Google Earth With LabVIEW 8.0?

[intel]

Hi All!

A new LabVIEW user and so far I am loving it!

Basically I will keep this short and sweet (and hopefully still make sense)

I am working on a personal project in which one of the requirements is to take in two sets of geo-coordinates. I believe Google Earth can provide coordinates just by clicking on the earth location.

I wondered if they could be transferred into LabVIEW 8.0 in any way? Also are there any alternative programs / web services that could do this for me?

I just want to add a edge to my system and not make the user type the coordinates in manually if possible.

Thanks for your help.

[Ben]

Check reply #16 of this thread

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=150798

vivi posted a zip of Terra VIEW.

It may be helpful.

Ben

[JamesC]

Hi Intel,

Surprisingly Google Earth has an ActiveX interface, and so LabVIEW can communicate with it. The TerraVIEW program looks like it should work well. However at the moment I am in the process of trying to get some simple VIs written to communicate with Google Earth.

I have so far managed to get the application open, bring back its version information, the Streaming percentage and the longitude/latitude from the camera focus, not where a user has clicked.

I will keep working on this and try and get some more functionality built up, but there are a lot of different interfaces and i'm not sure where to begin.

I am searching for documentation on the ActiveX interface at the moment.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[intel]

Hey thanks guys,

That TerraView looks great, it is the sorta thing I am looking for as you can have custom bookmarks. Although I would have no clue on how to start with something like that!

Even if I could send co-ordinates to check a location that would be ok, all I am really looking for a is a visual representation.

Thanks for your help.

[JamesC]

Hi Intel,

Here is what I have. As I could not find any documentation on the ActiveX interface, I did not realise there are two interface to Google Earth.

EARTHLib.IApplicationGE and EARTHLib.IKHInterface, I had created up most the VIs needed for the Application interface when I found that the KH interface worked for view position rather than Camera position in the app interface.

So I then went and modified my original VIs to use the KH interface.

Attached below are the LLBs I created for each interface, both are in version 8 format.

I hope this helps you and the example in each LLB shows you how to use the interface.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[rgambin]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering what version of Google Earth you are using for this. When I try to access the Active X control it does not show up in the browse list. I am just using the free version as this is a side project for my work. It's  a nice to have but not necessary.

Thanks,

Robin

[JamesC]

Hi Robin,

I am using Google Earth Free 4.0.2091 (Beta) for Windows.

You might want to open "Google Earth - initialise.vi" (inside the LLB). and make sure there is no broken run arrow.
If there is on the Front Panel right-click "EARTHLib.IKHInterface" click on "Select ActiveX Class" Browse.
In the drop down list that appears in the dialog box, find an entry starting with "Earth" select it, and then click on "IKHInterface"

To make sure we relink to the interface.

Looking at the naming of the type library for this interface, it might be that Google Earth 4 is the first version with an ActiveX interface.

Hope this helps

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[rgambin]

James,

I am using 4.0.2416 (beta). I checked the VI and it is not broken and when I browse I do not see anything for Google Earth.

Another questions is are you using the Google Earth IE plug in or the Google Earth application itself.  I only have the standalone app and I can't seem to find the plugin anywhere.

Thanks,

Robin

[JamesC]

Hi Robin,

I have tried my code with the Free version of the Google Earth Application only (no IE plugin) version number 4.0.2693

They seemed to have changed the interface name to "Google Earth" now, but the code still works. Here is the updated code for Windows Only.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[rgambin]

Thanks James,

I had found some information about the interface and it is a COM API. The problem I had was that the server was not started. When I ran Google Earth with /RegServer option the KH vi's worked. The application series of VI's still do not work though. Here is the link for the documention I found. It seems to have basic controls but no way to plot a path or use the ruler. At least that I can see.

Google Earth COM API Documentation:

http://earth.google.com/comapi/index.html

Once again thanks for the info and the VI's.

Robin

Google E