Is there a programmer in the house?

[Shan-man]

First let me apologize, I would not normally repeat a post from the Community board, but am doing it now since this project will mainly be for use in the Camping Board, and since we have a different group of folks over here (and I'm getting no bites on the community board )

I was hoping we might have a programmer in our midst who might be interested in writing a bit of code to help complete a project I've been working on for the benefit of the camping forum community? I've been trying a somewhat manual method, but am beginning to realize it is too big to reasonably do manually. I have also tried teaching myself VisualBasic in Excel but my head is near to bursting like a melon from being hit on the wall! I need help.

Specifically, I need a custom implementation of the Dijkstra algorithm, where I can feed a list of connected nodes and their weights and get back a list: start node, finish node, route taken, and total weight for route. If Dijkstra is too hard to implement, a brute force calculation of all routes under, say, 12 nodes would work too and I could just filter out the non-optimal routes. I can, of course explain it in greater detail (i.e. less covertly) via PM.

Thanks in advance,

 

[Shan-man]

In hopes that more info about the project will create more interest in participation I've decided to spill some details. I have been working on a detailed map of Fort Wilderness since December, utilizing satellite & aerial imagery and GPS data collection. The map itself is complete enough for an initial release now, but I am hoping to add more complete distance information. If you are "here" then the walking distance to Meadows Pool is 1120', Marina is 1710', MBYBBQ is 1945', etc.

I have hit a wall that really requires the talents of a programmer to overcome, manual calculation of all the routes I want to include is untenable. I have already mapped out the distances between all the key points necessary to go anywhere at Fort Wilderness, but adding up all the routes is a mammoth task. If anyone reading this has programming skills, and perhaps some familiarity with Dijkstra's algorithm, and would care to help I would be most appreciative.

More technical detail, for those interested: I have an Excel spreadsheet with the distances from every origin point to every directly connected intermediate point, and distances from every intermediate point to every other directly connected intermediate point (forwards and backwards), and distances from every intermediate point to every directly connected terminal point. This arrangement made sense to me, but I can change the input to whatever works for you. I would prefer to have the program dynamic enough that I can simply point it to the input data and have it spit out a second (tab-delimited text file?) with the start node, the terminal node, the path taken, and the total distance; which might look like Site 114 CCW<tab> Meadow Trading Post <tab> Site 114 CCW to 100 CP 1 to 400 CP 1 to 500 CP 1 to 1400 CP 2 to Meadow Trading Post <tab> 1143 feet. I may want to add other routes in the future, so I would not want the data hard-coded, but dynamic, based on the input file. For instance I might want to calculate the distance from the cabins using buses, and the current data set includes neither cabins or bus stops (I'm thinking the bus stop to bus depot nodes would be assigned values of 0, or a very low number like 10 feet to your seat?). Please PM me if you are interested in looking at my data and taking a whack at it.

 

[nealsmith]

You may have already looked, but I found this site of Excel add-ins
ORMM Excel Add-ins See Optimize.

 

[Shan-man]

Wow, thank you nealsmith! That looks very promising. It looks like it'll take me a week to figure out, but very promising!

 

[69RoadRunner]

I'm a programmer, but that isn't the type of programming I do. I wish I had the spare time to learn that and help out, but the kids and programming all day, I'm just capable of sarcastic responses on web forums in my "spare" time.

 

[Memph1s]

You might also want to check out http://www.mrexcel.com/if you haven't yet. The guys over there can do anything with excel.

 

[nealsmith]

Wow, thank you nealsmith! That looks very promising. It looks like it'll take me a week to figure out, but very promising!

thanks. wish I could be of more help. For me there isn't anything as satisfying as completing a program that actually does something useful. I don't do much programming, just a little in Perl and some web stuff.

how do you intend to access it when it's complete?

 

[mill4023]

If only I had saved some of my old java stuff from school.
Not sure if this will help you, but here's an implementation someone wrote.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/FastHeapDijkstra.aspx

 

[Shan-man]

Thanks for the link, I did examine the code, but I can't make heads or tales of it. I don't even see what the data source is. I may have to hire John's programmer from India. Man I wish I could remember my days of Pascal!