Mae Sot completely re-done

Hi people,

Seeing that some people have mapped Mae Sot mostly using my tracks and finding a lot of errors in it I have re-done most of it. I’d appreciate it if somebody could take a look and let me know whether there is anything I have done wrong that needs correcting.

I’ve got masses of tracks and POIs that I want to add over the next few months. As I have lived in Mae Sot for about 9 months this is the area where I have most of the data and which I’m most familiar with. I guess I have started with the most difficult area, then.

Any help and hints are appreciated.

Kind regards,
Peter (now in NZ).

Mae Sot to Umphang is finished. I’ll be moving North from there.

Hello Peter,

a warm welcome to the Thailand forum. Great to here that you contribute to Thailand. There’s still much to do here. We are not many.

I’m mapping since about one year in Thailand, mainly in Khon Kaen. I tried once to map based on OSM GPS tracks in Udon Thani without being there and with little additional information. I won’t try it again. Finally I stayed two days there, tracked myself and used the existing tracks for higher precision.

In Mae Moei I’ve been from one afternoon to the next morning coming through and passing by Mae Sot and going to Myawaddy for about an hour. I’ve seen, recorded and mapped a little bit only there. But I think I can have a look. I’ll let you know when I see something.

Kind regards
Willi

Thanks Willi. One day we hope to retire in Thailand, but not being allowed to work there was a bit of a bummer. I have mapped quite a bit in Thailand for a Garmin GPS map, but the map has never seen the light of day. So I’m now converting this to OSM.

Does anybody have a reasonably working converter from Polish Format (.mp) to OSM? I have a python script, but it’s a little crude.

Regards,
Peter.

Hi,

as Polish Format is vector data this might not be the preferred input format for maps. Do you still have the GPS tracks?

What is the source of the mp file? Does the license allow an import into OSM? It has to be free and compatible with CC-BY-SA as well as with the upcoming ODbL, else your edits will be removed when converting the license.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Polish_format

Stephan

Hi Stephan,

Polish format is FOR vector maps, it isn’t a vector format as far as I understand it. This is what a road looks like in a .mp file:


[POLYLINE]
Type=0x3
EndLevel=7
RoadID=59
Data0=(-8.53737,126.93743),(-8.53741,126.93750),(-8.53745,126.93761),(-8.53752,126.93766),(-8.53759,126.93782)
Nod1=198,147,0
Nod2=206,145,0
[END]

To answer your private question as well: the PFM tag contains the Type= code in the above example. It’s useful when converting POIs.
Yes, I still have all the tracks and you can download them from my web site beddha.free.fr/GPS. In fact, I have found that people have done that and then used them to create roads on OSM, which I’m now cleaning up. (I was there and the mappers obviously were not.)

The reasons for using the .mp files rather than the original tracks are simple: the roads in the .mp files have already been edited and cleaned up, joined, etc. If I were to use the tracks I would have to re-do all this work. In the .mp files some roads have been numbered or named. You can’t always do that with tracks, because the track names have to be unique in a file. Other than that, the data is identical as far as I can see.

I own the tracks and I have created the roads and POIs in the .mp files and I’m happy to release them into the public domain, as I can’t see myself ever making any money from them anyway.

The only problem I’m having with all this is that after much searching I have found only one way to convert .mp into .osm files. It’s a Python script that I have adapted a little, so that POIs get labelled appropriately. That’s why there are all the PFM tags. I don’t understand Python and I’m unable to remove this.

I tried reading about the OSM licences but it’s too complicated for me. I’m just releasing the data into PD and for me that’s the end of that problem.

Kind regards,
Peter.

Hi Peter,

not sure how the exact definition for a vector format should be. As opposed to a bunch of single points, maybe ordered your MP format contains linestrings and polygons with metadata. So similar to what we draw in the various OSM editors to represent the geometry.

I think it would be very useful if you can also upload your raw GPS tracks, maybe in addition to your linestrings. This can help other mappers to understand how a way is laid out.
As GPS can have errors for various reasons (e.g reflections on building) having the median on some points can help estimating the correct position of a way better.

I’m not too much Python expert but you can contact me on PM, so I can try helping to get rid of the PFM tags. If I understand you right they are no longer needed once you replaced them by the proper OSM-tags.

Stephan

From what I remember from school a vector is defined as having a point of origin, a direction and a distance from that point.

Can I upload about 10 MB, containing around 1400 tracks in one go?

That would be an Euclidean vector. In computer science there are a dozen other meanings for the word vector.

What OSM does is another incarnation of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Map (another way to represent the geometry primitives).

I used the word “vector” to distinguish the data format from the formats that are used by devices to store the raw coordinate information. (GPSBabel can translate them to GPX).

When talking about your upload: you are referring to 10MB of GPX? Should be possible. You can zip multiple files in one archive.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Upload

Take care to set the visibility to something different than “private”.

Stephan