In 2006, Seth carried a GPS everywhere with the hope of eventually doing something interesting with the data.  In 2010, he finally wrote the map visualization software he had in mind:

Image: http://www.sethoscope.net/heatmap/bman.png

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVNJcapE32Y

This year, the plan is to do something similar, but with a few improvements:

1. A new map will be generated at least once a day, rather than four years later.

2. The map (image, maybe video) will be displayed in our camp.

3. We will use data from more than one person.

Part one is easy at this point.  The software is already written.  We just need to bring a laptop and run something every now and then.

Part two requires hardware on-playa for display and power.  It may or may not come together in time.

Part three depends on people carrying around a GPS, as well as software improvements (not done yet) to handle multiple data sources, both for easy data inloading and processing enhancements.

Most urgent tasks are:

 - Seth gets a low power video projector projector acquired.  (50W, 110 lumens, 33.4° projection angle, runs without a computer)

 - Brenda gets a solar power system

If either of these don't happen in time, we probably won't have an in-camp display of this year's data.  Once the projector is on its way, Seth with hurry up and do the software improvements for multi-person data integration.

Some math for projector distance and image size:

image size w

distance d

projection angle A

w = 2d tan(A/2)   (I drew a picture; you'll have to draw or find your own...)

A = 33.4°, so w is 0.6 d

e.g. at 10 feet away, we have a 6 foot image.  Is that 6 feet wide? tall? diagonal?  I don't know.  It's whatever the 33.4° refers to.

Plan A projection plan:

- projector on van dashboard (4'8" elevation)

- project onto museum wall (8' tall?)

- bottom of image no lower than 2' elevation

Straight shot gives us ~ 5' image, with 2' margin at the bottom and 1' at the top, which means 8.3' projection distance.

The projector does have keystone adjustment, so we don't need to aim it level, though if the museum barn is truly 8' tall, it works out pretty well.

Projection plan B is to put a translucent screen inside the windshield and project onto the back of it.  I'll have to try it out to see if it passes enough through and whether the blur is acceptable.  If it blurs just right, it can save me a lot of computation!  :-)  But we'd have to play around with how and where to prop up the projector and screen to get good angles and sizes.  A 3' image needs 5' projection distance.