Zoom Maps

[allencherry]

Anyone who help please:

We have an application that requires the user to have a map showing on the GUI, and to be able to zoom in and out, pan around, place 'tags' indicating locations and also have a compass pointer  overlayed on the map.  Latitude and Longitude values are also required to be shown as the mouse moves over the map.

This all sounds like a 'Google Earth' type of facility, but we have the following constraints:

NO Internet connection is permitted from the network - so all map data must be held locally.

The software MUST be able to run on Windows (XP) and also Linux Red Hat 5 (using the CVI Linux run-time) - hence no 'OCX' applications.

Can anyone offer advice on a good starting point for such an application, preferably just using the libraries and facilities within CVI2010?

Thank you in anticipation of your help,

Allen Cherry

[fishingman]

Hi,

I worked with Google maps on ASP.NET. It offers all what you want in terms of handling map. I do not know if you can integrate this package in CVI. But you should know that you still need internet connection to update the map. First you need to know what map you will use, it is integrated into CVI? ...

[fishingman]

you have this solution also:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/GPS-maps-or-Google-earth/m-p/824327/highlight/true#M38936

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/Maps-and-LabWindows/m-p/219719/highlight/true#M16261

[Oli.P]

Hi Allen,

I'm Oli, an Applications Engineer at NI UK.

I have had a look around to see if I can find anything that you might find useful for your application.  I'm not sure if you might have come across them before, but there are a few examples on the NI Developer Community of how to use Google Maps or Google Earth within LabVIEW.

I think Google Earth would be the best to use of the two as it provides native offline-mode support.

I found these examples that you might like to take a look at:

Embedded Google Earth in your Application

Google Maps in LabVIEW

Using Google Maps in LabVIEW

Google Earth is supported under Linux too just for reference.  I just had a quick try with the 'Embedded Google Earth' link above with some offline cache of London and it seemed to work quite well.

Feel free to post back if you need any further assistance

Looks like Fishingman beat me to it though!

Kind Regards

[allencherry]

Hi,

Thanks for the response and the idea of using Google maps on ASP.NET.

The main problem is that there can be NO Internet connection!  We do know the area that will be required for the display (a very large area!), and we will require the ability to be able to zoom down to the small detail of the map over the whole area.

Can the Google Maps ASP.NET work with CVI - and if so, how is it incorporated?

Also, can it work with the Linux run time?

Many thanks,

Allen

[allencherry]

Hi Oli,

Many thanks for your suggestions - but can you say if the examples in 'LabView' will work in 'CVI'?  And if so, how do we transfer them to CVI?

We do not do any work with LabView at all  - everything is in CVI.

Many thanks,

Allen

[Oli.P]

Hi Allen,

I was just having a look into that.  I'm not sure what the answer is likely to be, but I will try to find out for you.

Kind Regards,

[allencherry]

Hi again,

The Google Maps applications all appear to require a permanent Internet connection, which is a 'no no' in our situation!

Thanks,

Allen

[Oli.P]

Hi,

I was aware of that, but there are a few little applications that you can find on googlecode that fetch map data and cache it locally so you don't need the internet connection.  The utilities aren't as useful as the implementation in Google Earth as they fetch a single zoom level at a time, but it would still work...just take a while!

One that I've used before is 'gmapcatcher'.  I don't know how we'd modify the code to make it look locally rather than online with Maps (rather than Earth).  It might be really simple - I'd have to try it.

First we aught to find out if it will work on CVI...

I'll report back with my findings.

Kind Regards

[allencherry]

Hi Oli and Fishingman,

Just to add a bit of information - the 'Offline Mode' for Google Maps doesn't allow enough data to be stored for the area the we require together with the level of detail that we need to go down to.

Unless there is some way of increasing it, and we will also have to transfer it to the computers that do not have the Internet connection, and are running the pplication that we are writing.

Thanks,

Allen