Second time at Osowa-Rondo in 2013

This Sunday 25+ riders attended a meeting at Osowa. A really big swarm of cyclists. Unfortunately I was able to keep the pace only for the first kilometers.

Video geocoding with gpsbabel

Contour camera

Crossing at Osowa

The winter was so hard and long that only yesterday I went to Osowa-roundabout on a road bike. We rode straight to Szemud (and back.) The weather was sunny but chilly.

There is an easy way to augment video files with GPS data using GPSbabel. Since version 1.4 of GPSBabel is able to create a subtitle file from a GPS tracklog. The subtitle contains latitude/longitude/altitude as well as the time. With a simple Perl scripts I have added current speed (not particularly accurate however).

To convert GPX file to subtitles one have to execute:

gpsbabel -i gpx -f FILE.gpx -o subrip,video_time=hhmmss,gps_time=hhmmss,gps_date=YYYYMMDD -F FILE.srt

Where: video_time -- video position (relative to beginning of video) for which exact corresponding GPS timestamp is known. gps_time -- the time part of the GPS timestamp which corresponds to a known position in the video. gps_date -- the date part of the GPS timestamp which corresponds to a known position in the video.

On the first video (see below) you can see that in 34 second I passed the zebra crossing. The zebra's crossing coordinates can be easily identified at Google Maps (cf. picture Crossing at Osowa). Now one have to search the GPX track for the point which is nearest to 54.429591/18.477973. I developed a simple Perl script for that purpose:

$ perl My_GPX_nearest_timestamp.pl -c 54.429591:18.477973 20130420.gpx
*** USAGE: My_GPX_nearest_timestamp.pl -c latitude:longitude GPX-file
*** Looking for 20 points near: 54.429591:18.477973 (lat/lon) ***
> 15.3758195746663 2013-04-20T10:27:09Z  54.429509640:18.477780819
> 22.0617273294607 2013-04-20T09:05:15Z  54.429701502:18.478256240
> 32.6458959467509 2013-04-20T10:27:15Z  54.429787332:18.478348190
> 43.3771684316959 2013-04-20T09:05:24Z  54.429531014:18.477310427
> 47.7727043140018 2013-04-20T09:05:11Z  54.429905936:18.478475260
> 63.903936892351 2013-04-20T10:27:00Z  54.429627573:18.476987137
> 70.171200323179 2013-04-20T09:05:28Z  54.429655485:18.476893930

One can stipulate from the above output that I passed a point 15,4 meters away from 54.429591/18.477973 at 10:27:09 GMT as well as I passed another point which is 22 meters away from 54.429591/18.477973 at 09:05:15. As I cycled back and forth along the same route the second point is valid, the first is accidentally closer but as the time is almost one and half hours later it is clear that I was there on returning home. So gpsbabel should be executed as follows (20130420.gpx contains GPX track):

gpsbabel -i gpx -f 20130420.gpx -o subrip,video_time=000034,gps_time=090515,gps_date=20130420 -F 20130420_1.srt

Speed is added with another very simple Perl script:

perl add_speed_2_srt.pl 20130420_1.srt > 20130420_1_S.srt

Just to remind: internally all GPS units record time/date using Coordinated Universal Time aka Greenwich Mean Time vel Zulu time (for army enthusiasts). What the unit displays is another matter (usually it displays local time).

Part two of the ride is here.

Map of 3City roads

Bigger map

I have found really impressive road map of tree city and tree city area prepared by some anonymous cycling enthusiast. The map is enriched with photographs and short notes concerning road surface types and traffic (unfortunately in Polish). Very useful for cyclists visiting 3City---other maps do not contain information on traffic/surface.

Roads marked with green and blue denotes paved roads, marked with red denotes paved road as well but with high traffic. Yellow denotes unpaved surface. Orange and pink denotes paved road but not particularly suitable for cycling (cobblestones, concrete road slabs etc)

Wunderground's weather sticker added to my blog

The weather station that I've been using since March 2011 is Termometerfabriken Viking 02049--a clone of Fine Offset Electronics WH 2080. The station is connected via USB cable to my tiny Sheevaplug server and the software used is pywws. Yesterday I added my station to the pool of Wunderground's Personal Weather Stations (see Wunderground's weather sticker added to the right panel of this page). It have appeared to be pretty simple: one have to register to wunderground.com. Next one have to register his/her Personal Weather Stations. On pressing Submit button station ID is returned.

Now one have to change the configuration of pywws. I am using an old version of pywws (11.02 namely)---the exact details can be different when one is using newer versions.

In the configuration file weather.ini:

[hourly]
last update = 2013-01-07 08:09:00
plot = []
text = []
twitter = []
underground = False

change False to True

Add password and station ID to [underground] section of configuration file:

[underground]
station = IPOMORSK8
password = #######

To check if everything is OK run the command:

python  pywws/pywws/ToUnderground.py -v ~/data/weather

The above should upload some data to wunderground.com.

It is hard to find IPOMORSK8 at wunderground.com because it is not directly accessible from user's account. I have found my station only thanks to WunderSearch. Looking at nearby stations list is useless as well because It takes approximately 24 hours for our database to update all of our web servers and place your station on your local forecast page.

Lime green Hüdz replacements hoods

I have bought Hüdz replacements hoods for my Campagnolo Ergopowers. I insist on lime (Milano Lime) ones and thus have some problems to get them. There are in stock at Wiggle but Available to order, stock expected Mid January 2013 and the delivery costs are high as it is 14 GBP for an 19 GBP item.

I have found a cheaper seller at Ebay, namely mojo-cycles. Not only the hoods arrived within a week (very fast) but the seller refunded 8 dollars for excessive delivery costs! In result, I paid ca 18 GBP for the item and delivery.

Mojo-cycles appeared to be an excellent seller.

First time at Osowa-Rondo in 2013

The weather was fine: dry and the temperature a few degrees over zero (Celsius scale:-). It was a pity only a few riders were present.

My bicycle tracks mapped with Google Fusion Tables (for 2012)

My bicycle tracks for 2012 (a few of them are not bicycle).

2012