heatmap.py -p photo-points -o photos.png --width 1000 --osm -B 0.8 --osm_base http://b.tile.stamen.com/toner
(I've been geocoding my photos since 2004.)
Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under CC BY SA.
Graffiti complaints in San Francisco over 90 days.
There's a trade-off between seeing the precise location of each data point, and seeing the aggregate regional blobs that make trends easier to see. Here I did both and composited one on top of the other.
heatmap.py -b black -p graffiti.coords -r 30 -W 1200 -o g1.png -P equirectangular ;Data from datasf.org. I don't know what system the coordinates are in, so I just pretended they're square and mapped them as-is.
heatmap.py -g orkney.gpx -o orkney.png --height 800 --osm
Background © OpenStreetMap & contributors; this image is available under CC-BY-SA
heatmap.py --decay 0.8 -g bman.gpx -o bman.png --height 800 --margin 10 -b black --gradient gradient-1.2.png
(I carried a GPS around all week.)
There are a few kinds of heat maps. This program is for when you have data points, each with a lat-lon coordinate, and you want to plot them on a map such that they blob together and get bright where they pile up, showing off the data density.
If you've divided your map into regions and want each region colored a certain way (a choropleth map), or you have a formula that gives you a value for every pixel on the map, this is probably not the right tool.
It's just one file: heatmap.py. I've put it on github in case anyone wants to contribute. If you want the --osm option to work, you'll also need osmviz and should read the bit about OSM licensing issues.
Now get yourself some data (or grab my list of photo coordinates) and just try it out. See the examples on this page, read the command line help for a very brief rundown on the options, and maybe eventually read the rest of this page. In general, the program will tell you if needs more information.
I wanted to make some data maps and I couldn't find any free tools that did a good job. I found proprietary tools (ick) that produced gorgeous output, and free tools that I felt took the wrong approach. Had I discovered gheat sooner, I probably would have started with that, but this is a bit different, better for some things, worse for others. There are some obvious next steps, but it's time to set it free.
It's a Python script, which makes it most suitable for server-side image generation or preparing images in the comfort of your own home. That's great for my needs, but doing the work in a browser would be a better choice for many applications these days.
How long it takes is roughly proportional to
num_points * image_area * radius2,
so if you want to try things out quickly, start with a smaller output
image, a reduced radius, and/or less data.
If you set it to 0.0, all the data points are visible and the map no longer conveys anything about which areas contain more points, making it more like a scatter plot (or a line drawing, with GPS tracks). If you set it to 1.0, you get the opposite effect, in which it's easy to see where the points congregate, but areas with few points may be so faint you don't notice them. All the other heatmap software I've looked at works at one of these extremes, but I find it looks better and conveys more information somewhere in between. I was unable to find a magic value that works well for everything, so you may want to fiddle with this. There's no right answer. You just have to decide what makes sense for your application and your data.
You can specify the color gradient on the command line by providing hue, saturation, value, and alpha for the two extremes. The program will use linear interpolation to render the in-between values. Note that hue is specified with three digits in case you want to go around the other way on the color wheel. For example, 000ffff00 and 100ffff00 specify the same color, but pass through different hues on the way to 02affffff.
The other option is to supply an image. The pixels down the left edge are used to specify the gradient. (For example.)
If you use the --osm option to overlay your data onto OpenStreetMap tiles, you are bound by their terms of service. That means you must credit the OSM project, and make it clear that your image is available under the CC-BY-SA license.
Here's what you get when you use --help.
Usage: heatmap.py [options]
Options:
--version show program's version number and exit
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-g FILE, --gpx=FILE
-p FILE, --points=FILE
File containing one space-separated coordinate pair
per line, with optional point value as third term.
--csv=FILE File containing one comma-separated coordinate pair
per line, the rest of the line is ignored.
--ignore_csv_header Ignore first line of CSV input file.
-s FLOAT, --scale=FLOAT
meters per pixel, approximate
-W INT, --width=INT width of output image
-H INT, --height=INT height of output image
-P NAME, --projection=NAME
choices: mercator, equirectangular; default: mercator
-e RANGE, --extent=RANGE
Clip results to RANGE, which is specified as
lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2; (for square mercator:
-85.0511,-180,85.0511,180)
-R INT, --margin=INT Try to keep data at least this many pixels away from
image border.
-r INT, --radius=INT pixel radius of point blobs; default: 15
-d FLOAT, --decay=FLOAT
float in [0,1]; Larger values give more weight to data
magnitude. Smaller values are more democratic.
default:0.95
-S FILE, --save=FILE save processed data to FILE
-L FILE, --load=FILE load processed data from FILE
-o FILE, --output=FILE
name of output file (image or video)
-a, --animate Make an animation instead of a static image
-f FRAMES, --frames=FRAMES
number of frames for animation; default: 30
-F STR, --ffmpegopts=STR
extra options to pass to ffmpeg when making an
animation
-K, --keepframes keep intermediate images after creating an animation
-b COLOR, --background=COLOR
composite onto this background (color name or #rrggbb)
-I FILE, --background_image=FILE
composite onto this image
-B NUM, --background_brightness=NUM
Multiply each pixel in background image by this.
-m HEX, --hsva_min=HEX
hhhssvvaa hex for minimum data values; default:
000ffff00
-M HEX, --hsva_max=HEX
hhhssvvaa hex for maximum data values; default:
02affffff
-G FILE, --gradient=FILE
Take color gradient from this the first column of
pixels in this image. Overrides -m and -M.
-k KERNEL, --kernel=KERNEL
Kernel to use for the falling-off function; choices:
linear, gaussian; default: linear
--osm Composite onto OpenStreetMap tiles
--osm_base=URL Base URL for map tiles; default
http://tile.openstreetmap.org
-z ZOOM, --zoom=ZOOM Zoom level for OSM; 0 (the default) means autozoom
-v, --verbose