[ 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.
- co-ordinates should be signed in the csv file i.e. 75w should be -75. you can use additional fields named n/s & e/w to dictate co-ordinate direction.
- goole 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, name, icon and elevation these will be selected as the latitude, longitude and elevation if they are present in the file (the can be overridden).
- the more fields that are used in the description the bigger the file.
- 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.
- the icon base folder (i.e. paddle) can be changed in the setup.ini file.
- see the setup.ini file for additional settings.

[ download
the latest version of csv2kml is 1.0.2 compiled in february 2008. the utility can be downloaded using the link below;

- zip file click here