Marking Locations

Ok, absolutely my first day here. However, I can’t seem to figure what, I think, is very, very, very basic. I want to map, for example, 5 locations in a city. IE: drop a pin.

Then, I would like to export the associated data with those pins to an XLS or CSV file. Data like coordinates, elevation, tags, and anything else interesting.

This seems so basic but I can’t figure it out and neither can google or chat gpt. All they talk about is editing points.

Thanks in advance

Do you want to map objects so that they are part of the public OpenStreetMap database? If you are finding information about “editing points”, that is probably what it is talking about (and it’s also what a lot of this Community Forum is about).

Or do you simply want to mark some locations for your own use and export? OpenStreetMap itself doesn’t really provide that (or only to a very limited extent for one marker at a time). There are tools based on OSM data that allow this. If you can clarify what you want to do, people may be able to suggest some (although I’m not sure about elevation - the tool would need to get that from somewhere other than OpenStreetMap).

Thanks for your help.

Eventually I want to add to OSM but for now I want to mark a number of locations and export that related data such as coordinates, elevation, tags, etc.

What external OSM tools might help me with that?

Thanks

OSM typically doesn’t contain elevation info, but besides that you can use the overpass API to query objects at or around a given location.
I don’t know any tool which could be used to mark several places on a map and then retrieve the OSM info for all the marked points.

I was also unsure about that. What did you have in mind when you refer to “tags”? A single point on the map might, for example, be inside a shop which is inside a shopping mall inside a suburb inside a city, and each of those things will have tags… what kind of data would you want ro export?

Welcome to OSM!

Perhaps Leaflet can help you with that. You can create Markers with it and then add a query around that point to get potential matches.

The pins themselves don’t really have associated data, they are just coordinates. You can do a query to search for nearby POIs or let the user choose a node. The associated tags can then be displayed. This usually doesn’t contain elevation, though there are libraries that can add that information.

The most basic version of this is the “Query features” functionality on osm.org. It seems to be very similar to what you want (except the literal pin drop).

1 Like

Welcome to OSM, I’m also relatively new to the forums, but have been mapping for a while.

I would venture that for 5 points, you might be far quicker by just getting the info for each of those points. Is there something specific about the export you’re after, or is it intended for something more cumbersome like 5000 points, not 5?

Google Maps doesn’t let you export details, but you can make a private or sharable list of points which would include the GPS coords, as well as Google coords, and an associated address, as well as any relevant business info. I don’t know of great public/free sources of elevation info, but I haven’t found it often in OSM or free/public maps.

Hello. You have several approaches that can be addressed from different points of view.

  1. The first one, which you already use, is to simply create an Excel table with name, attributes and coordinates (you can get it from any map app or website and copy and paste it into the Excel table).
    Once you get your table export to csv and mount it in GPS Visualizer to get the elevations and then export back to csv, kml, gpx.
  2. Use Google My Maps To create waypoint directly on a map, you edit the attributes (a simple note like restaurant or key=value according to the wiki), choose an icon for that wp, export to csv or kml and upload to GPS Visualizer, You have an additional advantage is that the map created with WP can be viewed through Google Maps by simply copying the URL and opening it, like my next example= The following link will open Google Maps on your device with all natural=peak of Berlin, Germany
  3. Use Google Sheets to create your table as in point 1 but this time around the Google environment, then import your table to My Maps and graph it on the map.
  4. Use GPS Visualizer directly (see link in point 1) and create WPs by simply tapping on the map and editing their attributes and then getting the elevations to add to the file you export (csv, gpx, kml), On this website you will have more tools to edit and graph your data (WP).
  5. You can use some public API to get elevations by simply adding the coordinates (single query or all coordinates) to the URL, opentopodata and gmrt are a quick alternative to get elevations or you can investigate and use some of the available elevation APIs (geonames, openrouteservices, …), if the elevations are to be mapped later in OSM and you get objections for using any of the services I just mentioned, I can send you a small HTML tool (html + js) that I designed to extract elevations from a NASA 1" .hgt DEM, it can be used locally by simply opening the html with any browser and loading the .hgt (available to most of the planet).
  6. Use umap and do the same as with GPS Visualizer and My Maps.

Ultimately, there are a ton of options and tools you can use to achieve what you want.

P.S. Don’t use Chat GPT to get inspiration for a project, in the end it’s just an AI and if you don’t ask it specific questions and give it precise instructions it will answer anything. If you already know what tool you are going to use, you can ask about how to use it, something like = How can I use MyMaps or GPS Visualizer to create a wp with a data table…, don’t thank him either, It’s just a machine :grimacing:.
You have tried to scold him and tell him: Focus you damn machine and give me a working code, these words usually work for me after 1 hour of trying and trying useless bits of code generated by Chat GPT.

Getting elevations via OpenTopoData
The following URL contains 4 datasets and 12 natural=peak coordinates without elevations in Berlin, Germany. I configured the URL with 4 data sets so that if there are no elevations in the first service do the search in the second, third or fourth. For these 12 coordinates eudem25m was sufficient as it covers all of Europe.

https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/eudem25m,aster30m,srtm30m,mapzen?locations=52.6228669,13.2628969|52.5421721,13.2655621|52.5763092,13.3875436|52.5760875,13.3883965|52.5757175,13.3898261|52.4946636,13.3738292|52.4413262,13.3950698|52.4684057,13.4982798|52.4653052,13.5256612|52.4529103,13.5829371|52.5445471,13.5794556|52.5450104,13.5999477

You can use it as a base to add your coordinates.

Another free service available

Coordinates

There is a warning about using 10 or fewer coordinates per request.

1 Like

One other option is to use a tool like QMapshack and add the Waypoints. If you have enabled DEM data the height will be automatically added.

Then save these waypoints in a .gpx file and use gpsbabel to convert the .gpx (-i gpx) into a .csv (-o csv)