(Here is the documentation for my thesis project at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. PDF version here.)

Riding through Mountains of Data:
Visualizations of Cycling

Robert Carlsen
Interactive Telecommunications Program
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University

Abstract

This project attempts to describe the cycling experiences of several riders in New York City through a series of visualizations. Specifically, I am interested to discover if riders similar to myself share a common experience through which a sense of connection could be derived.

Cyclists were encouraged to record their travels using their personal mobile devices running Mobile Logger, a custom iPhone application.
Log data was uploaded by the application to an online database in near real-time during each ride. This data was analyzed and filtered to provide source material for the resulting visualizations and system “dashboard” at http://mobilelogger.robertcarlsen.net.

Keywords

Cycling, New York City, sensors, iPhone, visualization, mapping, tracking, logging, mobile, application, bicycle

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Thursday, April 22nd is Earth Day. The weather is looking to be sunny and 65 degrees in New York City. Sounds like a perfect day to ride your bike (or walk, run or whatever you like to do outside). Since you’re already going to be out there, why not log the trip, help me with my thesis, and have your data made into some visualizations I’m preparing for the project?

It’s pretty simple…download Mobile Logger from the App Store (iPhone 3G/3GS), open it, then tap Logging switch to begin. Put the phone in your pocket, bag, mounted to handlebars, or wherever is convenient and go. You can double-tap the screen to disable the display, but shouldn’t lock the phone.

When you’ve reached your destination, tap the logging switch again to stop and you’re done! The log data is automatically uploaded to the Mobile Logger server and will be included in my research (this uploading can be disabled if you’d like to use the app without contributing to the project, too).

What I’m really interested in exploring is a sense of connection between us by sharing our experiences. I ride a bike daily through NYC, and encounter many other cyclists, walkers and drivers. We pass each other in a moment, or perhaps share a lane for a bit and then continue on our separate ways. How does my 5 mile, 25 minute ride from Greenpoint to the East Village compare to someone riding from Queens? What does a ride around Prospect Park share with one in Central Park? What’s the loudest part of the city for a cyclist? Where are the most frequently ridden routes?

I’ll be working with the contributed data to create visualizations which attempt to answer these questions. The “dashboard” of the system will be present at mobilelogger.robertcarlsen.net. More info about the app is available on it’s documentation page.

Times UP! is also organizing a ride at 7pm from Union Square if you still need another excuse to get on a bike, skates or a board. It would be neat to see a bunch of riders converge on a location, then ride together in a group. I really want to see what that visualization would look like…

Thanks, and enjoy the ride!

after a couple of late nights, i have a proof-of-concept in the real-time cycling-related datalogging. the reasons behind the project are still getting sorted, but lately my interest in ubiquitous urban sensor networks has been piqued and this is a tentative exploration in that area. sensors don’t have to remain static as part of physical infrastructure…millions of people are carrying millions of sensors around with them daily. (more…)

Had a really nice time tonight at the oF knitting circle held at Parsons in NYC. Saw several really inspiring projects and spoke to several people about using openFrameworks for iPhone development and showed the current version of the particle game using ofxiPhoneAlertView.

Quite a few folks mentioned that they have become interested in openFrameworks after hearing about it’s use for creating iPhone applications. While not every app is suitable, I saw a few really nice examples. My only regret is not getting the name of the fellow who was working with creating a sound wrapper.

The wiki page for the knitting circle is at the openFrameworks wiki.

BarCampNYC4 was hosted by ITP on May 30-31st. It was a great event – I’d highly recommend going to another one.

I did a presentation titled “Using openFrameworks for iPhone App Development” which I think went well, although it was quite dense. Can’t be helped, I suppose. The walk-through of getting set up with openFrameworks has been previously posted, and is also available on ITPedia. Below is an embedded video of the presentation thanks to Mark B… and New Work City. (more…)

nyc resistor had one of their craft nights last evening, where they invite folks to come in to work on just about anything “so you don’t have to make stuff by yourself.” i had been missing my community fix now that ITP is on winter break, so heading over there to assemble my new meggy jr rgb kit from evil mad scientist seemed like the things to do. (more…)

In conducting research for the CycleSense bicycle traffic proximity system I gathered data about the amount of space behind a bicycle rider traveling through typical New York City traffic at various times and locations. The initial visualization of this data was to graph the distances over time to look for specific events that the system would need to detect in order to be useful. I cross-referenced the space data with video taken on the same rides

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This evening is the first night of the 2008 Winter Show at ITP. My Cloud Reader project has been included, and I’ll be attending to it each night in the main hallway – surrounded by other really interesting work. The atmosphere on the floor last night was energized…almost like a festival. I’m excited for the show, having come full circle from one year ago when I visited ITP just before applying to the program.

It doesn’t really feel that long ago; it also feels like a long time ago.

It’s going to be a long and exciting day.

this saturday i participated in the elmo hacking workshop at eyebeam. adrianne wortzel , a resident at eyebeam, has a project which involves synchronizing the movements of 50 tickle-me elmos. mike gazes and soyoung park realized adrianne’s idea by reverse engineering the elmo’s and creating a new control unit based around an atmel atmega168, using the arduino development environment. wireless communication is through xbee radios (so many (more…)

I’ve wanted to try another geocode mashup since the Where We Were project I ran at Moore College. I recently picked up a GPS unit, which got me thinking about it anew.

For the M5 Bus trip assignment for our Applications class I worked up a mix of Twitter, GPS location, digital photos and Google Maps. I had previously synchronized the clocks for the camera, phone and TomTom GPS unit…and used these timestamps later to literally mash the Twitter XML and TomTom GPX files together with a custom Java application. Geocoding the photographs was done using the gpsdings java application.

Google Maps will display carefully formed KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files, which is nice because Google Earth can open the same file.

The project is available at http://robertcarlsen.net/m5. Although this entry is focused specifically on the technical side, I welcome comments here on the thoughts presented on the project page.