Radio Mobile + Google Earth

This is pretty slick and very easy to do:

1. Use Radio Mobile to create coverage plots of your AP’s with a merged MapQuest or Google Map
2. Save the resulting image as a jpeg.
3. Open Google Earth and navigate to your coverage area.
4. Use the “Add Overlay” function and overlay the RM image
5. Use the sizing handles to match the RM image to GE

Done

Then, while on the phone with a customer you can tell if they are in your coverage area and roughly what the signal level is like in that area.

Jerry in my version of Radio Mobile after you add the mapquest just merge again & select VirtualEarth, Aerial photo, & multiply.

I guess I did not clarify what it means to have the Google overlay.

While on the phone I can just open GE, type the address of the customer and see immediately if they are in the coverage area. Then a quick tilt and I can check LOS for hills.

Additionally the shadowing will reveal if they are in a depression or valley and if it might require a taller mast, etc.

I got you. The address lookup. That would make it nice.

I did the same thing using Global Mapper and Google Earth. I make the overlay from GM in png format, then put it in GE. If I had good digital elevation model map of my city I can make it so precise that I will know exactly form one roof how many base stations I see. In the moment I have map of the country only.

We keep track of GPS coordinates from all our installations…

So is it possible then to post this as a link on your web site so a potential customer could put in their address and get a Google map with this overlay?

That’s what I would like to see, but haven’t had time to experiment.

check out the coverage map i have at http://vcweb.org under coverage. that was best i could do.

wow vince, that looks pretty good. Is that all basically just how Jerry said to do it?

i wish i knew how it was done. the guy that did it charged me about 1k. i didnt have time to do it myself otherwise i would have.

How accurate DEM maps of USA can you find for free?

How’s 1 Arc Second SRTM data?

Browsing around some of the DXer sites gave me some great links when I was first starting down the propagation estimations path… qsl.net for example, hosts a lot of the sites. You’ll find a wealth of information those amham guys have collected, and put up on their own personal pages…

I have to try how this will work with the free maps. I will do the coverage for one POP for the first person from usa who posts coorinates on the forum, then I will put kmz file so everybody can look into.

hi jerry i have now downloaded goggle earth and i will be going through your steps to setup RM+GE. Please if you can make it more precise and explicit i will be very greatful for that help.
thanks in advance.
regards,
Gerald

Use the RM tutorials.

Once you can create coverage plots and save the results as images, then the steps I provided will make sense.

Jerry,

I’ve taken the ideas you gave and changed them a bit.
And it has given me amazing coverage maps.

I took radio mobile and generated a rainbow colored map, but changed the colors all to white. Then generated per tower coverage maps for each one of my transmitters using one reciever as the generalized mobile unit. I did not merge with anything else. I saved the output to a .png file. Then noted the map bounds from map properties on a piece of note paper.

Next i opened the image in an editing program and used the selection tool to select all the white in the image, and then i removed it, replacing it with transparency. Saved the resulting .png file.

Now i loaded the .png into google earth using the aforementioned bounds and set the transparency slider to halfway. Turned on roads within google maps. And viola! one highly versatile and highly useful coverage information map.

Now i can imput an address,
see the estimated coverage,
draw a route for ground distance checking. (for nlos applications) I can even see trees and forestation density. Basically a lot of things i would have to be “on site” to find out. Which forestation is a huuuuuge variable here in michigan so it helps a ton.

Also i can pinpoint a customers house this way as well. and see any trees around their house.

-Wayne

Thanks a ton btw, you made my job and my staff’s job much much easier.

Slick idea to remove the white. I’ll do that.

If you run into the background staying white after you put the image in google earth, try changing from DirectX to OpenGL mode. As we had one of our computers was unable to display transparency in DX mode. (old old onboard s3 video)

-Wayne

What version of Google Earth is everyone using for this? I’m thinking Pro is the version you would need but that means we would have to buy one for everyone that will use it right? That’s $400/person.

We use the standard (free) version of google earth, works just dandy.