Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@topshed
Last active May 14, 2019 19:40
Show Gist options
  • Save topshed/b9f3490cccb53cd4af85a8ab3020be25 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save topshed/b9f3490cccb53cd4af85a8ab3020be25 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.

Mapping Astro Pi Life on Earth Images

A simple way to visualise the path of the ISS while your experiment was running is to plot your photos on a map. You can use a free software application on the Raspberry Pi to do this easily and quickly.

Note: In order for this to work, you should have embedded into the EXIF meta-data of your photo the latitiude and longitude of the ISS at the time the image was captured (this process was described in this section of the Phase 2 guide).

If you saved your latitude/longitude into a CSV file but did not embed the data into the appropriate EXIF fields then you could write some code to do this now.

Installation

Make sure your Raspberry Pi's software is up-to-date. You need to be using the Desktop version of Raspbian, not the command-line only (lite) version which you may have installed for final testing of your code. Open a terminal window and type:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

Then install the DigiKam software:

sudo apt install digikam

This should add a number of new entries to the Graphics menu available from the Raspberry Button.

Imgur

Usage

When you first run DigiKam, a wizard will take you through various options but you should just accept the defaults. Note that Digikamn will look for images in the /home/pi/Pictures folder so that is where you should put all your photos. Once you've loaded them onto your Pi, click on View -> Refresh to force Digikam to re-scan that folder.

The normal view is to show Thumnails, which is useful for looking at the images, but if you select View -> Map it will plot the images onto a globe. At the botom of the window are a set of options buttons. the fourth in from the right toggles the view between thumbnails and markers - the latter is a good way of viewing the orbital path of the ISS (it is also faster when scrolling the globe).

Imgur

Once you've zoomed in, you can switch back to plotting the photos as thumbnails on the map. Note that a single thumbnail may be displayed for a group of photos (indicated by a number in the thumbnail).

Imgur

You can also adjust the size of the thumbnail so that you can tile a single image across the orbital path,

Imgur

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment