Heatmap Features - acstech/doppler-frontend GitHub Wiki

How To Use The Heatmap Web Interface

Once you have all the necessary services for Doppler-Heatmap up and running, you might be wondering what all you can do with it from a user perspective. Here is a guide to some of the features you can play with on the webpage.

Map

The map itself displays geographic data received either in real time or in the past. Data points that are plotted close to each other update their color to indicate the proximity of events with each other. The legend on the bottom right corner of the page indicates how many events correspond to a specific coloration.

Live

When the Heatmap webpage first loads, the client is directed to a live representation of the Heatmap with all corresponding client events selected. Clicking the "Live" button in the upper-right corner of the page will bring the user back to the live display. The button is red when live, blue when turned off.

Historical

By clicking the clock icon in the upper-right hand corner of the screen, the user will be able to see data points on the Heatmap from the past. Live data may still be received by the Heatmap, but it will not begin to display it until Live mode is entered again.

At the bottom of the page, there are two date selection widgets. The left date selector selects the start date to display historical data, while the date selector on the right selects the end-date. If the same date is selected in both widgets, historical playback will occur for just that day. If there is a range of days within the two dates selected, playback will occur for each day in the range selected. The user must click "Play" to begin playing back data.

Once a date range is submitted by clicking on the "Play" button, the map will begin to display data hour-by-hour for each day in the range. At any time the user can click "Cancel" and playback will stop.

Clock

On the top right of the Heatmap page, the clock widget displays the current time for the users location. To the right and left of the clock, the user can toggle between Live and Historical Mode by clicking the respective buttons. While in playback mode, the clock pauses. If a playback for previous days is in session, the clock will update hour-by-hour as respective data is displayed.

Settings

Clicking on the toggle button in the top left corner of the page opens a sidebar with several options.

The sidebar is only available in "Live Mode." Settings must be chosen before going into "Historical Mode."

Select Event Filters

In this display, the user can check/uncheck the events they want to receive on the Heatmap. The "Submit" button must be clicked after changing the configuration to update the map. This change will reset the map's data!

Switch To A Different Location

This drop down list simply has 7 different geographic views pre-loaded for quick navigation around the map.

Decay Rate/Refresh Rate

The decay rate slider adjusts the rate at which the map removes data points from the map. The user can choose between data removal every 1 second to every 10 minutes. The user must click the "Submit" button to update the map with a new configuration.

The refresh rate slider adjusts the rate at which the map displays new data activity. For example, a refresh rate of "10" will update the map every 10 seconds with every data point loaded from the last 10
seconds. The user must click the "Submit" button to update the map with a new configuration.