Curiosity Image Retrieval Tools, scripts and software Options

[RoverDriver]

That is pretty good, using the telemetry you have. To complicate things even further, there have been many backward drives that were partly driven forwards.

Paolo

[elakdawalla]

That is a lot more complicated-looking than I expected it to be when I made the request! Not a simple problem.

By the way, Joe, the image list function in your image synth app doesn't seem to be working -- I get a 404 error on http://curiosityrover.com/synth/foobar.php...=209&list=1

[jmknapp]

Oh, sorry.... fixed. I moved the site to a new server recently (aws) and still have a few loose ends evidently.

[elakdawalla]

No worries, I was able to get what I needed from your original site just fine Thanks again for all the work you put into this.

[jmknapp]

Here's an Android app to track Curiosity's progress:



Curiosity Track on Google Play

Should work on Android phones and tablets.

To do:

- add notifications of drives
- make iPhone version

[elakdawalla]

To do:

- make iPhone version

LOL

[jmknapp]

It's really not that much of a leap since this is a Phonegap/Cordova application that should be portable. The main issues involve getting into the Apple walled garden with only Windows/Linux burglar tools.

[CosmicRocker]

Thanks so much for this useful app, Joe! I know we have a lot of excellent maps available, but I often want to pan ahead or zoom out from the current view to see what may be coming up. Now I can.

[jmknapp]

iPhone/iPad app for the Curiosity track map:

CuriosityTrack on iTunes

This version doesn't have notifications of new drives yet, but that should be coming shortly (along with a Windows Phone version).

[elakdawalla]

Someone pointed out this tool to me: Curiosity Browser. I haven't really dived in to it yet to figure out if it's more useful for some tasks than any of the other tools here.

(Ack, Joe, I still haven't tried Curiosity Track yet...will do so soon...)

[jmknapp]

Microsoft Photosynth is a fun way to show MSL mosaics. Here's one from NAVCAM RIGHT at the Windjana site:

https://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=1cff44...23-8a05bfb54e54

The Silverlight browser plug-in/exension is required.

MASTCAM version:

https://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=2e7526...21-f2c28e8d0690

[mhoward]

This is exciting for me: thanks to json.jpl.nasa.gov, we now have some quickly-updated metadata for MSL, similar to what we've enjoyed for years with MER. Below is a view of the drive on sol 743, which the images just came down for. (The straight line is due to some missing metadata, which I'll talk about in a second.)

This is something I've been waiting for since Curiosity landed. However, if you're going to use it yourself, you might want to be aware of a few current limitations:

- Metadata for thumbnails is not included. This means there is basically no 'intermediate' drive data, at least not right away. That's why the line goes straight through the bluff in the screenshot below. (Since I'm still using the SPICE data as well, that will probably get corrected whenever the next SPICE update happens.)

- As far as I know at the moment, the only location information is site-relative. This means when MSL advances to a new site number, we no longer know where the rover is. Again in my case, I'll be filling in that information from the less-frequently-updated SPICE source. (We have the same problem with the metadata from from Pancam Tracking Database; only there, I can sort of work around it, because we have metadata for the thumbnails that gives us most of the intermediate drive path. Here, I don't think it's practical to work around it.)

- Metadata is currently incomplete for a lot of MMM images, especially earlier in the mission. Not sure what that's about; maybe a glitch somewhere.

- There is no observation description metadata that I'm aware of.

- A vector is provided so that you can quickly get the camera direction. In my case, I have to reverse-engineer this to get the azimuth and elevation values for the mast, because I still am not quite down with the whole CAHVOR thing yet (although I probably should be).

Anyway, I'm very happy to finally be able to see panoramas as soon as the images come down. So far, at least, JSON metadata updates have been practically immediate. Hooray!

And thanks to Dr. Mark Powell for getting this going.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[jmknapp]

I'll have to try that json service--looks much better than scraping web pages!

Emily: I notice you just tweeted a screen grab from my iphone app--cool. One thing about the iphone version, notifications aren't working quite yet, should be soon. There's a lot of secret code stuff that needs to be worked out to use the Apple Push Notification service, & something isn't quite right there. But it still shows that latest drive when you open the app.

[mhoward]

Well, since I brought that up, I guess I now have to add: James Canvin tells me he's found a different site with MSL metadata: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/im...e_manifest.json

I'm going to have to look at that later, I'm kind of running out of time to work on this soon. But offhand, it looks like it has much of the data I called out as missing. So this could be more really good news.

[mhoward]

Well, since I brought that up, I guess I now have to add: James Canvin tells me he's found a different site (the raws site) with MSL metadata: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/im...e_manifest.json

I'm going to have to look at that later, I'm kind of running out of time to work on this soon. But offhand, it looks like it has much of the data I called out as missing. So this could be more really good news.