Bearing angle of the vehicle - obd-ii

I have logged some data from OBD-II port of a vehicle using Torque app. One of the parameters logged via GPS is "Bearing" which I suppose is the angle between North and vehicle direction of motion (?). If that is true, should the difference between each two consecutive data points give me the turning angle of the vehicle?
Thanks for reading.

Related

Finding point coordinates using their point data in kilometers

I have some point data that has kilometers from the specific point of the road. I want to extract the lat and long. How could it be done?
You will not be able to get a precise set of Lat/Long, unless there is more detail in the data recorded at the police station.
One solution might be to buffer the police station to 1 km then select all the road sections within the 1 km buffer. If the police data holds the road name or ID you could then link your accident to the road section identified in the buffer. Theoretically you could then take the center point along the road, however this would be misleading as if you create a map of this it will create a false impression of where accidents occur.

Efficiency store coordinates: which database choose and how

I'm aware this kind of questions is frequently asked. But due to the age of the most ones and the enhancements on databases that I rode, I think it could be a good idea to create a new one.
I try to efficiency store coordinates (100K) in a database and do some operations on it. In others words, I try to store coordinates and get a rapid access to them. A typical operation should return all the records within a circle with a radius of 20km and center with given coordinates.
I rode MongoDB has a 2D spatial index that can store lat and long like in this example: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6026634/6271092
I also rode that it's possible to store and get coordinates within the circle by using MySQL, a kd-tree and the Haversine formula.
So my question is, in January 2018, which database and how should I use to store, access and do some operations with coordinates efficiency? Thx.

Google maps distance matrix API: get absolute distance

I want to calculate distances between two coordinates but sometimes the origin coordinate is over / beyond the destination coordinate. And it is really problematic at one-way roads, because in this case the distance can be eg. 1 km to get back to the destination. In real life it is OK, but actually the real distance is only eg. 10 meters (if I could turn back on one-way roads). So only the direction is wrong.
I can resolve this problem if I call the API twice (origins=my_origin_coordinate&destinations=my_destination_coordinate and origins=my_destination_coordinate&destinations=my_origin_coordinate).
But is there a easier way to get both distance in one query? (to save my query limit...)
The distance matrix allows multiple results in a single query. You can do origins=my_origin_coordinate|my_destination_coordinate&desti‌​nations=my_origin_co‌​ordinate|my_destinat‌​ion_coordinate in a single request, which will give you both results. That won't really help with your quota though as the quota is based on "elements", and whether you do it in one query or two, it will be the same number of "elements".

Sort by distance, how do you think I should do this?

My Company currently runs a listing service of family activities. In our CMS we have two types of entities Branches (The shops we list) and Events (Special Offers, Occasions etc).
Typically when listing an event we would say which Branches it is for and create a relationship, we would search the near by shops for events. Grab them and sort them by distance.
Now our clients want to be able to list a one off event that hasn't got a branch associated with it (For example they host a Festival at a near by garden center rather than one of their shops), I can easily make it I can sort these by distance as well.
But what I was wondering is how could combine the both, so one of our apps could go to our API, "Dude, where are 10 events near to whee I am right now ? " and the api would pull up a list of the 10 closest events.
It should be able to handle Events that are using the location of Branches as well as having its own unique location.
Or do you think I should just store location as its own entity or have hidden branches, places we can set up as being where the event is happening but don't actually show up as being a branch in the app :)
If you have lat / long positions for your events and your branches you can apply the Haversine Formula to compute approximate distances, then order by ascending distance.
MySQL can do this, if you're willing to use a hairy query. This note from the Google Maps team gives the query. You don't have to use Google Maps to do this; you just need lat/long information for each place involved.
https://developers.google.com/maps/articles/phpsqlsearch_v3
Edit It's true that this is very slow if you compute the distance between many pairs of places. The trick to making this kind of operation fast is using a bounding box (spherectangular) distance limit, and putting indexes on your latitude and longitude.
Look at this: Geolocation distance SQL from a cities table
MYSQL has support for "spacial databases" as the spacial extension This will allow you to use "spacial" datatypes in your columns, as well as build index on them, and perform various "spacial analysis" such as polygon intersection.
Not sure this is what you need, but that may worth investigations.

multi-level floor plan graph mapping

There's a collection of buildings each having multiple floors that are interconnected by stairs and lifts. Currently, I'm attempting to design a system that will find the shortest-path between two points across the any of the buildings, being the same building or in another building.
At the moment each floor is modeled in a graph as follows:
the door of each room is a vertex. the junctions of edges connecting the rooms to the main edge(corridor) is also a vertex.
The stairs between the floors are edges.
The question that remains is how should I represent the lifts(elevators) (which are right next to the stairs)?
To have it as an edge makes me wonder what weight it should have, given that I'll have to run a graph traversal algorithm after for finding the shortest path.
Lift(elevator) as edge or as vertex? That is the question.
thanks!
Edges
Using an edge is the most immediate answer, as you do that for stairs. However, while stairs can only go from floor X to floor X+1, a lift can go from any floor to any floor, with slightly different times - I usually find the stairs quicker for two floors, but slower for more than 2. To mirror this you'll need an edge from every floor to every other floor, complete with weightings for each.
Vertices
You could instead have some additional vertices as well as edges. If you had a vertex at each floor of the liftshaft, then you'd only need a single path of edges connecting all the floors together, rather than a combinatorial number of edges.
If you also added an additional vertex outside the doors at each level, then you could add the average delay for getting into a lift and so reflect the fact that a lift can pass multiple floors quickly. However, lifts are going to need average timings at best. At busy times, they can end up stopping at almost every floor anyway, so for a busy campus you wouldn't really gain from these extra vertices.
My vote is for a vertex for each floor of the lift and a single edge to link adjacent floors. It should simplify the graph and reduce the effort of any path-optimisation algorithm as there are fewer paths. Plus it is a more accurate reflection of reality and minimises your workload to set up the edge weights.
If the lifts are a possible shortest path from one floor to the next, then they must be edges with weights. The entrances to each level are vertices. If close enough to the stairs then they are possible shared with the stair vertices.
I vote for edge.
Say you choose to use an elevator. You walk to it, press button and wait a bit. You then get in, wait some more, get out and continue your walk. Now, although you are physically not moving much, in time you are moving. Taking a lift between floors is like walking, say, 50 meters.
What I mean is that the time spent standing around the elevator is equivalent to a distance that you travel if walking. So treat the elevator as an edge that you are walking along during the duration that you are using it. Use that distance to compare, say, walking down the stairs.