We’re using Foursquare as a data logger for one of our assignments in the Telling Stories with Sensors, Data and Humans class at ITP. As an aid to begin understanding the relationships between venues for our tracks, it’s helpful to munge the KML into CSV so it can be plotted and played with in a spreadsheet, Illustrator, R, Processing or whatever…

Below is a short python script to parse a Foursquare KML file into a simple CSV file. It outputs the check-in name, description, timestamp and location (as lat, lon). The Foursquare KML feed is available at the Feeds page on their site. (more…)

(this is an initial report for a longer post)

in conducting field research for the CycleSense bicycle proximity sensor i’m looking to gather data about actual proximity events while riding and to correlate these events with video documentation and personal annotation from the test subject…probably just me.

to that end, i’ve worked on rigging up a data logging solution for the sensor package. there was some information on using bluetooth enabled mobile phones as a storage device, communicating to a bluetooth module such the blueSMiRF attached to a microcontroller. in this case, an ultrasonic rangefinder is read by an Arduino which sends the range values through the blueSMiRF to a nokia phone. (more…)