Hi,

Before I dive into openlayers for this small hobby project, perhaps I could gather some input from the community to choose the right tool.
- A balloon is to be sent up with a GPS tracker, which sends its coordinates to a webserver.
on the webserver, a map should be displayed showing the progress and current location.
So the tracker would probably upload a file to the webserver (or perhaps call a webservice) every minute or so.

The webpage should be simple, and fast - e.g. work well on a mobile display.
Its a small hobby project, so it should take me hours and now weeks of programming :-)

Reading up on openlayers, it seems like a toolbox with a vast array of geo possibilities.... I understand that coordinates are stored in nodes, and views used on the nodes to display maps. So each coordinate would have to create a node, so a track of a few hours would create hundreds of nodes? The tracker would have to do an xmlrpc call to add a new node every minute?

Or could each coordinate be added to an array on just one node?
Could each coordinate just be uploaded as a csv file?

Is OL perhaps over the top for this project?
If yes, is there a more appropriate tool (if possible Drupal based) for such a project?

Thanks in advance,

Sean

Comments

phayes’s picture

phayes commented

I've seen a similar project using openlayers to display automated tracking data. It ended up creating many hundred thousand nodes, but that was considered perfectly acceptable...

I think it will work fine for you - the only thing you need to watch is to make sure that you add indexes to any field that you use as a filter / argument etc. in your view.

Also, openlayers display itself starts breaking down at the 10,000 point stage. You'll have to limit your view to display only say 5,000 points at a time.

zzolo’s picture

zzolo commented
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

Closing. Re-open if there are more related questions.