In a follow up to yesterday’s post, on the Nokia N95’s built in GPS and creating GPS track for visualisation in Google Earth, we thought we would try it out on the train back to Central London.
To be honest we didn’t think it would work but as we switched on the GPS, while leaving Wokingham Station in Berkshire, the N95 picked up 6 satellites and displayed our location and speed in realtime. Due to the length of the journey we were not prepared to hold the phone next to the window the whole way so it sat on the seat while playing MP3’s and tracking the route.
It performed surprisingly well, only losing the signal at one station which was undercover. While the speed of the train is not something we normally take a great deal of interest in, to see it displayed in realtime is oddly fascinating.
Once the journey was complete we uploaded the route into Google Earth and this time used the altitude of the route to portray speed. This creates an impressive Google Earth path and considering that the phone was merely placed on the seat, rather than near a window, one with a high level of accuracy.
Thanks to the N95 i am now also in possession of some great facts about trains – did you know that on the Wokingham to London Waterloo line the average speed is 60.3km/h or that the maximum speed is 120km/h ………
You can view our path in Google Earth here.
See also iPhone 3G, InstaMapper App and Google Earth: Tracking the Thames Clipper
