[ hype
i happen to work in the mapping industry so viewing csv log files written by gps speed sentry is easy. i realise that not everyone has access to mapping software and google earth is a great free tool that can be used to view maps (click here if you dont have the software). csv2kml is a small utility that converts csv files into the kml format which can be read by google earth. its still a work in progress and i welcome any feedback or suggestions on it.

the utility is currently written in visual basic 6 and requires the comdlg32.ocx control in order to run (my xp laptop didnt have this installed so i have included this in the download).

[ features
here are a couple of features available in the utility;
- the utility offers a fair bit of flexibility in terms of column names etc (some are automatically recognised)
- any fields within the csv file can be used to create a description for each point in the kml file
- point or line files can be created
- lines can follow the ground or use supplied elevations
- different icons can be specified in a csv column (see tips below for more detail)
- support for quote enclosed commas generated by excel
- conversion of xml escape characters

[ conversion tips
here are some tips for converting your csv files successfully;
- google earth requires latitude/longitude to be in decimal degrees.
- google earth requires elevation in meters.
- elevation will be converted to meters if the elevation field contains the letters "ft" (for feet) eg 100ft will be converted to 30.48m
- fields that are automatically recognised are lat_dec, long_dec and elevation; these will be selected as the latitude, longitude and elevation if they are present in the file (they can be overridden).
- the more fields that are used in the description the bigger the file (so beware)
- valid icon names are listed under the google earth sub-folder "\res\paddle" e.g. ylw-stars-lv.png (all that is required is the image name)

[ download
the latest version of csv2kml is 0.4b compiled in october 2007. the utility can be downloaded using the link below;

- zip file click here