of what I documented I feel that the most helpful (and probably easy) short term changes would be the combining the of two names such that they are NavAid:Name (Name). So: "ABRAMS MUNI (4D0)" for the data below:
<name>4D0</name>
<cmt>ABRAMS MUNI,GRAND LEDGE,MI,US</cmt>
<type>AIRPORT</type>
<extensions>
<navaid:name>ABRAMS MUNI</navaid:name>

So if you have a priority queue for items I'd ask that that happen before the other items I suggested.  Also, is there a thread I've missed about Locus AIR?

Cheers,

Eric