Title: Cycling / bike trips and opensource

	Title: Cycling / bike trips and opensource
	Author: Solène
	Date: 06 February 2020
	Tags: biking
	Description:

	# Introduction

	I started doing biking seriously a few months ago, as I love having
	statistics
	I needed to gather some. I found a lot of devices on the market but I
	prefered
	using opensource tool and not relying on any vendor.

	The best option to do so for me was reusing a 6 years old smartphone on
	which
	the SIM card bus is broken, that phone lose the sim card when it is
	shaked a
	little and requires a reboot to find it again, I am happy I found a way
	to
	reuse it.

	Tip: turn ON airplane mode on the smartphone while riding, even without
	a SIM
	card it will try to get network and it will draw battery + emitting
	useless
	radio waves. In case of emergency, just disable the airplane mode to
	get access
	to your local emergency call number. GPS is a passive module and
	doesn't
	require any network.

	This smartphone has a GPS receiver, it's enough for recording my
	position as
	often I want. Using the correct GPS software from F-droid store and a
	program
	for sftp transfer, I can record data and transfer it easily to my
	computer.

	The most common file format for recording GPS position is the GPX
	format, it's
	a simple XML file containing all positions with their timestamp,
	sometimes with
	a few more information like speed at that time, but given you have all
	positions, software can calculate the speed between each position.


	# Android GPS Software

	It seems GPS software for recording GPX tracks are becoming popular,
	and in the
	last months, lot of new software appeared, which is a good thing, I
	didn't
	tested all of them though but they tend to be more easy to use and
	minimalistic.


	## OpenStreetMap app - OSMand~

	You can install it from [F-droid](https://f-droid.org/) an alternate
	store for
	Android only with opensource software, it's a full free version (and
	opensource) compared to the one you can find on Android store.

	This is OpenStreetMap official software, it's full of features and
	quite
	heavy, you can download maps for navigation, record tracks, view tracks
	statistics, contribute to OSM, get Wikipedia information for an area
	and
	everything of this while being OFFLINE. Not only on my bike, I use it
	all the
	time while walking or in my car.

	Recorded GPX can be found in the default path
	Android/data/net.osmand.plus/files/tracks/rec/


	## Trekarta

	I found another software named Trekarta which is a lot more lighter
	than
	OSM, but only focuses on recording your tracks. I would recommend it if
	you
	don't want any other feature or have a really old android compatible
	phone or
	low disk space.


	# Analyzing GPX files / keep track of everything

	I found Turtlesport, an opensource software in Java for which last
	release was
	years ago but still work out of the box, given you have a java
	implementation
	installed. You can find it [at the following
	link](https://turtlesport.sourceforge.io/EN/home.html).

	/usr/local/bin/jdk-1.8.0/bin/java -jar turtlesport.jar

	Turtlesport is a nice tool for viewing tracks, it's not for only for
	cycling
	and can be used for various sports, the process is the following:

	- define sports you do (bike, skateboard, hiking etc..)
	- define equipments you use (bike, sport shoes, skis etc..)
	- import GPX files and tell Turtlesport which sport and equipment it's
	related to

	Then, for each GPX file, you will be able to see it on a map, see
	elevation and
	speed of that track, but you can also make statistics per sport or
	equipment,
	like "How many km I ride with that bike over last year, per week".

	If you don't have a GPX file, you can still add a new trip into the
	database by
	drawing the path on a map.

	In the equipments, you will see how many kilometers you used each, with
	an
	alert feature if the equipment goes beyond a defined wearing limit. I'm
	not
	sure about the use of this, maybe you want to know your shoes shouldn't
	be used
	for more than 2000 km?? Maybe it's possible to use it for maintenance
	purpose,
	says your bike has a wearing limit of 1000 km, when you reach it you
	get an
	alert, do your maintenance and set the new limit to 2000km.


	# Viewing GPX files

	From OpenBSD 6.7 you can install the package gpxsee to open
	multiple GPX
	files, they will be shown on a map, each track with a different colour,
	and
	nice charts displaying the elevation or speed over the travel for every
	tracks.

	Before gpxsee I was using the GIS (Geographical Information System)
	tool
	qgis but it is really heavy and complicated. But if you want to
	work on
	your recorded data like doing complex statistics, it's a powerful tool
	if you
	know how to use it.

	I like to use it in a gamification purpose: I'm trying to ride over
	every
	road around my home, viewing all GPX files at the same time allow me to
	plan
	the next trip where I never went.


	# Miscellaneous

	## Create an unique GPX file from all records

	It is possible to merge GPX file into one giant one using gpsbabel
	.I was
	using this before having *gpxsee but I have no idea about what you
	can do with
	that, this create one big spaggheti track. I choose to keep the command
	here,
	in case it's useful for someone one day:

	gpsbabel -s -r -t -i GPX $(ls /path/to/files/*gpx \| awk '{ printf
	"-f %s ", $1 }') -o GPX -F - > sum.gpx


	## Cycling using electronic devices

	Of course, if you are a true cyclist racer and GPX files will not be
	enough for
	you, you will certainly want devices such as a power meter or a cadence
	meter
	and an on-board device to use them. I can't help much about hardware.

	However, you may want to give a try to [Golden
	Cheetah](https://www.goldencheetah.org/) to import all your data from
	various
	devices and make complex statistics from it. I tried it and I had
	no idea
	about the purpose of 90% of the features.


	## Have fun

	Don't forget to have fun and do not get obscessed by numbers!