Geographic Visualizations in Python with Cartopy

Cartopy is a cartographic Python library that was developed for applications in geographic data manipulation and visualization. It is the successor to the the Basemap Toolkit, which was the previous Python library used for geographic visualizations. Cartopy can be used to plot satellite data atop realistic maps, visualize city and country boundaries, track and predict movement based on geographic targeting, and a range of other applications relating to geographic-encoded data systems. In this tutorial, Anaconda 3 will be used to install Cartopy and related geographic libraries. As an introduction to the library and geographic visualizations, some simple tests will be conducted to ensure that the Cartopy library was successfully installed and is working properly. In subsequent tutorials: shapefiles will be used as boundaries, realistic city streets will be mapped, and satellite data will be analyzed.

Arduino GPS Tracker

The NEO-6 is a miniature GPS module designed by u-blox to receive updates from up to 22 satellite on 50 different channels that use trilateration to approximate fixed position of a receiver device every second (or less, for some modules). The particular module used in this tutorial, the NEO-6M, is capable of updating its position every second and communicates with an Arduino board using UART serial communication. The NEO-6M uses the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) protocol which provides temporal and geolocation information such as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), latitude, longitude, altitude, and approximate course speed. The NEO-6M and Arduino board will also be paired with an SD module to create a portable logger that acts as a retrievable GPS tracker.