How many times have this happened to You?

1. You need a boundingbox. Possibly to query a database or maybe call a WMS service.

2. You open a map somwehere on the internet or maybe in another GIS-tool than FME.

3. You locate Your area of interest and manually note of the corner coordinates -the bbox. (xmin is…. ymin is… max lat is…)

4. You manually enter these into FME.

We figured out a smarter way here: http://bbox.me/osm

1. Search for You area of interest (Find Place)

2. Zoom in/out and redefine the bbox (Set to screen)

3. Select the Resource (“6 BBOX Transformer.fmw”) and press “Download”.

Now open the generated Workspace in FME and You have a Transformer with Your Boundingbox!

(If You do have troubles getting it to work with Internet Explorer – You may have to enter bbox.me to the trusted sites).

The old FLEX-based OSM extractor has been around for a while. A week ago I decided to rewrite it in HTML and it’s now in live beta!

In short http://bbox.me/osm lets You search and zoom in any area and get a ready-made FME Workbench for that particualar place.

This is making it real easy to extract smaller areas of OSM-data straight into FME.

- Dont forget to tribute OSM-data and MapQuest (and FME from www.safe.com) if You use it !

(If You do use Internet Explorer and have problems getting search to work. Try adding bbox.me to trusted sites).

The major supergreat components I used was:

- Leaflet

- Open MapQuest and tiles.

I will publish new and fresh 2012 Workbenches later on but for now I just include a small instruction. Use this at Your own risk!

Click to enlarge:

continue reading…

MapTrawler

While experimenting with bbox.me, more than a year ago, I came up with an interesting search method, “Map Trawling.” In short the method can be described as:

1. Find out placenames within a certain area.
2. Feed all these placenames as keywords into a search-engine.

The result is: Geographic information, Maps, Transit information, Municipal plans, Tourist Guides, Bicycle maps etc…

Not very surprising if You think about it. However, entering these placenames manually is tedious. By automating this with a web-map it gets more fun. It also works with other languages!

So MapTrawler is an early fun beta-version. (Limited with the amount of Webservice-requests Geonames can handle, Some Internet Explorer issues.  Note that MapTrawler do work with my Safari on iPad – but have some issues if you are logged into Google. And as always – You use it at your own risk! )

After reading James Fees blog this was my first go at Mapstraction. – We are about to make a plain HTML/JavaScript version of the OSM Extractor for FME currently running in Flash.

Trying it out in London:

So here are some examples of what can be found:

1. Some sort of fashion-map:

2. A very interesting document about prototype wayfinding in London.

3.  An entertaining map of filming locations in London.

There are also a lot of other findings like guides and KML-files if You switch to search for that.

You can read about the old Flash-version here : http://bbox.me/blog/?p=38

/Regards

Ulf Mansson (Ulf Månsson)
Twitter:@ulfme

Would You like to play around with LiDAR and FME? Have no data for testing?

By using the “OSM Extractor” to get OSM data (buildings+roads) and combining it with SRTM data I’ve come up with something that (sort of) looks like LiDAR data.

By applying the PointCloud trix by Dmitri at Safe I produced LAS files that might be of interest to someone.

Note that the buildings are not correct in height and the SRTM  has a huge Z-offset. That is – You can not really use this data for anything practical. But it looks good and is FUN to play with in FME.

The zip-file (covering an area in Lund/Sweden) is about 11 Mb and contains 1-5.LAS files that can be viewed in the FME Data Inspector.

Even if the data is “fake” extruded with “random” heights from OpenStreetMap it looks pretty.

I will try to produce some more Li(E)DAR in the future. Feel free to request an area.

/FME Rox

Ulf Mansson (Ulf Månsson)
Twitter: @ulfme

Today I decided to examine if someone actually use our FLASH-application “OSM Extractor“.

In short it’s a map with a simple user-interface to generate a Workspace for FME. The workspace is setup to extract OSM-data with the current bounding-box. (You can read more in the instructions).

I was quite surprised to see that it’s used a lot. The below picture indicates where FME workspaces have been generated to extract OSM-data in the middle of Europe:

The map was generated by FME by parsing the Web-server logs. (Quite easy to do).

/Regards

Ulf Mansson (Ulf Månsson)
Twitter: @ulfme

Soon it’s over for one of the greatest achievements in mankind history. The last mission will be STS-135 for the space shuttle.

As a space-nerd I will really miss this icon.

Creating a custom transformer in FME (called Atlantis) is my goodbye to the shuttle.

The transformer renders a PointCloud by using an embedded 3D-model from NASA.

You can download the transformer in a zip-file here and try it out (at Your own risk!)

Unzipped size is 5 MB.

/Regards

Ulf Mansson (Ulf Månsson)
Twitter: @ulfme

1 hr recording from the FME 2011 launch -  http://bit.ly/jB80wr

As FME 2011 was launched in March the Safe Software crew took of for an epic World tour.

The liftoff was in Vancouver. Some of us could not go there. But we did follow the  livestream (of great qualit by the way. Check out the conference and great presentations here).

However it certainly would be more fun if someone listened to Your comments…

7 countries

After starting a Skypeconversation I ended up with company from all over the world and several hours of recording with commentray from true FME Power Users:

• James Fee, USA – http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com
• Isabella Fluehler, Switzerland – http://www.inser.ch
• Ken Bragg, France – http://www.safe.com
• Jeff Konnen,  Luxembourg – http://www.ubithere.lu
• Brett Madsen, Australia – http://www.lagenspatial.com.au
• Mark Ireland, Canada – http://fmeevangelist.com
• Ulf Mansson, Sweden – http://bbox.me

The several hours of rambling FME comments then was edited down to this “essential mix” : http://bit.ly/jB80wr

The word spread

As the word got out there people held up notes in front of the camera and Tweeted about it.

Aaron Koning showing  “Hi Mom!”. Other notes read “We Love Ken!”

What did we say then?

There certainly where a lot of fun comments but also some serious feedback that Safe Software really did value and filed requests for.

You have to download and listen to find out everything but some highlites include:

* Candadians surprise us by using hockey-goals in the presentations!

* Jason Birch’s super hero cape!

* The table viewer!

* Kens Wife is a true superhero!

* FME is so fast so by using it you go back in time!

* The random transformer!

/Ulf Mansson  (or Ulf Månsson in Swedish…)

Thanks to Graeme’s fantastic optical writeup I finally created a Workbench in FME. (Actually “Workspace” is the correct expression but rarely used…..)

* For distance to the picture I decided to go with Graeme’s formula “(@Value(jpeg_exif_focallength) * 659.065) / 1000″

* However, I did implement a formula “(4.1-0.0330*@Value(jpeg_exif_focallength))” for the width of the picture.

* The result is a pretty big (29 Mb KMZ-file)     http://bbox.me/pub/gps_cam_1.kmz

* Here is a screenshot:

Finally running it all through FME producing a kmz-file

Looking pretty good! It really is pretty accurate.

/Ulf Mansson

Preliminary results

Here are som charts for the Tennisball test. We can clearly see that the distance to the picture is NOT a linear function.

* Using no zoom (FocalLength 4.25 mm) means approx 3m to the picture (middle tennisball)

* Using 6.4 zoom (FocalLength 27 mm) means approx 16-17 m to the picture (middle tennisball)

Distance to picture/tennisball and FocalLength

The data about the width is a bit more surprising?

It seems to be a more linear function going from 4-3.5 m in the same ranges.

Width and FocalLength

Whats the point?

One might ask what the (focal)point is. Let’s see in the coming post. The theory is that I now can calculate the most appropriate way to position pictures in 3D with FME. That is the offset from the Camera but also the width of the picture in metres.

The testpictures

Below are all the tespictures. Unfortunately my garden was too short for testing 10x zoom. Maybe I’ll try to test this on a suitable football field.

(Who knows? American Football fields might actually be entertaining one day…).

All the testpictures

/Ulf Mansson

I need to use Focallength but it’s tricky.

In my previous blog-post I confessed that I never really quite understood all the technical lingo with SLR Cameras. Today I realized that positioning pictures in 3D with FME still demands some knowledge about photo-lingo. Good thing I studied remote sensing 15 years ago then… So understanding what focallength means should be no problem – right? Just studying a bit of Wikipedia about the subject and we should be fine.

So I did. It did not help. I still can’t figure out how to use this in theory.

Why the interest in focallength then? Well – as far as I can see it is the only Exif-tag I can read that has information about “the distance to the picture”. What I mean is the distance to where I would position it in the 3D space.

So today I decided to experiment and gather the data I needed to understand this. And I did. However I have not fully analyzed the result. I will publish this shortly. However I will use this moment to announce a challenge.

Here is the challenge for You Camera nerds who knows all about focallength

1. I mounted my Camera on a Tripod in my garden. 1.53 m above ground pointing straight ahead.

2. The camera has these detailed technical specifications (For instance the Focal Length, f= mm 4.3-42.5 )

Below are two pictures.

* The first picture has the Focal Length 4.25 mm.

* The second one has Focal Length 12.29 mm.

(Note! ignore the big red and blue ones. It’s only the three Tennisball that should be used)

And here are the questions:

A. What is the distance (in metres) from the camera to the middle Tennisball for each picture ?

B. What is the distance (in metres) from the leftmost Tennisball to the Rightmost Tennisball for each picture?

If You post a comment with an answer I will give You the full testdata in Excel (gathered with FME) !

Picture A above

* What is the distance to the middle Tennisball from the camera? Focal Length 4.25 mm

* What is the distance from the leftmost Tennisball to the Rightmost Tennisball ?

Picture B above

* What is the distance to the middle Tennisball from the camera? Focal Length 12.29 mm

* What is the distance from the leftmost Tennisball to the Rightmost Tennisball ?

/Ulf Mansson