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Video Clips in KML Ham Radio QSO Maps

 This post and the next will detail plans for ideas inspired by K4SWL, Thomas Witherspoon, of qrper.com. Thomas records all of his POTA activations, and then posts them on YouTube like the one below.

Meanwhile, Google Earth Web has introduced(?) the idea of carousels (maybe just new to me) in their KML styles. A carousel allows multiple media containers, (videos, hthml, pictures, etc.), to be attached to a placemark. The result is a placemark that looks like the following


Here's the idea. What if a POTA video could be automatically split up into per QSO snippets using ffmpeg and then automatically added to kml QSO maps like the one below?



In that case, not only would you see the information in the marker above, but you'd be able to listen to the fluttering signal as it bounced of the aurora on its way to New Mexico!

Heck, the map could even include and elevation profile per QSO.

I think the technology exists already. The keyer for the Pico-W runs on Linux on a chromebook and outputs a UTC timestamp every time I send CW characters. That gives both callsigns and timestamps that could then be programmatically used to pull snips out of a video in a manner similar to the one I used to pull out bird freeze frames. I'd need to sync my video recorder to UTC time as well, but that shouldn't be too difficult! In principle... Kinda cool.

Next: The QMX!!!




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