Filing in the blanks on Google Street View
Google Street View is a great feature of Google Maps, allowing you to look around paths and locations to et a better idea of what’s actually at a map location. You’re probably aware of the Google Street View Cars that get around from time to time capturing everything with LIDAR and a big bank of cameras, feeding that to the big servers somewhere in the clown.
They don’t just use cars though. There’s a whole bunch of different ways they capture things, including cameras on backback mounts, bikes, and all kinds of things that move about the world. The thing is that they don’t capture everywhere. If you take a look at a map of your area, there’s probably a lof of paths that are mapped, but not able to view on Street View. This is a shame because people use Street View for a wide range of things, not least of which is journey planning for folks with mobility challenges.
Cool video about Google Street view, including information about how people add to it.
I live very near the Darebin Trail in Melbourne, Victoria, and the GSV coverage on there is extremely spotty, so I thought I’d see if I couldn’t add some data to fix that. I attached an Insta360 X4 to my bike helmet, and rode one of the sections on the map that had no blue lines.
Insta360 X4 attached to my bike helmet with a GoPro mount, as modelled by Hedley Lamarr. Best not to ask why I own a mannequin head.
It’s pretty simple to do if you have the gear. I attached the Insta360 X4 to my bike helmet with an action camera mount, making sure to get it as vertical as I could in my slightly head down riding position. I have the Insta360 GPS Preview remote, which feeds GPS data to the camera as it records video, and I started the recording with that. If you don’t have a GPS remote, you can start the recording using the Insta360 phone app, making sure that GPS recording is on — it feeds your phone’s GPS data to the camera. Make sure you leave the phone on! I then rode at a normal pace for the 4.3 km from my house to Northland Shopping Centre and stopped the recording.
Next step is you open that recording in Insta360 Studio, add a nadir logo if you want to, export it as a 360º mp4, and make sure you also export the gpx (gps data) file.
Make sure these are selected.
Open Google Street View Studio, upload the video (it’s going to take a long time), and then the matching gpx file. Then you wait. And you keep waiting. Mine took a week, but at the end you get an email that your file has been processed and populated to Google Street View. That’s all there is to it.
Once that’s all done, your stuff is in Street View, with all faces blurred, number plates removed, and everything else you’d expect. It’s not a great process, but it works well enough to get out there and start filling in gaps.
I’m very much just getting started at this, but I’m keen to do more. If you have any tips or just want to chat about it, hit me up in the comments or drop me an email.