blankblank blank

Archive for the 'GPS' Category

Free 60-Day Trial Versions Of Microsoft Streets And Trips, MapPoint

Published at August 26, 2008 in GPS. 0 Comments

The Microsoft Virtual Earth blog announces that free 60-day trial versions of the newest (2009) versions of both Streets & Trips and MapPoint are now available for download. Be warned, both downloads are well over a gigabyte in size. While you’re at it, there are free pushpin images and construction updates for both programs.

PR blurbs:

“MapPoint ® 2009 gives you the power to visualize business data and communicate insights with instant impact. Before you hit the road, plug in your stops and MapPoint plots the most efficient course with turn-by-turn driving directions. MapPoint 2009 with GPS Locator adds routing and directions to easily plan your trips and track your location in real-time.”

“Every trip is a good one with Microsoft Streets & Trips 2009! With tools and features to help you create custom routes, set driving preferences, plan breaks, and calculate travel costs, this trip planning software makes travel easier, whether you’re going around town or anywhere across the U.S. and Canada. As the #1 best-selling travel and map software, it gets you where you’re going quickly, easily, and without all the guesswork.”

Via The Map Room.



Web App For Analyzing GPS Tracks

Published at August 11, 2008 in GPS, GPX and Google Maps. 2 Comments

Peter Vojtek has a new web app online called AnalyzeMyTrack! that lets you analyze your GPS track files (in GPX format). Upload the GPX file, and get back:

- An interactive graph of speed vs. distance

8-10-2008-8.29.28 PM

- Interactive altitude profile as a function of distance

8-10-2008-8.28.59 PM

- A “Basic Analysis” of the track stats, with the option to plot the position with the highest speed in Google Maps

8-10-2008-8.33.51 PM

- A lookup of the closest geographic features to points in the track using the Geonames server

- Supposedly also the ability to add your GPX track to your Google Maps MyMaps page, but I was unable to get that to work, at least in Firefox 3



Make Your Own Topo Maps For A Garmin GPS Unit

Published at August 5, 2008 in GIS, GPS, Garmin and topographic maps. 2 Comments

Well, the good news is that Garmin is finally starting to offer 1:24K scale US topographic maps for some of their GPS units. While they’ve had these maps for US National Parks in the East, Central and West for quite a while, they’re now issuing them for the US as a whole. These are different from the 1:100K Garmin topo maps available for a while, with the latest release coming in 2008. But there’s bad news as well:

- The datasets come on individual microSD cards, so they’re only compatible with units that support those cards

- Because they’re on microSD cards, you can’t load additional map data like CityNavigator or BlueChart data on the cards; you need to either do without or swap cards back and forth to get the dataset you want

- Cards cover various sections of the US, aren’t cheap ($100 list, typically available for about $60-70 street), and only a limited part of the US is currently covered:

(Note: Garmin also sells 1:100K topo maps on microSD cards, and you have to read the product description carefully to find that out; in any case, you’re almost always better off buying these 1:100K maps on a DVD; you can then upload selected maps to the GPS unit)

There are options that are cheaper, and cover areas not currently available from Garmin. The MiscJunk website has 1:24K topo maps for UT, MT and WY, with CA on the way, though there’s already a map file for the entire state of CA already available. Dan Blomberg’s  GPSFileDepot site has 1:24K topo mapsets for Arizona and Mississippi, and he’s automated the process to a point where I suspect more state mapsets will be coming in the future.

But Dan has also put up a full tutorial section on how to create your own 1:24K topo Garmin mapsets, with full links to data and software sources. While I wouldn’t describe the process as simple and easy, it can be done by anyone with reasonable computer skills. And even if you don’t need a full topo map, similar procedures can be used to create simple Garmin point, line and area maps from GPS and GIS data that can be overlaid on top of other mapsets.

Other data resources for creating your own Garmin GPS maps:

The Yahoo Map Authors forum

Creating Custom Topo Maps For A Garmin GPS

GPS Maps

Make Your Own GPS Maps From GIS Data (TravelByGPS website)

Make Your Own GPS Map

KeenPeople.Com Tutorial One, Tutorial Two

New Zealand Open GPS Project tutorial

Custom Maps For Garmin GPS Receiver Part One , Part Two

… and I hope to cover some other free options for creating Garmin GPS maps in the near future.



Uploading .img Map Files To A Garmin GPS Unit With MapUpload

Published at July 28, 2008 in GPS and Garmin. 3 Comments

A while back, I posted about MapSet Toolkit, a program that adds information about Garmin-map-format .img files to MapSource, so you can upload them with that program to a compatible Garmin GPS unit. But there are several faster and more direct ways to upload a .img file to a Garmin unit which don’t require installation in MapSource; they may be more convenient for a single map file, or for evaluating a map file before installing it as a MapSource option.

The first one I’ll cover is MapUpload, from the creators of MapWel, a program for creating custom maps for Garmin GPS units. MapWel isn’t free, but MapUpload is; there’s a list of supported Garmin units on this page.  Just download and run (no program installation):

3-16-2008-7.06.02 PM

If your GPS unit is turned on, it should be recognized automatically, and info displayed in the Status window. If it’s off, turn it on and select “Detect GPS” from the GPS menu. Select .img files by clicking on the list at left (or the menu Files => Add img files to the list), and using the file selection dialog; there’s room for up to 300 files on the list. Click on “Upload to GPS”, and the maps will be sent to your GPS. There’s no way to tag a set of maps with a label; on your GPS, they’ll all have the category label “Custom area created with Mapwel”, followed by the .img creation date.

The default is to delete the current mapset, but if you check the box “Add to existing maps”, the maps on the list will supposedly be added to the maps currently loaded onto the GPS. I’ve had mixed success with this option - it seems to work better with small installed mapsets than with large ones. And if you have a large set of maps on your GPS, it will take a while to merge them, since the connection is either serial (unbearably slow) or USB 1.1. (painfully slow), and MapUpload first has to download the full mapset, then merge it with the new maps, then upload it back again. It doesn’t support the faster option of uploading data onto a memory card in a higher-speed (USB 2.0) card reader. There’s also no way to save a map list, so you have to select individual map files every time you want to do an upload. On the plus side, you can create a stand-alone program that takes all the .img files, and puts them into an executable that will upload the data to any attached, compatible Garmin GPS unit.

On the plus side, MAPUpload is fast and simple. If I have one or two maps I need to upload quickly, especially if I want to merge them with the current mapset, it’s my program of choice. For larger sets of maps, you’re better off using MapSet Toolkit, or other options I’ll cover soon.



Create Bicycle/Travel Courses For Your Garmin Edge/Forerunner GPS With Bike Route Toaster

Published at July 22, 2008 in GPS and Garmin. 0 Comments

Although it’s primarily aimed at bicycling Garmin Edge/Forerunner owners, Bike Route Toaster is a useful tool for any GPS user, or anyone planning a bike road trip. Create a course in a Google Maps interface by adding points along the route; Bike Route Toaster gives you the option of auto-routing, where it connects the points along roads and adds directions:

Continue reading ‘Create Bicycle/Travel Courses For Your Garmin Edge/Forerunner GPS With Bike Route Toaster’



The Simplest Windows Photo GeoTagging Tool

Published at July 14, 2008 in GPS and geotagging. 2 Comments

The website for GEOTaggingTool is in Russian, there’s no English documentation there, and there’s no help file included with the program. But as long as you can find the download link at upper left for version 0.5.1, that’s all you need. The program itself is in English, and there’s no install program; just unzip it into a folder. This has to be the simplest Windows photo geotagging application out there; click one button to open the GPX track, click another to open the images folder, then click “Process GEOTagging!” and the images will be geotagged (but be warned, the old images will be overwritten with the new geotagged versions without notice).

5-17-2008-4.49.51 PM

The only available options are setting the time offset and window for matching GPS track times with photo times, but GEOTaggingTool handled the time offset between my local camera time and UTC GPS time without touching these. Fast, simple and easy.

Note: Requires Microsoft .Net 2.0.



Updates At The GPS File Depot

Published at July 11, 2008 in GPS, Garmin and shapefile. 0 Comments

Dan Blomberg, owner of the GPSFileDepot site, has some updates and new resources at his site:



OKMap - GPS Mapping Software For The Beta-Adventurous

Published at June 24, 2008 in GPS. 0 Comments

An email, and comment on a previous post, led me to OKMap, a GPS mapping program that has lots of promise, but currently has a few issues. The feature set is certainly interesting:

  • Open vector data in many different formats (OziExplorer, GPX, shapefile, DCW), and export/upload data
  • Import raster images, and calibrate them; import raster images with worldfiles, in ECW format, or in OziExplorer format, and have them calibrated automatically. Supports many different projections and datums.
  • Catalog your saved maps for easy retrieval.
  • Extensive editing tools for creating and modifying waypoints, tracks, and routes.
  • Real-time GPS support (NMEA)
  • Data exchanges with Google Earth

In short, some of the more useful features of the paid versions of OziExplorer and GPS TrackMaker. However, this is a program that is definitely still in beta form:

  • A bit buggy still - crashes occasionally
  • Functions of specific features unclear in many cases
  • It’s possible that I may not have been doing things correctly above, but there’s no documentation included with the program; even the downloadable help file in Italian has many pages that aren’t complete yet
  • Using ECW imagery requires installation of the ECW ActiveX SDK, something not mentioned on the website, but which you find out after you start up the installation program (it’s available at this link)
  • Latest version also requires that you have the J# .Net redistributable package installed, available here

The author (Gian Paolo Saliola) is very responsive to comments, and quickly fixed several bugs and quirks I pointed out to him. With enough people trying out the program and reporting issues back to him, this could soon be a very strong GPS utility program.



« Previous Entries