The Street Views Grabber

The script grabs Google Street View for a city.

How does it work

It works in several steps:

1. Get a list of the roads (of all types, including pedestrian, service, etc.) for the area passed as a parameter. That is done via Overpass API.
2. Count the intermediate points of the roads.
3. For all the intermediate points - check whether a street view is available there, and download if yes. That is done via the Google Street View Metadata API (for checking), and the Google Street View Static API (for downloading).

Requirements

Modules

Install dependencies using requirements.txt

pip install -r requirements.txt

Google API key

Moreover, an API key is necessary to get access to the Google APIs. It should be passed as a environment variable GOOGLE_API_KEY.

A key for a project can be obtained at Google Cloud (https://cloud.google.com/).

Usage:

python3 grab_street_views.py [-h] [--debug] [--verbose] [--count-only]
                            [--alternative-server ALTERNATIVE_SERVER]
                            city

positional arguments:
  city                  the city for which street views shall be downloaded.
                        The name should be written in its original language
                        (e.g. Москва, not Moscow).
optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

  --debug               run in debug mode

  --verbose             show info about all the processed points

  --download            download the images. If not set, only count amount and
                        calculate approximate total size 

  --alternative-server ALTERNATIVE_SERVER
                        alternative server of Overpass API if the main one
                        refuses to handle. Must start with "http(s)" and
                        contain the right URL (usually, "api/interpreter")

  --fov [20-120]        field of view of the street views. Less the value,
                        more zoomed the images. Must be in a range between 20
                        and 120. Default is 50.

  --step STEP           a step in meters with which the script walks through
                        routes, i.e., probes for a street view availability.
                        Also it effect the radius of the search for a street
                        view. The radius is a half of a step. Default is 10.

  --rand                in the case of debug run, randomize the route to be
                        handled (by default, the first one is taken)

  --visualize           visualize the walking process: show all the points of
                        interest and the vectors of the available looks

Alternative Servers

A list of alternative servers with public Overpass API instances can be found here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API#Public_Overpass_API_instances