Velotracker map of Köniz
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Here is the result:


How was it made?

First, for about 100 Swiss Francs, I bought a rugged, battery+solar powered TTN Velotracker from Luond Electronics, some nice people on the Zürisee. Of course, I could attach my own contraption, but it would never survive the hilly roads and weather conditions through which I bike.


Get your own at velotracker.ch - and connect it to The Things Network. Note that your bike will only be tracked if it's within range of an open gateway. Here's the current view on Bern in TTNmapper.org - clearly there are will be many gaps in reception:


For better coverage, Velotracker gives you the option of connecting to Swisscom's LoRaWAN network for a monthly fee.


After you've biked around a bit (I collected 8 months of data for the image above), export a CSV file from the PWA app. This should look like this:


Then import it into a QGIS delimited text layer. The import dialog helps you to make sure the "lan" and "lot" columns are properly attributed.


Then create a grid (hexagons are the bestagons!) and adjust the spacing until you're happy.


Use the handy Count Points in Polygon tool with your Grid and point-layer:


Finally add a dynamic opacity on the NUMPOINTS attribute that the tool has generated:


You probably need to multiply it by a factor of 20 or so:


Tweak the result, then hang it on your wall and be proud of your proof of spatial awareness!


Thanks to the TTN Bern community for all the gateways that make this tracking possible `<3`