Lights of Europe and North America

[grantmc]

Here's a link to a visual display/map of all the lights you might see on your passages. Ok it's cheesy but I think it's kind of cool.

https://geodienst.github.io/lighthou...pPl3ibamxk6wrI

[boatman61]

Neat...

[DeValency]

while a nice play, it is maybe somehow accurate in Western Europe but of course nonsense in the US. For example; New England alone has more than 200 active light houses, not including illuminated buoys and other alerting lights. The chart here shows zero... More or less the same in the Eastern Med, parts of the Dutch and Eastern Swedish coast of the Baltic sea...

[Jim Cate]

Yep, cool, but somewhat Euro-centric in its view. I can assure you all that there are at least a few more lights in Tasmania and the rest of Oz than they have recognized and that the Scandinavian areas appear to be related to Las Vegas!

But interesting to watch, nonetheless!

Jim

[psk125]

The lights on the map don't correspond to the brightness and timing and color of the actual light they're supposed to represent, do they? THAT would be cool.

[skipmac]

Thanks. Very cool but yes US and especially New England is mostly missing. Maybe they will add more as time goes by.

[grantmc]

Originally Posted by psk125

The lights on the map don't correspond to the brightness and timing and color of the actual light they're supposed to represent, do they? THAT would be cool.

Actually they do, based on the published light list.

Very sorry if I gave the impression that this is some sort of toy.

Here's a link to the basis of the illuminations: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/...ght_Characters

This is an open source project called Open SeaMap https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenSeaMap

As well as lights the data collection includes pretty much anything that can be mapped on a marine chart. The data is available for down loading and populating things like Open CPN. Here's a list of symbols: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/...eamark_Objects

[grantmc]

Originally Posted by skipmac

Thanks. Very cool but yes US and especially New England is mostly missing. Maybe they will add more as time goes by.

This is a wiki project so I guess become a volunteer author and enter New England in to the database. I'm tempted to add in New Zealand and Fiji as these too are mostly missing.

But as I write this post I'm reminded that directly above is the a link to a similar project. See above tab called 'Wiki'. Click on that and you'll be drawn to a virtual World Cruising and Sailing Wiki. It's filled with all sorts of interesting and useful information. But it needs contributors and it needs people to refer to it.

[Sos]

Quite a few missing on the South coast of UK as well.
Pretty but not much use.

[NBs]

Originally Posted by DeValency

while a nice play, it is maybe somehow accurate in Western Europe but of course nonsense in the US. For example; New England alone has more than 200 active light houses, not including illuminated buoys and other alerting lights. The chart here shows zero... More or less the same in the Eastern Med, parts of the Dutch and Eastern Swedish coast of the Baltic sea...

I looked at the light map and it is very deficient in Sweden and Finland, if you have a navicons map program then you can quickly notice that there are thousands of lights in this area ...

Finish costal lights
https://www.traficom.fi/sites/defaul...on_loistot.pdf

NBs

[goboatingnow]

It’s not very good. It misses the oldest working lighthouse in the world ( hook head) in Ireland on the south coast.

[Barkingmad]

No Sandy Point Lighthouse? I feel left out, I live on the Lighthouse Route. Seems to be a few missing......

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by grantmc

Here's a link to a visual display/map of all the lights you might see on your passages. Ok it's cheesy but I think it's kind of cool.

https://geodienst.github.io/lighthou...pPl3ibamxk6wrI

There's an AWFUL lot missing. Nothing on the Canadian or Alaskan west coast north of the Salish Sea. Nothing in Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands), only a few on the west coast of Vancouver Island, nothing on the west coast of the US from Cape Flattery to San Francisco, etc. etc. etc. Even Cape Flattery light itself is missing.

But the concept is interesting and it would be useful if the database were fleshed out.

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

There's an AWFUL lot missing. Nothing on the Canadian or Alaskan west coast north of the Salish Sea. Nothing in Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands), only a few on the west coast of Vancouver Island, nothing on the west coast of the US from Cape Flattery to San Francisco, etc. etc. etc. Even Cape Flattery light itself is missing.

But the concept is interesting and it would be useful if the database were fleshed out.

Oops. Cape Flattery light IS there. It's just a really, really slow flash.

[Kelkara]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

There's an AWFUL lot missing. Nothing on the Canadian or Alaskan west coast north of the Salish Sea. Nothing in Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands), only a few on the west coast of Vancouver Island, nothing on the west coast of the US from Cape Flattery to San Francisco, etc. etc. etc. Even Cape Flattery light itself is missing.

But the concept is interesting and it would be useful if the database were fleshed out.

The data is all available, published in the "List of Lights" and should be pretty easy to scrape into a useable database. I have thought about doing this with the Canadian lights to make an app that shows them ... but haven't really worked out how it would be useful. After all, the same info is also on the charts, which I am using for navigation anyway.