Haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but RoadNav is an open source GPS Road Navigation program that uses TIGER data to generate street maps and turn-by-turn directions, gives verbal commands, and doesn’t require an Internet connection. Also runs on Linux and Mac OS X, in addition to Windows. I usually drive alone, and it’s a *really* bad idea to use a PC-based road navigation program as the driver, so I don’t know when I’ll get around to it. If anyone tries it out, please let me know how it works for you.
Addendum from the comments: Check out this SlashGEO posting for links to other freeware road navigation solutions.
From the “I’ve been missing the obvious” file: If you have the MapSource program that comes with many Garmin GPS units or Garmin MapSource data disks, you can export waypoints, tracks or routes in the display directly to Google Earth with the View => View In Google Earth command. The data can be imported from a GPS unit, imported from a file (*.gdb, *.gpx, *.mps or *.loc formats supported), or entered manually into the program using its editing tools. Once displayed in Google Earth, you can make a permanent KML file of the data by right-clicking on any the appropriate data entries in the Places Pane, and choosing Save As.
Just a recap of a multi-part series on exporting and importing GIS data to and from GPS units, so that I can have a single posting to list in the “Special Series” sidebar section. If you’ve read it before, there’s nothing new.
Description of how to use DNRGarmin to export shapefile data from Garmin GPS units.
Covers shapefile data import from non-Garmin GPS units.
How to import point, line and polygon shapefile data into a GPS unit.
Brief description of capabilities of demo version of OziExplorer.
Hand-held GPS units typically have a limited amount of memory to store track points. My old Garmin eMap could hold only about 2000 trackpoints, while my newer 60Cx unit can hold up to 10000 trackpoints. There are also sometimes limits on the maximum number of trackpoints in a saved track; for example, the eMap limits the maximum number of trackpoints in a saved track to 250, while the Garmin limits you to 500. But suppose you have a long active track with greater than 500 points, and you’d like to save that track for future use in your GPS? Or you need to get the total number of trackpoints down to fit into your unit’s memory? There’s an easy way to “simplify” the track, reducing the total number of trackpoints without significantly affecting the track shape.
Continue reading ‘Simplifying GPS Tracks’
Now that I’ve *finally* finished the series on how to meet or beat most of Google Earth Plus’s features without paying for it, here’s a one-post set of links to all the posts in the series.
Brief summary of what features Google Earth Plus has, and which ones there are free solutions for.
Importing GPS data into Google Earth using standard GPX files, proprietary GPS unit software, and EasyGPS.
How to use GPSBabel and GPS Visualizer to download GPS data, and convert GPX and other GPS data formats into Google Earth KML format.
Exporting point and line data out of Google Earth and into a GPS unit, something Google Earth Plus doesn’t offer as a special feature.
Another “free” program with the ability to import and export GPS data to and from Google Earth.
Google Earth Plus lets you import up to 100 coordinate points in CSV format; free options allow unlimited import.
A simple Excel spreadsheet that can take up to 50,000 sets of coordinates, name and description data, and convert it to a KML file.
As part of the spreadsheet import, Google Earth Plus will let you geocode 100 addresses, but free options let you geocode thousands of addresses per day.
A post about GPS TrackMaker, totally free software for GPS export/import to Google Earth, file conversion, track editing and more.
A link to the DestinSharks.com description of Google Earth Voyager, a free program for automated caching of Google Earth data for offline use. Caching Google Earth data is necessary if you’re going to be doing real-time GPS tracking with Google Earth when you don’t have an Internet connection.
The final set of posts, dealing with how to implement real-time GPS tracking in Google Earth with free or cheap options.
And check the series listing at the bottom for more recent updates.
As a wrap-up to the “Google Earth Plus features for free” series, I’ll briefly comment on the three paid (albeit cheap) options for doing real-time GPS tracking with the free version of Google Earth.
Franson GPSGate Google Earth plug-in
I mentioned GPSGate in an earlier post – it converts a Garmin USB connection to an NMEA equivalent, and also splits a single NMEA connection into multiple serial connections, so that more than one program can receive data from your GPS at the same time. If you buy the Express edition of GPSGate (only two connections) for $9.95, or the Standard edition (unlimited connections) for $29.95, you can also download and install a free plug-in that lets you do real-time GPS tracking with Google Earth. Haven’t tried it, so can’t really comment on it, but from the screenshots and description it looks pretty good.
EarthTracker
EarthTracker will run for a few minutes, then timeout; you then have to re-start it. Registration for $10 stops the timeouts. The feature set looks pretty decent: supports NMEA and Garmin USB, fleet tracking then Supports Garmin USB connection, fleet tracking, comes with a data converter. But I was unable to get it to work correctly; with an NMEA connection, Google Earth opens and displays a position marker briefly before shutting down spontaneously; I suspect that one of the Google Earth API revisions broke it. And the Garmin USB connection didn’t work at all. But give it a shot – it might work for you. Comes with a PDF manual.
GETrax
GETrax has a 30-day free trial period, then requires $9.95 registration. Comes with a wide-variety of features, including APRS support, sending data to Google Maps, file conversion, etc., and worked fine on my system. Comes with a decent help file as well. Don’t know that I’d choose it over EarthBridge, but at least worth checking out in 30-day demo mode. DestinSharks has a review of this program, along with reviews of GooPs, EarthBridge, and Google Earth Plus.
After my last Google Maps posts, Rich of GPS TrackLog wrote to let me know that there’s a way to convert Google Maps search results (restaurants, Wi-Fi hotspots, etc.) to a GPX file for upload to a GPS. He’s already got a full write-up on the procedure, so I’ll just link to that. Unfortunately, the process doesn’t work with the DigiPoint site, but it appears as though that site’s author is planning direct GPX support in the future. And you can always use the options described in the post to convert the text output to GPX.
One drawback of Google Maps is that it doesn’t give you position data for a particular spot, like latitude/longitude or UTM coordinates, unless you jump through some hoops. But I’ve found a site that makes determining point coordinates easy, and even allows you to export those coordinates into a file.
Continue reading ‘Coordinate Data From Google Maps’
