mattloaf1

boo, VPC. yay, Route 66.

It's funny you asked this, as I had just finally gotten all my GPS stuff together for Mac and was about to come on here and write about it all. So here it is: Actually physically connecting your GPS to your Mac First of all, I should say all this takes place with a 12 inch, G4 iBook with an 800 Mhz processor, 256 MB RAM, and Panther 10.3.3. Thankfully, OS 9 did not have to come into play at ANY point. I have a Garmin eTrex, the regular ol' yellow base model which ran about 100 bucks when I bought it a few years ago. My first task in marrying the iBook and eTrex was purchasing the proper cabling, and the cavemen from prehistory who make GPS data cables still work with 9-pin serial ports. That would be great if this was 1997, but nowadays most Macs are strictly USB and Firewire. So i needed 1) a GPS data cable that ran from the back of the eTrex to a female 9-pin serial connect and 2) an adapter to plug that 9-pin serial into a USB port. Here's Exhibit A, the data cable: I got it off eBay for $6.99 bucks (plus shipping), and apparently it's made by a company called Gilsson out of California. I got it from an eBay selling company called GPS Geek. Exhibit B, the serial-to-USB adapter: I also got this sucker off eBay from "the-la-guy", some dude who sells a lot of adapters and stuff. It was $9.99. The Belkin adapter, model F5U109, is rated for Mac 0S 8.6 or 'higher', which turns out to be a lie! I sat down to plug all this stuff into my iBook, and realized that the Belkin adapter thing needs a driver, and that driver is not yet available for OS X, *except* for 10.1 and 10.2, and even those are in beta stages. If you want those, go to the Belkin beta software page, but be warned, they don't work for OS X 10.3, Panther, so I was out of luck. A quick Google search and I found a highly recommended serial-to-USB adapter for OS X, the Keyspan USA-19QW, which is available at Comp USA. I took a quick trip over there and picked it up for $39 bucks. I plugged it all in, put the CD for the adapter in, installed the drivers, and I was good to go! The little green light on the adapter lit up and data was indeed being transferred. Now that your Mac and GPS unit are talking, what software to use? Some in-depth research showed that Route 66 was the only map software available for Mac OS X, and luckily, it also includes real-time GPS connectivity and tracking. So I picked that up from Comp USA (also $39, which is a bargain). Be warned it takes up about 2.5 GB of space on your computer, but that's because it's VERY, VERY comprehensive and excellent. With Route 66's Route USA 2004, you can search for different 'locations', and then have it calculate and spell out the best route to get there. You can type in "Pizza Hut", "Holiday Inn", "3032 Main Street" followed by the city name and it'll show you a list of things that match that description. So basically it's a built-in yellow pages (it also tells you the phone number of the location). So cool thing number one you can do is map a route between two points and it will tell you how to get there. And how long it will take. And how much money the gas will cost you (based on your inputs of your car's fuel efficiency and the price of gas). I plugged in my GPS and hit the road. Route 66 uses NMEA data, so just make sure to go to your GPS's 'interface' options menu and select "NMEA Out". Instantly Route 66 centered on my location and as I drove off, showed my heading and everything. Here's a screenshot. Of course if you have a route established, it will show your little icon moving along the route and by watching the screen you can see where it thinks you should turn and stuff. Very very nice software which crashes occasionally but I highly recommend. I mostly plan to do confluence hunting with this set up, not geocaching, so the only compaint I really have is that although you can set a 'push pin' to things like restaurants and stuff, you can't set one to a certain lat/long point unless you manually find it. But there is a little tool that you drag across the screen and it tells you the lat/long of whereever you have it hovering over, so that's good, but it's still not as good as just typing in the coords and being able to mark it that way. Terrabrowser OS X is freeware from Chimoosoft which will download aerial maps from MSN's Terraserver and show your location on them in real-time when you're hooked up to a GPS (supposedly). I tried it out, and it downloads maps from Terraserver alright, but when I go to establish 'real-time tracking', it gives me the grey circle thingy forever and never does nothin'. And it looks like this. So. Other than to say it doesn't work for me, I can't really review it. The same company also makes GPS Connect, which lets you send waypoints back and forth between your Mac and your GPS. It's pretty cool and works, but I don't have one of those fancy premium Geocaching.com accounts, so I can't test it out with a GPX file, and it doesn't accept .loc ones. So here's what the regular screen looks like and here's what the waypoint uploading/downloading screen looks like. It works well, although I don't have much practical use for it. That's pretty much my review of what I've got so far, if anyone wants any Mac/GPS advice based on my experiences just drop me an instant message on AIM at Mattloaf1.

Is there any map software (expensive or otherwise) that I can use in Mac OS X that has a full road map for the USA? I don't care so much about being able to work with GPX files; I'm really just looking for something so that I can plug my eTrex into my iBook and watch myself driving along a road and see where I'm going and such.

So.. i need something like MS Streets and Trips if I want I map of the whole US and be able to see where I am and where I'm going on it, I guess?

I like the screenshots on that site, looks like a nice app... Does it come with maps installed, or do I have to insert maps myself?

I'm a Mac user, but I'm considering picking up a real cheap laptop (around 50 bucks) on Ebay, and connecting that sucker to my Garmin eTrex, so i can get some real-time mapping action going on while I'm driving. I'd like an all-in-one software package that can give me real-time location data on the laptop, and also, I'd like to be able to upload waypoints onto the eTrex from the laptop, ideally automatically using Geocaching.com's waypoint downloading thing. Is this possible? If I can't do both of these things with one app, can someone atleast recommend a good real-time mapping software for Windows 95 and above?