[plug] GPS and maps

[W.Kenworthy]

On Fri, 2007-04-20 at 00:09 +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> "Patrick Coleman" <blinken at gmail.com> wrote:
> >On 4/19/07, William Kenworthy <billk at iinet.net.au> wrote:

> 
> GPSdrive will do it I think. Apparently able to download appropriate
> maps by itself from maps.google
> 
The version I am using can only download from two servers (Europe, USA -
same organisation) - blue for water, grey for land, no
roads/topo/detail, but major centres are shown.  Useless!  Besides the
scaling/accuracy problem.

> Unfortunately, the only maps available for Australia appear to be
> by Senseless (or something that sounds similar and means the same
> thing). TomTom maps for Australia cost 200 Euros. You can get all of
> Europe from TomTom for about 60 Euros.
> 
> Germany/Austria/Switzerland plus other major European roads, on
> mini-SD (with SD adapter) + genuine TomTom GPS bluetooth set me back
> 140 Euros from a retailer (in Germany) via eBay.
> 
 wouldnt mind paying a reasonable amount ($50?) for good, detailed
aussie maps and same again for functional software.  Current prices seem
steep compared to a road map.

> I could "upgrade" to include Australian maps but there doesn't seem
> to be much point. Nobody looks as though they know where they're
> driving in Australia!
> 
> >I can't find it anywhere unfortunately - just had a look now. If you
> >were looking for route mapping, though, it may not be what you want
> >anyway; otherwise I can dig a bit further.
> 
> I have Cetus GPS on my Treo for track-logging from GPS. Haven't yet
> gotten to downloading to Linux and mapping.
> 
The pathaway4 trial looks good - just needs maps - but costs more than I
am willing to pay with no map data.  Cetus will probably do what I want,
but some parts of what I downloaded (beta) dont seem to work.  I grabbed
the beta because its mentioned as supporting bluetooth GPS (which I
have) - might try the stable version and see if it works better.

> I understand that the tracklogs can be "replayed" into GPSdrive once
> extraced from the CetusGPS log databases. There's free software with
> CetusGPS to do it and the main app is also open source. Just to keep
> this on-topic! :-)

I am working towards walking the bibbulman track.  Tried the Kalamunda
section two weeks back to see whats involved and saw that getting lost,
or rather being "sure" that I was not lost might be a problem.  The idea
is that with gps and maps I have peace of mind.  Well, it will when I
find the maps- misplaced them some months back and they still havent
turned up :(

What I eventually want to do is process the track data and have my linux
server dish it up on demand.  All the elements seem there, but there
will be a fair bit of glue needed.

This should probably go OT before the thought police start to get
restless ... :)

BillK