Skip to main content

Things I Learned: Time Stamps on QSO Maps using the Google Charts API, Datasette, and KML

 I'm still using that API that was deprecated. I know I should give it up, but it just keeps being useful. It's possibly the best Google product ever. (In that it just keeps on existing rather than falling into the deprecation void.)

Specifically, I used the dynamic icon portion of the Google Charts API. 

The Google Earth Pro animations of our QSO are missing something. (OK, maybe lots of things, but one thing I saw that I could add on this iteration.) They don't have a way to easily view the time of each QSO, or the progression of time during the POTA or SOTA session. Thanks to a suggestion from a StackOverlow user, dynamic bubble icons have provided that!


I've added icons that appear with each QSO on the map, displaying the callsign, received RST, and and time of the QSO, as well as a different set of time icons that simply update each minute of map time to display the UTC time as the map animates.

Using the Google Dynamic Icon API

The following address gives back a bubble icon for a QSO with N5KIP.

https://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chst=d_bubble_icon_texts_big&chld=glyphish_clock|bbT|00ff00|000000|n5kip|Received+RST+539|2024-03-09T13:35:00


But, I also wanted to know how time was progressing as the map advanced, so I also added bubble icons that updated once per minute. 

I built all of this in the Datasette QSO application I've been developing. Adding kml features has been much easier since I moved to using Datasette's Jinja capabilites.

For example, to add the icons that update each minute, I simply added a jinja loop to the kml template that creates one screen overlay per minute during the time span between the first and last QSOs.

{% for map_minute in Map_minutes %}

        <ScreenOverlay>

                <name>Map Time</name>

                <Icon>

                        <href><![CDATA[https://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chst=d_bubble_icon_texts_big&chld=glyphish_clock|bb|00ff00|000000|{{ map_minute }}]]></href>

                </Icon>

                <drawOrder>{{loop.index}}</drawOrder>

                <overlayXY x="0" y="1" xunits="fraction" yunits="fraction"/>

                <screenXY x="0.4" y="0.1" xunits="fraction" yunits="fraction"/>

                <rotationXY x="0" y="0" xunits="fraction" yunits="fraction"/>

                <size x="0" y="0" xunits="fraction" yunits="fraction"/>

                <TimeStamp>{{ map_minute }}</TimeStamp>

        </ScreenOverlay>

{% endfor %}

What Happens When the API Goes Away Forever

What about deprecation concerns? For now, I'm studiously recording each animated map as a video. The recordings do not depend on the API. This might not be a sustainable model for new videos... eventually. Still, worst case, none of the existing videos will break.


References:

Small world! The StackOverflow user mentioned above had also provided the kml circle generator I use on some of my QSO maps.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comments on this topic:

Popular posts from this blog

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1.  While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero.  This is typically explained in the following way.  While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare.  That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2].  Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector.  Its operation is in...
1 comment
Read more

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain ...
11 comments
Read more

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:...
Post a Comment
Read more