FIRST Team Map

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Well, I was curious, and wanted to see what it would be like to plot the locations of FIRST teams on a map; so, this is the result:



Clicking on the image will take you to a much larger version (it's 1.7 MB and 2048x1024 pixels-- or in other words, not at all friendly for dial-up)

For those interested in some of the technical details:

The data for the map was taken from TIMS via the database available at http://www.team358.org/files/team_lookup/public/ and the image is hosted by the openFIRST project; the background image is in the public domain and can be found at numerous places on the Internet. Some of the teams didn't have enough information to lookup their geographical coordinates, so they haven't been shown.

[EricH]

Could you find the coordinates for Brazilian teams, Israeli teams, and the one Mexican team?

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Originally Posted by EricH

Could you find the coordinates for Brazilian teams, Israeli teams, and the one Mexican team?

At least one of the Brazilian teams is on there. I don't think the Israeli teams managed to resolve and it looks like the Mexican team is there. I may be able to tweak the Israeli results to perhaps get them to show up.

[Daniel Brim]

The dot in South America looks like it is in Ecuador or Peru rather than in Brazil. It is far west of where Brazil actually is.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by DanielBCR

The dot in South America looks like it is in Ecuador rather than in Brazil. It is far west of where Brazil actually is.

You're right, but Ecuador has one team (I think). There was a brown spot in Brazil, but I don't think it's supposed to be a team.

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Originally Posted by DanielBCR

The dot in South America looks like it is in Ecuador or Peru rather than in Brazil. It is far west of where Brazil actually is.

According to TIMS; there is a team in Ecuador; so yeah, it looks like I misidentified that dot.

[Elgin Clock]

Coming soon to an Earth near you; an Australian team (or 2). Stay tuned.

[spears312]

cool map. Really gives you an idea on the density of first teams in certain areas on a global scale. I never really realized how many teams there are in the north eastern part of the country. Looks like you could almost go from Maine to Atlanta without leaving the red dots (what does one of those dots equal, somewhere between a 25 and 50 mile radius?)

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Originally Posted by spears312

cool map. Really gives you an idea on the density of first teams in certain areas on a global scale. I never really realized how many teams there are in the north eastern part of the country. Looks like you could almost go from Maine to Atlanta without leaving the red dots (what does one of those dots equal, somewhere between a 25 and 50 mile radius?)

I think the dots are somewhere closer to the 300 kilometer or 200 mile cube range; but I'm not entirely sure whether I did the conversions right on that (I'm pretty new to the whole GIS thing). That's on the big map. On the small map, I believe they would be a bit bigger than that.

Edit: Just a note; that's width/height of cube (or diameter if you're treating it as a circle); not radius

[Mike AA]

I was trying to access the file of the picture to look at it and it was coming down very slowly. something like .2 Kbps. Does openFIRST do something during the night that makes it slow down? I am accessing the file at 12:43am EST. The website opens correctly. But not the large file.

Just a bug I guess?

-Mike

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Originally Posted by Mike AA

I was trying to access the file of the picture to look at it and it was coming down very slowly. something like .2 Kbps. Does openFIRST do something during the night that makes it slow down? I am accessing the file at 12:43am EST. The website opens correctly. But not the large file.

Just a bug I guess?

-Mike

Actually; we don't do anything in the night on that server which would slow things down (there's automated things running on other servers, though). What it probably is, is Source Forge implementing restrictions on serving large files from the project web servers. They've been saying they'd do it for a while, but I hadn't noticed any effect before now. So, I've copied it up to the update server and http://update.openfirst.org/firstteams-map.png is where it can sit now (and I'll setup a redirect from the old location to there). Thanks for pointing that out, though; it probably would have been quite some time before I noticed.

[Bcahn836]

I could be mistaken but weren't there suposed to be a few teams from china next year as well?

[Timothy D. Ginn]

Originally Posted by Bcahn836

I could be mistaken but weren't there suposed to be a few teams from china next year as well?

You may be right; I'm not sure, but they weren't in the listing of teams the last time it was built from the TIMS pages. So, I guess they hadn't registered at that point.

[Mike AA]

Originally Posted by Timothy D. Ginn

Actually; we don't do anything in the night on that server which would slow things down (there's automated things running on other servers, though). What it probably is, is Source Forge implementing restrictions on serving large files from the project web servers. They've been saying they'd do it for a while, but I hadn't noticed any effect before now. So, I've copied it up to the update server and http://update.openfirst.org/firstteams-map.png is where it can sit now (and I'll setup a redirect from the old location to there). Thanks for pointing that out, though; it probably would have been quite some time before I noticed.

Hey, it works now, cool now I get to see it Thanks

-Mike

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by Timothy D. Ginn

The data for the map was taken from TIMS via the database available at http://www.team358.org/files/team_lookup/public/ and the image is hosted by the openFIRST project; the background image is in the public domain and can be found at numerous places on the Internet. Some of the teams didn't have enough information to lookup their geographical coordinates, so they haven't been shown.

How'd you actually overlay the dots onto the map and get the coords to do it? I was thinking about doing this last week but didn't have a chance (finals...). I was thinking about using Googles APIs (though acutally I was thinking more of one of just displaying dots but being able to view by state/country/region/etc)...so how'd you resolve into coords and then overlay those onto a map?

Also - I'm glad someone is using all the information I pulled off the TIMS system.

Great job!