Google Earth

Post date: Jul 4, 2011 3:10:16 PM

To get your nodes to show on the LocustWorld GoogleEarth overlay please follow these instructions:

Point and Click Mode:

Once you have at least one node with valid coordinates, then the map will display and you can simply click on the map where you would like to position a node. To enable this mode, you must click the "Reposition" link at the bottom of the page and this will enable repositioning.

In repositioning mode, when you click the map itself, an "Imaginary Node" icon will appear titled with the letter "I" and a pop-up window will ask which node the position should be saved as. Simply select the node you would like to position and click "Save".

Clicking on the icon will make the imaginary node disappear. Multiple imaginary nodes can be created for the purposes of mesh layout planning.

Double clicking on the map when not in repositioning mode will center the map at the point you clicked, this is handy, often just before zooming in to a specific part of the mesh

Manual Mode:

For each node on your mesh, manage the node and complete the longitude and latitude fields with your decimal coordinates.

eg:

Latitude: -53.2249

Longitude: 67.7321

Altitude: 10

Altitude is measured in meters, don't worry about filling this field in if the height above sea level is not known.

Check the "Publish Position" tick box to enable the name and position of your node to be publicly available.

Click "Make Changes on Reboot" to apply the changes without rebooting your meshbox.

If you are using a GPS and it outputs coordinates that look like

• W 42.244 N 53.4564 or something like 44'33'21

Then you can convert to decimal degrees using the web tools on this page

You'll need to make the coordinates positive or negative, depending on whether the coordinate is being converted from North/South or East/West. For positive values simply write the number, for negative values write it like -53.2249

Latitude is positive if you are north of the equator, and negative south of the equator. Longitude is Positive if you are to the east of Greenwich, London, e.g. Europe, or Negative if you are to the west of Greenwich, e.g. USA

Joe Roper has this advice: One way of getting the correct node location is to look up the address in Google Earth, and to default to decimal degrees, in tools, options, under rendering, select the degrees radio button, then return to the map and hover your mouse over the node location, and read the off the degrees at the bottom of the page. CTRL L toggles the grid on or off.

When using Google Earth, if there isn't sufficient satellite resolution for your local area, it is a very good idea to enable the "Roads" overlay which can be found on the bottom right of the main Google Earth display. This makes it much easier to see where you are.

You should also ensure that you don't enter exactly the same coordinates for more than one node. Even if they are located in the same location you should adjust any duplicates so they are slightly different. For example if the coordinates were -53.2249 67.7321 for two nodes you could make one of them -53.22491 to make it slightly different. This is because if two nodes have identical positions, only one of them will be shown on the map.

A publicly accessible version of the map (eg no login needed) will be made available shortly so that you can link to it externally from your own website. Only nodes with Publish Position set to yes will be displayed on this map and the data will be more generic (eg sensitive information will not be shown)

The Google Earth map is currently only available on the http://americas2.wiana.org mirror. It will become active on all the other mirrors shortly.

If you've entered everything correctly, you should end up with a map that looks a bit like this one:

See: LinkingToGoogleEarth for details on how to display your map on your own website.