I should have written this a few weeks ago when this was fresh … but time has moved on. I can’t pretend.
Easiest way through it:
a) I did a prototype. You can see a video of it .. pictures don’t do it justice .. at the following links:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BT-A9yrhNCv/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BT-BWXphF5I/
b) I used an Android program called “MyCarTracks” to then record my tracks. I specifically used these options:
- Autorecord – when turned on, mycartracks starts on boot and can be set up to start recording when the car starts moving. This prunes out the GPS points when your car is on, but not moving yet.
- It has the option of “don’t record a point till you’ve moved N*precision feet”, which gets rid of Jitter. side effect though is time at stoplights ends up looking angular rather than vertical.
- It allows track naming during or after the trip, to make it easier to identify tracks.
- It allows export to CSV on the SD card; you don’t have to use their online service.
I tried to do the following routes – if Google Maps will let me:
It took several mornings – I had to go straight there, and NOT stop at Starbucks. That can be hard, sometimes. I also wanted to get it around 8am, during commute hours – mostly successful.
c) I put all these maps together into my program, and … ran into a problem. Somehow, the code that writes out to a .STL file seems to stop at 32k. So, I had to rejigger the code a bunch .. I also changed it so that all the tracks would END “top-justified” at work, so that the shortest track was on top.
d) And then it was time to stop. I could have futzed with it forever .. So, gulped, uploaded my image, ordered it printed. And immediately:
e) Buyer’s regret. Turns out I could have gotten it printed for significantly less money! I found http://3dprintingpricecheck.com/ which led me to https://www.makexyz.com which supposedly would have printed my thing in resin for $27.90. However, the dimensions .. maybe that’s smaller.
So I called it “a learning experience”, and let it go, archived the project, and started a new one.
All the code is at http://github.com/sunnywiz/commute3d. Including the final .STL (and most of the intermediate ones as well) and my GPS logs.
I’ll post some more pics and video when the print arrives.
