A Python script for cleaning GPX tracks. It removes consecutive duplicate track points (based on latitude, longitude, and elevation) and allows retaining only every nth track point. Especially useful for processing GPS data from FPV drones with Betaflight.
This script efficiently reduces and cleans GPX data for better analysis and visualization in software like GeoTracker, OsmAnd, or Google Earth Pro.
- Post-flight analysis and visualization of FPV drone flights.
- Improving data quality from Betaflight logs by removing redundant entries.
- Preventing issues with flight visualization (e.g., incorrect speed calculations, display errors on maps).
If you are using an FPV drone with Betaflight and GPS logging enabled, you can generate GPX files using the following steps:
- Enable GPS Logging in Betaflight: Ensure that Blackbox logging is activated and GPS data is being recorded.
- Carry out your drone flight.
- Download Blackbox Logs: Retrieve the
.bbllog files from your flight controller. - Convert to GPX:
- Open the logs in Betaflight Blackbox Explorer.
- Use the Export to GPX function to generate the GPX files.
These GPX files can now be processed with this script to remove redundant data and optimize them for further analysis.
If your FPV drone's flight controller storage is full or no GPS logs were recorded, you can still obtain GPS data from GoPro videos. There are two main methods to do this:
- Use the Telemetry Extractor software.
- The free version is sufficient for basic GPS data extraction (the paid full version is expensive, costing several hundred euros).
- Telemetry Extractor is a web-based app, but the extraction process runs locally on your machine.
- To use the free version, go to this page, select Free, and enter an email address to access the tool.
If the Telemetry Extractor method is unavailable or does not work, you can extract metadata using Gyroflow:
- Open the GoPro video file in Gyroflow.
- In the bottom-left corner, open the Motion Data section.
- Click Export and select Export All Metadata.
- This will generate a JSON file containing all metadata from the GoPro clip.
- Although this is not a direct GPX file, you can extract the relevant GPS track information from the JSON file and convert it to GPX if needed.
- Python must be installed.
- The script gpx-cleaner.py must be downloaded.
Use the following command in the terminal:
python3 gpx-cleaner.py <keep_every_nth_trkpt> <path-to-directory-with-gpx-files>Replace <keep_every_nth_trkpt> with an integer specifying how many track points to retain (e.g., 1 to keep all, 5 to keep every 5th point). Replace <path-to-directory-with-gpx-files> with the directory containing your GPX files.
If your GPX files are in /home/user/gpx_data and you want to keep every 5th track point, run:
python3 gpx-cleaner.py 5 /home/user/gpx_dataThe cleaned files will be stored in /home/user/gpx_data/output/.
- Cleaned GPX files are saved in a subfolder
/outputwithin the specified directory. - Duplicate entries are removed, and depending on the setting, only every nth track point is retained.
In addition to filtering track points, the script includes an elevation_increase parameter that allows increasing the elevation of all track points by a fixed number of meters. This is particularly useful for better visualization in Google Earth Pro, where terrain data can sometimes cause track points to be hidden beneath the ground. By increasing the elevation (e.g., by 20 meters), these points remain visible.
The elevation_increase parameter is hardcoded within the script and is not passed via the command line. By default, it is set to 0 meters, meaning no elevation adjustment is applied. If you need to modify it, open gpx-cleaner.py and adjust the value manually.
This project is a fork of gpx-track-cleaner by codeOfJannik. Thanks to the original author for their work!
This script is open-source and released under the MIT license. Feel free to use and modify it!