OpenJUMP GIS: from a local (cartesyan) system to a projeced coordinate system

Sometimes we are asked why (after 11 years) we still keep OpenJUMP in ArcheOS, since QGIS became such a functional GIS  and could cover all the feature of the other similar software. The main reason for such a choice are two:

1. QGIS developed very fast and can happen that some tools are still buggy when released (like for the newest georeferencer version)

2. the software (Polygontool) our friend +Szabolcs Köllö (aka Keulemaster) developed for us, in order to handle big data in archaeological surveys, is strictly connected with OpenJUMP

The GIS OpenJUMP

Today I just finished to package for (ArcheOS Hypatia) the last version of this GIS (OpenJUMP 1.9.1) and to upload it in our experimental repository (soon we share it), so I prepared a new videotutorial to illustrate one of the operation in which OpenJUMP is still useful, since the similar tool of QGIS are sometimes buggy: the recovering of old excavation data from a local (cartesian) coordinate system to a projected coordinate system (e.g. in the videotutorial, ETRS89 / UTM zone 32 N).

I hope this can be useful. Have a nice day!

ArcheOS Hypatia, a new tool for 3D documentation: opnMVG-GUI

In these days we are working very hard to package new software for ArcheOS v. 6 (codename Hypatia). This time we just finished to work on the new GUI +Martin Greca developed for +Pierre Moulon software, openMVG, setting up all the requested dependencies. The result is a new tool for 3D photogrammetry in +ArcheOS: openMVG-GUI. This software can be considered as the evolution of the old Python Photogrammetry ToolBox, but we are currently working to fix some bugs of this application to keep providing it in ArcheOS, since it gave the best results in underground environment documentation.

Here below you an see a fast videotutorial I did for our brand new YouTube channel:

To speed up ArcheOS Hypatia development, we set up an unofficial new repository, which we will use (by now) just internally our society, to be sure that everything works fine before to release it publicly to all the users. Anyway we will share this repository also during the university courses in which we should teach this years, like the one in Evora (Portugal) or the one in Venice, since in this conditions it is possible to work under strict control, avoiding problems in unresolved package dependencies. As soon as the new repository will be hardly tested, we will open it, adding the coordinates to the ArcheOS main branch.

The new GUI (by +Martin Greca) for openMVG (by +Pierre Moulon)

 

PS

If you are interested, there are still available places for the course in Evora (regarding open source technologies and cultural heritage). Here more infos.

Have a nice day!

ArcheoFOSS 2016 in Cagliari!

Hi all,

this post is to notify that next ArcheoFOSS workshop (the eleventh edition) will be held in Cagliari, at the local university, by the Department of History, Cultural Heritage and Landscape (it: Dipartimento di storia, beni culturali e territorio). The meeting will take place from the 7th to the 9th October 2016 and the main topic will be: "Knowledges for communication. Tools and open technologies for the analysis and the sharing of our cultural and territorial heritage".

Pictures of Cagliari (by various users from flickr; CC-SA)

This year there will be some novelties and, among others, the fact that the workshop will be associated with the GFOSS Day, the annual meeting of the Italian Association of the Geographic Free Software (GFOSS). 

The conference will be organized with three main sessions: the first day (7th October) will be dedicated to different workshop about Free and Open Source software used for geographical or cultural (and archaeological) aims; during the second day (8th October) some key-note speakers will present general topics (e.g. legislation about the use of open data and public data), while parallel sessions will host more specific arguments; the last day (9th October) will be focused on operative activities, like mapping parties and similar happenings (thanks to the association Sardegna Open Data).
If you are interested in proposing a contribution, here are the thematic guidelines:

• FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) applied to research (main topic: archeology, cultural heritage and landscape)
• FLOSS for protection, management and development of archaeological, cultural or territorial heritage
• FLOSS for visualization, analysis and web-publication of data realted with archeology, cultural heritage and landscape
• Projects oriented in opening and sharing data (related with archeology, cultural heritage or landscape studies
• Case studies of using FLOSS in order to develop and share territorial data
• Experiences in opening and sharing geographic data (cultural, technological and legal aspsects
• Experiences of institution (schools, universities, public administrations, etc...) in using free geographic software or migrating form closed software to FLOSS or hybrid systems

If you plan to join one of the two workshops, you need to send your proposal, using this module, to this address: archeofoss.gfoss2016@gmail.com
Here you can download the call for papers.

For more informations, please visit the site of GFOSS Day and ArcheoFOSS.

See you there!

QGIS: exporting 3D data in threejs

Hi all,

I go on recording small videotutorial regarding the software in ArcheOS 5 (codename Theodoric), trying to collecting more material for the official documentation.

In order to avoid the creation of "wasted food" (videotutorial which are not connected with a real project risk to be useless because too theoretical and too few practical), I am collecting examples from our (Arc-Team) work.

This time I will show how to export 3D data from QGIS and visualize them in a browser thanks to the nice plugin "Qgis2threejs". I I had the necessity to do this kind of operation just to create some screenshot to complete this very simple illustration that gives a geological overview of the working area:

Of course this is not the only way to collect 3D views (I could do the same in GRASS with Nviz), but this workflow is very fast, for a small project.

Here is the videotutorial (I hope it will be useful):

As ususal, the video is uploaded also in our Digital Archaeological Documentation Project.

Have a nice day!

The Taung Project from a Free and Open Source point of view

The Taung Project has ended almost six months ago, but today I would like to analyze some of the most remarkable aspects of this experience, which can be considered as an example of open research.

This project, indeed, was able to meet all the three prerequisites that characterize an open research, achieving the primary goal of this blog (open archeology): the team used open tools (software and hardware), shared the necessary knowledge to replicate the experiment and published the data under open licenses. These three elements (open tools, open knowledge and open data) are the basis of the new idea of science that is emerging in recent years and that, hopefully, will also affect archeology as a discipline (and this is exactly the objective Arc-Team is pursuing since more than ten years). 
Tools, knowledge and data are like the rings of a chain (the research itself) whose potential increases significantly when a complete and free access is guaranteed.

The "Chain of Liberty"

If one of these ring is close (broken) or its access is restricted, the resulting weakness can affect the whole cognitive process, till the extreme consequence of invalidating the final result.
I would like to further analyze the benefits of an open approach to the archaeological research in ATOR, but, due to time reasons, today I will just report some of the old posts where it is possible to access the main steps of the Taung Project:

1) data acquisition
2) data processing

In those articles it is also possible to download the raw and processed data we produced, with the hope that they will be useful to new experiments and research ideas. For example, currently I'm using these data to test the Java-script application you ca see below (soon a post about it):

 PS

Writing this post I noticed that we never shared the data of this post, which marked the beginning of the experiments that led to the Taung project. It is now possible to download the 3D pointcloud here and the relative mesh here. Have fun!

ArcheOS and UAVP for archaeological remote sensing

Hi all,

Finally I uploaded the presentation we did in the CAA Southampton 2012. Until our website is down (for maintenance), you can see it here. Inside you can find more details about the aerial archaeology project we mentioned in the post Xcopter drone and SfM techniques.

Here you can see the first slide, in the new Arc-Team theme I did playing with beamer, LaTeX :).

As you see the license is the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0), which we are planning to adopt soon also for ATOR to facilitate content sharing.

2016-03-31 Update

Thanks to self-archiving I can now add the bibliography related with this post:

 ResearchGate: Articl

Academia: Article

I hope it will be useful, even if no more up to date it can be a starting point to work in Aerial Archeology with Open Software and Hardware.

CAA 2012, Southampton

This year the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) conference will be hosted by the Archaeological Computing Research Group in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Southampton on 26-30 March 2012. Unfortunately we will have no time to stay the whole week in Southampton, but we will participate  to the session regarding "Novel Technologies For Supporting Archaeological Fieldwork" which will take place Wednesday, March 28. Our presentation ("Free and Open Source platform for remote sensing and 3D data acquisition") will focus on the combination of open source UAV (especially the UAVP drone) and ArcheOS. We will show as well some results about our last project of aerial archaeology in North Italy. 

I hope it will be an interesting experience (just to write some report about it). For more information about the congress, here is the official website: http://caaconference.org/.

Soon we will post the presentation, and some more details about our last research in UAV field.

2016-03-31 Update

Thanks to self-archiving I can now add the bibliography related with this post:

 ResearchGate: Article - Presentation

Academia: Article - Presentation

I hope it will be useful, even if no more up to date it can be a starting point to work in Aerial Archeology with Open Software and Hardware.