[plug] GPS and maps

[Bernd Felsche]

"W.Kenworthy" <billk at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>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.

Even the high-quality ones have issues aligning where things are
"supposed to be" with sattelite pics. Introducing GPS tracks will
make life even more interesting. It's not unusual to have major
roads shows to be going through houses in "hybrid" views that show
the roads overlayed on the photos.

>> 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'm using 1.1 with the Bluetooth TomTom GPS receiver. Didn't have
any problems installing using KPilot on openSuSE 10.2

>> 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 :(

A good map is certainly essential. You need one showing contour
intervals of 5 metres or less. The bread-crumb thing just doesn't
work. ;-) A compass, even a cheap one will tell you which direction
you should be heading in general.

GPS is a bit of a toy by comparison.

>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 ... :)

We're all Constables here.
-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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