GPS Mapping How To

Netforcement is a primary sponsor of the Catalyst Racing Team car in the Cannonball One Lap of America. Part of our sponsorship included real-time GPS mapping of the race car. We provided the GPS hardware and wrote custom software to convert the latitude and longitude raw data into a JPG map of the race. The map is updated every 15 min to show the current location of the car.

GPS Hardware

The GPS hardware used in the Catalyst Racing Team car was rented from www.aaaspyshop.com. AAA Spy Shop specializes in GPS car tracking equipment. The great thing about them is you can rent a self contained GPS car tracking unit and have it delivered the next day. You open the waterproof case and turn on the Nextel phone and then attach it to your car. The waterproof case had two big magnets attached to it, So you can mount the GPS under the car or in the trunk and it won't slide around.

GPS Software

When the vehicle moves the GPS coordinates are uploaded to a secure web site. So the AAA Spy Shop provides a total turn key package that was designed "just to work" and be easy enough for anyone to use. The web site with the collected data lists the date/time, estimated speed and a button to map the location. When you press the map button you are sent to yahoo maps to show you where the car was at that time. This is great if you just want to find out where your car is at a specific time. For our project wanted to draw a map with all the points of data so we could see visually on one map where the car had been and where it is now.

Automating the data retrieval

The standard AAA Spy Shop web page included the latitude and longitude as part of the URL for yahoo maps. I wrote a simple AutoIT v3 script to start IE, login to the web site and then save the web page to a local file.

Creating the Map

I created a Python script that read the local file and converted the latitude and longitude into X,Y coordinates that can be mapped on the JPG base map. I used the draw.line command to connect all the data points and for the current location I used a green dot.

View the live map of the race.