Use Public Lab's open source MapKnitter to upload your own aerial photographs (for example those from balloon or kite mapping: http://publiclab.org/balloon-mapping) and combine them into:
- web "slippy maps" like Google Maps
- GeoTiff
- TMS
- high resolution JPEG
MapKnitter is broken into three major components:
- Map user interface
- Application
- Exporting system
Component 1 has been broken out into a new Leaflet plugin, called Leaflet.DistortableImage (https://github.com/publiclab/Leaflet.DistortableImage/) and allows for client-side, CSS3-based distortion of images over a Leaflet base map
Component 2 is a Ruby on Rails application which is the core of what you've looked at. It stores images, image corner locations, annotations, map details, and user accounts.
Component 3 is a set of calls to GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) and ImageMagick which perform the distortions, geolocations, and produce export products like GeoTiff, TMS, jpg, etc. These are baked into the Warpable and Map models, as well as the Export controller, and could use some consolidation.
Another moving part is the new-ish Annotations 2.0 which uses Leaflet.Illustrate (https://github.com/manleyjster/Leaflet.Illustrate) to provide rich annotation on top of maps.
Map Knitter is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Map Knitter is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Map Knitter. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
For a run-through of the Prerequisites and Installation steps listed below, you can watch the install video at:
Recommended; for an Ubuntu/Debian system. Varies slightly for mac/fedora/etc
Install a database, if necessary. sqlite does not seem to work due to some table constraints.
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
Application-specific dependencies:
sudo apt-get install bundler libmysqlclient-dev imagemagick ruby-rmagick libfreeimage3 libfreeimage-dev ruby-dev libmagickcore-dev libmagickwand-dev
(optional) For exporting, you'll need GDAL >=1.7.x (gdal.org), as well as curl and zip-- but these are not needed for much of development, unless you're working on the exporting features.
sudo apt-get install gdal-bin python-gdal curl libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev zip
Install RVM for Ruby management (http://rvm.io)
curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
Note: At this point during the process, you may want to log out and log back in, or open a new terminal window; RVM will then properly load in your environment.
Ubuntu users: You may need to enable Run command as a login shell in Ubuntu's Terminal, under Profile Preferences > Title and Command. Then close the terminal and reopen it.
Then, use RVM to install version 2.4.6 of Ruby:
rvm install 2.4.6
You'll also need bower which is available through NPM. To install NPM, you can run:
sudo apt-get install npm
However, on Ubuntu, you may need to also install the nodejs-legacy package, as due to a naming collision, some versions of Ubuntu already have an unrelated package called node. To do this, run:
sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy
Once NPM is installed, you should be able to run:
sudo npm install -g bower
You'll need Ruby v2.4.6 (use your local ruby version management system - RVM / rbenv / etc. - to install and set locally)
- Download a copy of the source with
git clone https://github.com/publiclab/mapknitter.git - Install gems with
bundle installfrom the rails root folder. You may need to runbundle updateif you have older gems in your environment. - Copy and configure config/database.yml from config/database.yml.example, using a new empty database you've created
- Copy and configure config/config.yml from config/config.yml.example (for now, this is only for the Google Maps API Key, which is optional)
- Initialize database with
bundle exec rake db:setup - Enter ReCaptcha public and private keys in config/initializers/recaptcha.rb, copied from recaptcha.rb.example. To get keys, visit https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create
- Install static assets (like external javascript libraries, fonts) with
bower install - Start rails with
bundle exec passenger startfrom the Rails root and open http://localhost:3000 in a web browser. (For some, justpassenger startwill work; addingbundle execensures you're using the version of passenger you just installed with Bundler.)
To report bugs and request features, please use the GitHub issue tracker provided at https://github.com/publiclab/mapknitter/issues
For additional support, join the Public Lab website and mailing list at http://publiclab.org/lists or for urgent requests, email web@publiclab.org
For questions related to the use of this software and balloon or kite mapping, the same page links to the "grassrootsmapping" discussion group.
Help improve Public Lab software!
- Join the 'plots-dev@googlegroups.com' discussion list to get involved
- Look for open issues at https://github.com/publiclab/mapknitter/issues
- Review contributor guidelines at http://publiclab.org/wiki/contributing-to-public-lab-software
- Some devs hang out in http://publiclab.org/chat (irc webchat)
In addition automatic testing with Travis CI - we have a branch (unstable) is set to auto-build and deploy to a staging instance. This instance includes a copy of the production database and is intended for experimenting or debugging purposes with a production-like environment.