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Cellular forums Home > Archive > Garmin GPS > November 2005 > GPS for touring cyclists.
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GPS for touring cyclists.
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| Hello NG,
Any touring cyclists around? I´m starting on long-distance trip through
US-Canada-Alaska and then South America. Of cource I would like to have a
GPS unit with me to collect infos about the route. But which one do you
recommend me to choose?
I do not intend to put in way points but want to trace the route I ride and
combine it to the photos taken along the route. That is what I think for now
is the primary use, but also the altimeter and compass are interesting
features.
I want to trace the tour continually but also to store/save the daily tours
as a trip-distance like we do on a normal cycle computer.
I have seen (for the US market) basemap to be expressed as "Americas". Does
that mean both North and South America?
Thanks
Per
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| peter 2005-11-27, 11:48 pm |
| Per wrote:
> Any touring cyclists around? I=B4m starting on long-distance trip through
> US-Canada-Alaska and then South America. Of cource I would like to have a
> GPS unit with me to collect infos about the route. But which one do you
> recommend me to choose?
Unfortunately there generally isn't one 'best' unit, but several that
have assorted pros and cons. The main problem with all current Garmin
models is that they have limited tracklog capacity (of up to 10,000
points) with no way to use any of the large map memory for storing
tracklogs. Both Magellan and Lowrance do have that capability.
Lowrance does not include either altitude or timestamp data with their
tracklogs. The latter can be worked around somewhat by setting the
unit to record trackpoints at fixed time intervals and keeping track of
the starting time. But Magellan is probably best overall for saving
long tracklogs.
OTOH, I'm much more impressed by the quality of Garmin's firmware and
their trip computer functions. Magellans frequently don't keep very
good track of distances when travelling slowly and are more limited
with regard to things like moving average speeds and max. speeds. The
Garmin handhelds are also better at battery life and run on standard AA
cells whereas the latest Magellans (eXplorist 400 - 600) use a special
Li+ cell that would be hard to find on a remote tour.
Garmin is coming out soon with some new handhelds that use a TransFlash
memory expansion card. But there's no indication yet of whether it can
be used to store waypoint and tracklog information.
> I have seen (for the US market) basemap to be expressed as "Americas". Do=
es
> that mean both North and South America?
Yes, the 'Americas' basemap covers N & S America, but remember that
basemaps aren't very detailed. Only major roads and highways are
shown, i.e. largely roads you might want to avoid when cycling.
Detailed street-level maps of South American countries are harder to
find in a form that's compatible with dedicated GPS units.
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| Thank you Peter,
OK, now I understand the effect of the tracklog points limit. I´m now
thinking it must then be possible to transfer the data to a diskette during
the trip, fx. when finding an Internet Cafe and then put it together when
back home? Am I right?
I like the Garmin product very much becauce of the different useful features
and the standard AA cells. I read about the new TransFlash
memory expansion card. It is probably a way to create more space for more
detailed maps, but it would be great if it opens a possibilty of storing of
tracklogs. The latter means that I must concentrate my thoughts about the
products prepared for these cards.
How much does more detailed maps of Americas or US/Canada cost - I cannot
find a webside with that info. About South Amerika I understand the problem
;-)
Per
"peter" <prathman@comcast.net> skrev i en meddelelse
news:1133136235.717301.46270@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Per wrote:
> Any touring cyclists around? I´m starting on long-distance trip through
> US-Canada-Alaska and then South America. Of cource I would like to have a
> GPS unit with me to collect infos about the route. But which one do you
> recommend me to choose?
Unfortunately there generally isn't one 'best' unit, but several that
have assorted pros and cons. The main problem with all current Garmin
models is that they have limited tracklog capacity (of up to 10,000
points) with no way to use any of the large map memory for storing
tracklogs. Both Magellan and Lowrance do have that capability.
Lowrance does not include either altitude or timestamp data with their
tracklogs. The latter can be worked around somewhat by setting the
unit to record trackpoints at fixed time intervals and keeping track of
the starting time. But Magellan is probably best overall for saving
long tracklogs.
OTOH, I'm much more impressed by the quality of Garmin's firmware and
their trip computer functions. Magellans frequently don't keep very
good track of distances when travelling slowly and are more limited
with regard to things like moving average speeds and max. speeds. The
Garmin handhelds are also better at battery life and run on standard AA
cells whereas the latest Magellans (eXplorist 400 - 600) use a special
Li+ cell that would be hard to find on a remote tour.
Garmin is coming out soon with some new handhelds that use a TransFlash
memory expansion card. But there's no indication yet of whether it can
be used to store waypoint and tracklog information.
> I have seen (for the US market) basemap to be expressed as "Americas".
> Does
> that mean both North and South America?
Yes, the 'Americas' basemap covers N & S America, but remember that
basemaps aren't very detailed. Only major roads and highways are
shown, i.e. largely roads you might want to avoid when cycling.
Detailed street-level maps of South American countries are harder to
find in a form that's compatible with dedicated GPS units.
| |
| Grumps 2005-11-28, 5:48 pm |
| Per wrote:
> Thank you Peter,
> OK, now I understand the effect of the tracklog points limit. I´m now
> thinking it must then be possible to transfer the data to a diskette
> during the trip, fx. when finding an Internet Cafe and then put it
> together when back home? Am I right?
I'm not sure whether the track log can be easily extracted at an internet
cafe. For my GPS60 I think you'd need a USB connection and have to install
some software.
Another solution to the track log limit is to connect your GPS to a
datalogger. I've no experience with these, so I'll leave that to someone
else (or you could do a quick search to see if that's an appropriate
solution for you).
| |
| David Lee 2005-11-28, 5:48 pm |
| Grumps wrote...
> Per wrote:
>
> I'm not sure whether the track log can be easily extracted at an internet
> cafe. For my GPS60 I think you'd need a USB connection and have to install
> some software.
Probably not much use in an Internet Cafe, but if you can get your hands on
a computer that you are allowed to reboot then there are a number of Linux
versions that run from a CD or DVD - either you boot directly from the CD or
else via a startup floppy. The OS uses RAM disk to run and a USB memory
stick for storage so you don't have to install anything on the PC or even
use its hard drive. I've had a play with a couple of these distros -
Knoppix and Mandrake Move - it's been a lifesaver recently when my hard
drive failed and wouldn't boot up windows - I was able to rescue all my
recent unbackedup data using Linux from a CD. I've also had pretty good
success running Windows applications under the Windows emulator (Wine IIRC).
You can install the applications either on the USB memory or else build them
into the CD installation. It's also possible to load Linux on a bootable
USB flash memory (there was a recent article about this in one of the UK PC
mags) but I think that it requires a cunning bit of re-partitioning of the
memory and they recomended that you didn't risk it on a precious new 2GB
memory stick!
David
| |
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| OK, it seems to be more difficult than I imagined.
I thought that the tracklog with the infos about points and time was
collected into a file, which can be transferred via an USB-connection. The
latter I expect to be delivered together with the GSP-unit.
Of cource it will be a problem if I need to install a software to collect
the transferred infos from the GPS-unit but it seems to me to be a bit
akward. I imagined that all the infos were collected into one single file
which could be imported into the choosen software, fx. "Topofusion" - but am
I wrong?
Per
"David Lee" < davidlee_malvern@don
t.use.this.bit.hotmail.com> skrev i en
meddelelse news:_PadnaN7PZnBZhf
enZ2dnUVZ8qqdnZ2d@ec
lipse.net.uk...
> Grumps wrote...
>
> Probably not much use in an Internet Cafe, but if you can get your hands
> on a computer that you are allowed to reboot then there are a number of
> Linux versions that run from a CD or DVD - either you boot directly from
> the CD or else via a startup floppy. The OS uses RAM disk to run and a
> USB memory ...........................
David
>
>
| |
| David Lee 2005-11-28, 5:48 pm |
| Per wrote...
> OK, it seems to be more difficult than I imagined.
> I thought that the tracklog with the infos about points and time was
> collected into a file, which can be transferred via an USB-connection. The
> latter I expect to be delivered together with the GSP-unit.
>
> Of cource it will be a problem if I need to install a software to collect
> the transferred infos from the GPS-unit but it seems to me to be a bit
> akward. I imagined that all the infos were collected into one single file
> which could be imported into the choosen software, fx. "Topofusion" - but
> am I wrong?
Per
If you speak Visual Basic then you may be in luck. Ray Perkins has been
developing software for translating Ozi Explorer files into Google Earth
format but has also included a routine for downloading track files from
etrex family receivers via the serial port. His earlier versions included
the VB source code - the latest version doesn't but I think that he will
probably share the code with you if you ask him nicely. I don't know how
straightforward it will be to convert this to work with your own receiver
but I think that Garmin use the same basic protocol and format for all their
models.
See http://web.295.ca/gpz550/OziToGoogleEarth/
Ray's email is gpz550@295.ca (also in the applications help file)
David
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"David Lee" < davidlee_malvern@don
t.use.this.bit.hotmail.com> skrev i en
meddelelse news:aZedna9n2dXfyRb
eRVnyjQ@eclipse.net.uk...
> Per
> If you speak Visual Basic then you may be in luck. Ray Perkins has been
> developing software for translating Ozi Explorer files into Google Earth
> format but has also included a routine for downloading track files from
> etrex family receivers via the serial port. His earlier versions included
> the VB source code - the latest version doesn't but I think that he will
> probably share the code with you if you ask him nicely. I don't know how
> straightforward it will be to convert this to work with your own receiver
> but I think that Garmin use the same basic protocol and format for all
> their models.
>
> See http://web.295.ca/gpz550/OziToGoogleEarth/
> Ray's email is gpz550@295.ca (also in the applications help file)
>
> David
Thank you very much David for your great advice. I´m not that familiar to
VisualBasic except using it a bit in MS Access. I will consider what to do
and perhaps contact Garmin about the problem.
Per
| |
| David Lee 2005-11-28, 5:48 pm |
| Per wrote...
> Thank you very much David for your great advice. I´m not that familiar to
> VisualBasic except using it a bit in MS Access. I will consider what to do
> and perhaps contact Garmin about the problem.
If you have a copy of MS Office 97 or later then you have a very handy
version of Visual Basic as the "macro language". The language - Visual
Basic for Applications (VBA) is almost identical to VB6.0 although it isn't
form-based like the "genuine article" (although you can generate form
dialogues if you want to) and there are some restrictions but almost
anything you can do in VB can be modified to work in VBA - you can even call
Windows API functions! VBA is common to all Office components but the
quality of the object model varies and the best implementation is Excel
(much easier to use than the Access version that you have played with),
which is great as you can easily interface your code directly with
spreadsheet pages - ideal for manipulating tracklog data.
If you want to have a go then there is one little hint that you will find
very handy - VBA doesn't have a Print command as such but you can use the
method Debug.Print to send output to the Immediate pane of the Visual Basic
Editor window.
For your purposes there is a limitation as VBA doesn't have any built-in
serial port control so you would need to scrounge the Com port Activex
control from someone with a copy of VB or VC++
David
| |
|
| Thanks again David,
With that instruction I probably will give it a try.
Per
"David Lee" < davidlee_malvern@don
t.use.this.bit.hotmail.com> skrev i en
meddelelse news:CZSdnS8FGf31- hbenZ2dnUVZ8qmdnZ2d@
eclipse.net.uk...
> Per wrote...
>
> If you have a copy of MS Office 97 or later then you have a very handy
> version of Visual Basic as the "macro language". The language - Visual
> Basic for Applications (VBA) is almost identical to VB6.0 although it
> isn't form-based like the "genuine article" (although you can generate
> form dialogues if you want to) and there are some restrictions but almost
> anything you can do in VB can be modified to work in VBA - you can even
> call Windows API functions! VBA is common to all Office components but
> the quality of the object model varies and the best implementation is
> Excel (much easier to use than the Access version that you have played
> with), which is great as you can easily interface your code directly with
> spreadsheet pages - ideal for manipulating tracklog data.
>
> If you want to have a go then there is one little hint that you will find
> very handy - VBA doesn't have a Print command as such but you can use the
> method Debug.Print to send output to the Immediate pane of the Visual
> Basic Editor window.
>
> For your purposes there is a limitation as VBA doesn't have any built-in
> serial port control so you would need to scrounge the Com port Activex
> control from someone with a copy of VB or VC++
>
> David
>
>
>
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