I'm happy to announce that the PCT data project is complete!

Over the past several weeks/months, I have been slaving away over my computer writing this program. When used, it will generate a dynamic graphing area that will load up temperature data for one to six PCT hikers.

All those that are interested in the most complicated programming assignment I have ever worked on are welcome to check it out at michaeljaylissner.com/pct-temperatures.

I am officially a free man once again! Thanks to all who made this possible with their encouragement and patience!

Introduction

As mentioned in my previous blog posting, in 2005 and 2006 six hikers carried iButton thermocron devices 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail. These devices are a sealed cannister about the size of five stacked dimes. Inside the cannister are the following:

• A piece of memory
• A clock
• A thermometer

Each hour, these devices were programmed to check the temperature and record it to the memory. Upon returning from the journey, the devices were connected to a computer and the data was extracted. All told, there are about 18,522 data points - too many to be plotted in any one graph. As a result of the struggle to make meaningful use of this data, the applet below was created.

Applet and Java Project

This applet was created as a final project for Java: Discovering its Power, a class offered by University of California Berkeley Extension. The source code is attached to this posting, and modifications or updates are more than welcome. Additionally, the source data is attached to this posting for all six hikers. You will see that it is in .csv format (the fields go like this: month, day, year, hour, temperature).

To use the applet, simply select the date range that you are interested in displaying, the time of day that interests you, the hikers whose data you want to see, and press the 'generate' button.

Caveats and Warnings

There are a few caveats about using this data:

• The primary caveat is that these results are all passive data, which is to say that these measurements were not taken by a careful experiment, but rather by a device that was carried somewhere in a backpack for the length of a five month journey. As a result, the figures shown can vary greatly depending on how the device was treated, where it was when it took its measurement, and any number of other factors.
• Ground temperatures and solar energy can be very extreme. Many of these hikers carried their iButton in a pack that might have been set within one or two inches of the ground or directly in the sun, where the temperature can seem unreal. I have seen measurements ranging from about 10 to 160 degrees F. These are actual measurements.
• Different hikers move at different paces, and take off-trail days at different times. There is no guarantee that the figures you are looking at were measured while the hiker was on the trail.

Hiker Start and End Dates

Adam Bradley: 5/15/06 to 9/24/06
Matt Church: 4/28/06 to 6/22/06
Robert Francisco: 4/25/06 to 9/26/06
Michael Lissner: 4/21/05 to 9/12/05
Jeff Singewald: 4/22/06 to 9/6/06

The Applet

Applet?
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Bugs and Questions

Inevitably, we shall find bugs and problems with this applet. When that happens, it would be great if they were sent to me for analysis and correction.

Any questions about the use of this applet are more than welcome. Just send me a jot.

Back in '05 when I hiked from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, I carried a little device called an iButton. This little device contains essentially three things: a clock, a bit of memory and a thermometer. It's waterproof, accurate to .1 degree Celsius, and is about the size of five dimes stacked one upon another. There are a bunch of silly things you can do with these, but what I chose to do with mine was to have it record the temperature every hour on the hour for the entire time I was hiking, with the idea being to get some good data about the temperature out there on the PCT.

All in all, you can figure that the temperature was recorded 24 times a day for about 150 days, for an astounding 3600 data points, and about 150 oscillations from the daytime high to the nighttime low. I've spent some time working with the data, and it's pretty much impossible to make much use of....unless you write a program to interpret it. You can see it for yourself if you're interested.

Well, as fate should have it, I am currently enrolled in a Java programming class, and I have the option of doing a final project of my own choosing. Having not put this data to good use has been a burden on my soul for a couple of years now, and I've decided to make my final project an applet that will allow a user to plot this data on a graph for any date range and any time range that they choose (e.g. 5pm to 10pm for September 20th to 23rd).

Once this is done, I will attempt to post it here, but here's the question to you dear reader, do you have any suggestions as to features that you would be interested in seeing in an applet of this sort? Thoughts?

I'm quite excited about getting this info out there. Finally.