exporting mscape traces to Google Earth
I’m not very familiar with either GPS or Google Earth so this took me a lot of trial and error – there’s probably room for some refinement!
Problem:
You have used mscape to log your GPS route, but the overlay trace function within mscape isn’t useful for comparing multiple traces or for sharing with others.
One possible solution:
Strip your log file
Open your log file and save a copy somewhere else to work with.
I’m generally working with coordinates in decimal degrees in Google Earth (Tools > Options… >3D view), so that’s the format I want my log data in.
Open the file in notepad (or other text editor) and check your data is in the right format. Here’s a sample line for Birmingham, UK (wrapped):
21:05:32,Place,centre_and_digbeth,E,OnLocationChange,
52.4545033333333,-1.892005
We need to strip out all the first part so we’re only left with the coordinates.
Open the text file (you did save a different copy to work with, right?) in Calc or alternative spreadsheet application. You’ll need to open it as text CSV so make sure you select that file type after selecting the file you want to work with:
The next window will give you some options. Check the box to select comma as a separator and double-check in the preview below that this splits your data up into the appropriate columns:
After the file has opened, select columns A-E and delete them:
This will leave you with just your longitude and latitude data in columns F and G. They’re the wrong way around though so we need to select column G and cut and paste it into column A, and then cut and paste F into B:
For me, calc defaults to showing numbers to 2 decimal places, so I right click and format cells to bring it up to 14 decimal places which is how accurate my log data is:
(You may need to increase the column width to display the full number rather than ###.)
We now have data that we can insert into a .kml file for Google Earth. Nearly.
Save your spreadsheet as a .csv file, making sure to check the “edit filter settings” box at the bottom:
In the next window make sure you’re using a comma as your field delimiter and then save.
You can now open up your .csv file in notepad. It should look something like this:
-1.89200500000000,52.45450333333330
-1.89200500000000,52.45450333333330
-1.89200500000000,52.45450333333330
-1.89213000000000,52.45448500000000
-1.89213000000000,52.45448500000000
-1.89213000000000,52.45448500000000
-1.89210666666667,52.45450333333330
This is what you will carry over into your .kml file.
Note for UTM data:
Some of my logs are in UTM format, (I think it’s something to do with importing a pre-existing maplib file, this may help) in which case they look more like this to start off with:
20:32:17,Place,centre_and_digbeth,E,OnLocationChange,
575850.093317163,5814462.83102075
(You can check what you’re aiming for by hovering the mouse over your location in Google Earth and reading off the coordinates at the bottom of the window.)
To convert from UTM to decimal lat/long I used the batch convert sheet of this spreadsheet from Steven Dutch. In the case of Birmingham (and most of the UK) set column D cells to all have a value of “N” and column E (aka UTM zone) to “30”. You’ll then have to copy your data into F and G and extend the formulae down on either side to the appropriate length.
I then had problems trying to copy and paste the results into a different file because the cells were still trying to reference cells in the first spreadsheet for the formulae. My eventual work-around was to save as a .csv file and then open it again before copying into a different file, switching the column positions and then taking it into notepad.
The .kml file
Working from the examples here, I got my basic .kml structure down to this.
Save that file and then you can open it up in your text editor.
Copy and paste your coordinates into the gap between the
Save and then cross your fingers as you open the .kml file in Google Earth!
