[HN Gopher] Kepler.gl
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Kepler.gl
Author : 9woc
Score : 111 points
Date : 2025-07-04 13:58 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kepler.gl)
(TXT) w3m dump (kepler.gl)
| aidanlister wrote:
| Oh so exciting!!!
|
| I've been looking for an alternative to CARTO, their sales reps
| are awful and their pricing is wildly expensive and opaque.
| kingforaday wrote:
| I had to look this up. You are talking about Carta Maps? That's
| different from what this audience will think of when we read
| Carta but ironically your comment is the same.
| smokel wrote:
| They probably mean CARTO, formerly known as CartoDB.
|
| https://carto.com/
| pininja wrote:
| CARTO is more focused on backend pipelines and large-scale data
| (where everything needs to be tiled before it can be
| visualized), while Kepler is a great last-mile visualization
| tool. It probably makes more sense for enterprises that scale
| beyond what Kepler can do.
|
| That said, credit where it's due - their engineering team is a
| super active contributor to the deck.gl framework powering
| kepler.gl.
| peterb wrote:
| From earlier post (2018): https://www.uber.com/en-
| CA/blog/keplergl/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17181879
| loicsaintroch wrote:
| Nice to see kepler.gl getting some love here!
|
| Funny enough, I just released an open-source, opinionated map
| editor built on top of kepler.gl with their DuckDB integration --
| yesterday! If anyone's curious to see how it all fits together,
| feel free to check it out here:
| https://github.com/mountayaapp/insight-editor.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| DuckDB integration is a game-changer for geospatial
| visualization since it enables client-side processing of
| massive datasets without server roundtrips, significantly
| reducing the performance bottlenecks typical in browser-based
| GIS tools.
| tharmas wrote:
| Thanks. I didnt know this about DuckDB. I will have to check
| it out.
| plannerqadeer wrote:
| Great to see this. Indeed very useful. I am new learner here.
| Would you kindly share Which version of kepler you are using as
| base?
| loicsaintroch wrote:
| Glad to see it can be useful. The project relies on the
| latest kepler.gl version, which is v3.1.8.
| xyst wrote:
| The marketing page needs some work on mobile but otherwise a cool
| library.
|
| Export your phones GPS pings and then use this to render a heat
| map of the most frequently used locations :)
| pininja wrote:
| That was a fun mobile challenge! I just exported my Google Maps
| Timeline, used ChatGPT to convert it to a CSV of points, and
| then made a heatmap with Kepler's grid layer.. I had to tweak
| the color breaks a bit or else it only highlighted my home and
| (old) office
| adeptima wrote:
| Foursquare has another open source project worth noting on DuckDB
| - SQLRooms
|
| https://sqlrooms.org/
|
| "Build data-centric apps with DuckDB An Open Source React
| Framework for Single-Node Data Analytics powered by DuckDB"
| pininja wrote:
| It'd be great to have contributors join our collaborator summit
| [0] in the Seattle area this fall!
|
| It's a free event, supported by the OpenJS Foundation,
| kepler.gl's host foundation.
|
| We're expecting to have a session from Shan, the creator of
| Kepler.gl as well as Ilya, the creator of SQLRooms. We're still
| accepting session proposals as well [1]!
|
| [0] https://deck.gl/events/seattle-summit-2025/ [1]
| https://github.com/openjs-foundation/summit/issues/450
| qwertox wrote:
| Which is powered by deck.gl, also a very nice library.
|
| https://deck.gl/
| zkmon wrote:
| As someone to whom these kind of awesome visualizations are often
| presented, let me tell you something. Real decisions do not
| depend on these nice stuff. I sometimes feel sorry for the folks
| who spend great effort in producing these, like a children
| amusing themselves with the great sand castles they built. A lot
| of times, simple text or numbers could also have more effect on
| the decisions.
| enjoylife wrote:
| I agree that these visuals rarely drive decisions on their own.
| They're more like supporting tools... useful for framing an
| argument or guiding a narrative in a presentation, especially
| when static.
|
| Unless it's interactive or tied to live data the usefulness of
| the visualization produced is limited.. it's a shame and it's
| something this tools should pivot towards
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(page generated 2025-07-04 23:00 UTC)