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SiliconFiend

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Posts posted by SiliconFiend

  1. http://www8.garmin.com/weblinkextensions/ Apparently MapSource has two, Google Maps and Geocache.com. Google maps comes up, Geocache does not.

    At any rate is there a way to upload gecahe co-ordinates to my VistaHCx? Anything to make things easier :laughing:

    So far all the respondents have missed the obvious Send To GPS function. It's not the same thing as WebLinks in that you don't use it from MapSource. You go to the cache page on geocaching.com and click Send To GPS. It will then download the cache coordinates to your Vista HCx. You will need to install the Garmin Communicator plugin.

  2. I'm in the market for a Garmin handheld and noticed an oddity on their model comparison page.

     

    The Legend HCX and the Venture HC look to be almost identical in specs, except for the memory configuration. Data card for the Legend, 24MB not expandable for the Venture.

     

    Battery life is a surprise though: 25hrs for the Legend, only 14 for the Venture?

     

    By comparison, the Summit HC has a similar configuration to the Venture HC but adds a barometer and compass. And also lists 14hr battery, even though I'd expect those extras to weigh against long battery life.

     

    Any idea why such a difference? There's either some seriously new/different electronics in the Legend HCx (in spite of every other spec looking the same), I don't understand it.

    It may be because the non-x models have 24 MB of internal memory. It's possible that memory causes a significant power draw. Not sure why older models weren't like that, though.

  3. I have an early model Vista HCx (bought it in August 2007). I had never seen the drift until recently (although to be honest I hadn't really been walking in difficult reception conditions very much). When I saw it, I had just turned the unit on (we were approaching a cache) and put the GPS on my belt. There were trees on the path but not dense forest. When I reached the cache area, I looked at the screen and my track was about 30 meters off from my previous tracks, and the EPE circle was big and getting bigger. I looked at the satellite screen and it showed the EPE going from 20 meters slowly climbing up to 25 meters, even though the satellites showed very good reception. I finally rebooted it and it immediately snapped back to the correct location. I think this happened with 2.60. When I upgraded to 2.70 and tried another cache with similar conditions (GPS on my belt, some trees around), it happened again, but with less severity. But even after rebooting the location was wandering (this was on a 4.5 difficulty cache, too, dangit--could have used some help from the GPS!).

     

    Anyway, after reading about Blindmantoo's suggestion, I did a hard reset and tried the same cache again (with the GPS on my belt). This time, no drift but the accuracy still wasn't very good (When I held it over the cache spot, it was pointing me 6 meters away when I was at GZ), so it wasn't a "slam dunk", and I'm not convinced that it fixed the drift problem anyway. I haven't tried reverting to GPS software 2.3 yet, but I may if this continues to be a problem.

  4. I looked through all the pictures again and realized I would have liked to revist the locations with the Colorado to set different levels of detail, note how the contour intervals change relative to zoom level, try different label sizes, and actually hike some of Smith Rock to add my own section of trail to the map, even if I have to accept a default color. I'll continue this when I get the Oregon.

     

    As I mentioned, I was a little disappointed in the trail detail Topo7 offers for Snow Lake and none at Smith Rock. Would a PN-20 user who has access to the USGS 7.5 minute series maps that DeLorme offers like to see if this trail detail is any different at Snow Lake and present at all at Smith Rock?

     

    Thanks.

    Since you're in Oregon you may be interested in the Northwest Trails Project for Garmins. Not sure if Smith Rock (my wife--who grew up in Bend--calls it Monkey Rock) is covered yet, but if not, you could contribute your tracks to improve the project. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention OpenStreetMap, which I doubt has maps of Smith Rock, but is a great resource for do-it-yourself mappers (there are tools to create Garmin maps from OSM data).

  5. Check out www.openstreetmap.org for accurate (if incomplete) maps of China. Accurate because they were surveyed with non-broken GPS equipment. OpenStreetMap was good enough (better than Google) for Flickr to change over to show their map data instead for China. OSM maps can be put onto a Garmin GPS (non-routing) using a tool called mkgmap.

  6. Is there a GUI application for Ubunutu that would allow easy transfers to my Gamin, or is there a GPSBabel for new users help page to get me started with that?

    Thanks.

     

    Take a .gpx file from your pocket query and just run this:

     

    gpsbabel -i gpx -f THEFILE.gpx -o garmin -F /dev/ttyUSB0

     

    If your device is connected to your USB port. If it's an older serial device, then use /dev/ttyS0 instead.

    I think by default that will transfer only waypoints. If you want to transfer tracks, add the -t option. Like this:

    gpsbabel -t -i gpx -f THEFILE.gpx -o garmin -F /dev/ttyUSB0
    

    For routes, use -r instead.

  7. <snip>

    You're very observant. I have owned about 10 Garmin units and have been most disappointed in the latest two units they have released (Oregon and Colorado). They are hyped as High Sensitivity Receivers, but they seem more prone to drift than earlier units (60scx) that do not have High Sensitivity chipsets.

    Actually, the 60CSx has a high-sensitivity chipset (Sirf Star III). It was the first Garmin handheld to have one, and people have been frustrated by Garmin's seeming inability to surpass or (in some cases) even match the performance of that receiver in later handhelds.

  8. FWIW I just ordered a Vista HCx from Amazon and got it last night, powered it up and it was 2.60/2.60. I took the batteries out, boxed it up, printed the return shipping label and ordered the 60CSx. Done.

    Umm, what were you expecting? Why did you even bother ordering it? Sounds like you just wasted shipping charges. I know there are reports of a 2.70 version coming on some new units, but don't you think if Garmin has a magic version that fixes everything, they'll release it to the unwashed masses, too?

  9. I d/l the mac version of the the maps and have tried to install them on my legend hcx (i have a 2 gig card). when i select the entire us to transfer to my card it says i still have over 300 megs free, but gives me an error saying that it contains 1112 items too many. Is there any fix for this? I really don't need the whole us on my gps, but i figure if a flight goes wrong it might help :unsure:

     

    also, is there away to edit the maps as my area is missing a few roads here and there?

     

    thanks!

    jason

     

    On a PC you'd use GPSMapEdit and cgpsmapper (both free) to edit it.

     

    The other problem you're running in to is the segment limitation of your GPS. You can load up to 2025 mapsheets on most units. There is a workaround though. Send half, rename the file to gmapbmap.img or gmapprom.img and then load the other half.

     

    Dale

    As far as I know, I don't think that will work on an eTrex, only on a Colorado, Oregon or Nuvi. Maybe the techniques used in this post could work for combining your map segments. I think all you'd have to do is come up with new GDB files and then run the script.

  10. Hi,

    I'm going to Iraq for half a year and thought of buying a GPS (probably something like a Legend/Vista HCx). I've seen a couple of sites where I can buy detailed maps of the country, however at a price of around 300$.

    Does anyone know of sites that offer any free (or cheaper) maps (perhaps not so detailed) over Iraq, especially the Baghdad area? I guess that almost everything will be better than the base map that goes with the GPS.

    All the best

    P

    You might check mapcenter2.cgpsmapper.com or www.openstreetmap.org (can be converted to Garmin format using a program called mkgmap).

  11. The ultimate question/test for a GPSr for me is: If I regain consciousness somewhere in the wilderness in the middle of the night, and need to get to safety, which model do I want to have with me?

    Hee. Thanks for the laugh. :D Really, how many times has that happened to you? I think under those circumstances you'd be lucky to have a functioning piece of electronics, not to mention spare batteries...

  12. I'm not sure how to answer the previous post because I'm using GPSMapEdit to create .mp (polish) files which I then compile using mapcenter2.

     

    But, I do have my own questions about how to use mapcenter2:

     

    I think I've figured out my problem with routing. The routing works great when I test in GPSMapEdit, but doesn't work after I compile and import to MapSource. The problem (I hope) is that I've been using MapSetToolKit to install my compiled .img file to MapSoure. To do this, MapSetToolKit is first converting my map to a mapset using the free non-routing version of cGPSMapper. Thus, when I convert my compiled map into a mapset, the routing is destroyed.

     

    So, apparently, I need to use mapcenter2 to create a mapset (using "Add new mapset"), not just a map.

     

    Question 1: Do I need to compile the map before creating a mapset, or do I just create the mapset from my .mp file, the same as if I were compiling a map?

     

    Question 2: How do I fill out the fields in the "Add new mapset" form?

    (a) "Mapset name:" will be the same name I specified in the properties of my .mp file.

    (:( "Description:" is a description of the mapset.

    © "Family ID:" can be anything as long as it doesn't conflict with the family id of an existing mapset I have installed, such as City Navigator?

    (d) What do I use for "Map ID:"? The ID of the map I already uploaded to mapcenter2 and compiled?

    (e) Does the archive matter? Should I create a new archive, or use the same archive I previously used to compile the map that I am now trying to make into a mapset? If I select the existing archive, do I need to upload a new source file?

    (f) Is "Source filename:" my .mp file?

    (g) "File to upload:" is just the .mp file zipped up? Do I have to upload anything if I select an existing archive?

     

    Question 3: Once mapcenter2 compiles the mapset, how do I install it to MapSource?

    I suspect sendmap (from cGPSMapper) would be capable of sending routable maps to your GPS. Otherwise, you have to modify the registry to get the maps into MapSource, or use a tool such as MapSetToolkit. It's possible the mapset that you will download from MapCenter will have the .reg file that you need in order to make it work with MapSource.

  13. Uing GPSMapEdit, I added a few test trails to my custom topo, assigned them to Levels 0, 1, and 2, and then generated the routing nodes. I tested the routing in MapEdit and it worked great. No luck after compiling, though. I get an error in MapSource, and all the device does is draw straight lines between my two waypoints (from a trailhead to a lake, both waypoints are directly on the routable trail).

     

    I'm going to try recompiling just the trails, just on one level, and troubleshoot from there.

    You have to have the routable version of cGPSMapper, which costs ~$2800. Or, you could use MapCenter for free, if you don't mind sharing your maps. (Yeah, I didn't think you'd mind...)

    Here's another question. I want to add POI (peaks, ranger stations, lakes, whatever) to my topo map. I've downloaded a .txt file containing 1000s of geographic POI. How do I get those added to the map using MapEdit? I want them to display on the map and be searchable.

    I assume you mean geonames.org, or something similar... You'll have to find a way to translate that text file into Polish Map (.mp) format, or find someone who's already done it. If you're handy with programming, it's not difficult to do--the most time-consuming part is mapping all of the types in your source file to Garmin type codes.

  14. You're trying to split a complex polygon (one with nested holes). I'm considering exactly the same problem for a tiling task for OpenStreetMap. I came across this interesting paper

    ....

    Edit: fixed broken url tag

     

    I think you may have 'fixed it good'. The link worked earlier, but now I can't seem to read it.

     

    Dale

    The site is down. My edit was only a minute or so after my original post, and it was to fix a missing slash on the closing url tag. I just poked through my browser cache to see if I could resurrect the pdf, but it's gone. Hopefully the site will come back soon...

    Edit: I found another paper that purports to have a fast algorithm. The paper is longer, but I don't think it's too difficult to understand (I haven't read it fully, mainly the abstract). It even has some pseudocode, which is always helpful.

    Edit again: I tracked down a paper referenced in the above one, which has an algorithm for clipping against rectangles, which I think is what you want to do. It's much simpler and has a C implementation given (look at the "2D polygon clipping" section).

    Edit one last (?) time: Found the original paper on the new CiteSeer site here.

  15. You're trying to split a complex polygon (one with nested holes). I'm considering exactly the same problem for a tiling task for OpenStreetMap. I came across this interesting paper about generalized polygon intersection which may be helpful. It's a bit academic, and it's intended for intersecting two arbitrary polygons (instead of one rectangle and one polygon), but it could be helpful in thinking about the issues.

    Looking at your example: In general, you're going to take one polygon with three holes and transform it into three polygons, some of which have holes and some which don't. The hole in the top right will no longer exist as a hole in the new, split polygons--it will just become part of the outer edge of the two polygons. This means you'll have to join the intersecting points of the outer ring and the "hole" together. Tricky to figure out how to get it right. To talk it out: as you're iterating around the points for the upper right polygon, you'll come to the part where your cutting line is. At that point, you need to follow the cutting line down (or up?) and find the intersections of any inner rings. If there are two intersecting points for the inner ring (your cutting edge could intersect the inner ring only at one point), then you need to connect a line from the intersecting point on the outer polygon to the closest intersecting point on the inner ring, and then add the portion of the ring (which is inside your intersecting area) to the boundary of your outer polygon. Then draw another line along the intersecting line from the inner ring to the next-closest inner ring (if any) and repeat the process, then eventually you'll re-intersect the outer ring and you can close out your polygon.

     

    It's an involved process with a lot of steps, but when you break it down, it's manageable. You just have to make sure you account for all the special cases (like does your intersecting rectangle have a corner inside the polygon?).

     

    Sorry if this is a bit rambling--writing it out has helped make it more concrete it in my own head.

     

    Edit: fixed broken url tag

  16. I've had a really annoying experience with City Navigator 2008 NT (and eventually 2009). I was unable to register City Navigator NT 2008 online under MyGarmin--it didn't even show up on the list as an option. So, I called Garmin and they gave me the unlock code. I asked for the 2009 upgrade and they said wait a day and it should show up as a download, and if not, call back. Well, I had to call back, and they said they'd send a note over to IT and that I'd get an email when it was ready to download. 1 week later, no email so I called back. This time I got to the mobile devices department, and the guy I got on the phone said that I couldn't get it as a download because I had a Vista HCx and it wasn't supported. I tried to tell him that yes, in fact, it was possible and please give me the download, but he was adamant that only the DVD would work. I eventually gave in and said "fine, send me the DVD". They sent it for free, which was nice. Installed it, and then couldn't get it unlocked to my GPS. One more call to Garmin and they said they couldn't do it because of a problem with the website with an undetermined resolution date. :D They said I might eventually get an email that things were resolved. At this point, I got fed up, found a key generator and took care of it myself. All in all, not a shining example of Garmin's storied customer service.

  17. I want to make a topo map of a national park with routable trails based on gpx tracklogs I've recorded.

     

    Using this guide, I've downloaded and converted contour and water data to .mp format and it all shows up great in GPSMapEdit. Now it's just a matter of putting it all together with my tracklog data.

     

    I'm dealing with a 400 square mile, mountainous national park. At 40' increments, that's a LOT of contour data. Before I get too far into this, I'm trying to figure out how to set my levels.

     

    Ideally, I'd like to set up my map similar (but a bit more simplified) to what Garmin does with its 24k mapset: Trails, 200 foot contours, lakes and streams showing up at one zoom (maybe 3 miles), and 40' contours showing up at narrower zoom in the 800' range.

     

    The trouble is, I've read that routing works for lines assigned to the 24-bit level only. (See this guide on making routable maps) This causes some problems:

     

    First, in GPSMapEdit, I can't get anything assigned to level 24 to show up until I'm zoomed in to about 500'. The program does not allow me to change the GPS zoom ranges associated with the levels (ex. Level 24's "GPS Zoom" value is frozen at 120 meters). If I can't assign a wider zoom to level 24, my routable trails won't show on my GPS until I'm zoomed way in. Is there a way around?

     

    Second, even if I could get my level 24 trails to show at a wider zoom (say, 3 miles), because level 24 is the most detailed level, I can't make things like minor contour lines show up at a closer zoom (say, 800 feet). Is there a work around?

     

    It would be a lot easier if I could just assign routable trails to level 20, but the guide above says it can't be done. Anybody disagree?

     

    I'd really appreciate any help the mapping gurus can offer.

    In GPSMapEdit, you can hit Ctrl+0 to make all levels show up, or Ctrl+1 for level 1 & up, Ctrl+2 for level 2, etc. To return to the default zoom, press . (period). Also, look at the "EndLevel" directive in cGPSMapper. That's how interstates show up at the 20 mile+ zoom.

  18. Hmm.... Playing around with this a bit more I think it still needs some tweaking. Place name POIs are duplicated, so those need to go in the DeleteFeature section. Also, polygons like state park areas cover the City Navigator roads (boo!), but unfortunately that's inherent to the transparent map, so that can't be fixed. Too bad the City Navigator maps can't be made transparent... Anyway, I might just delete those polygons (but they're nice to have...). I'm planning to take it out on a caching trip this weekend so hopefully I'll find any more bugs so I can regenerate the Topo combined maps.

    Okay, so I spent a lot of time trying to get this right, but I think I have a good solution now. I removed all the place names and roads in the USTopo.cfg. You can get my config file here. Then, with a custom TYP file, I tweaked the park polygons to be partially transparent so that I could see the City Navigator roads underneath. I got a lot of help from this post for the bitmap style. I got some more help from this post for the required registry entry to make the TYP file work with MapSource (basically just add a String value named TYP with the path to the file). BIG FAT WARNING: Make sure your TYP file base name is 8 characters or less. I tried it with 9 characters, and while it displayed correctly in MapSource, it caused a program error when I tried to transfer the maps to my GPS.

     

    Some screenshots: Here's a section where the park boundary in City Navigator ends but continues in Topo (the dots are sort of hard to see):

    mixed.jpg

    I had to experiment a lot with the color to get it to match the park color in City Navigator, because I wanted the dots to disappear when both City Navigator and Topo had the same park. I ended up loading the maps to my unit (Vista HCx), taking a screenshot of a park from CNNT with xImage, then sampling the color of the park in Paint and copying that color into the TYP file. So, now I can see the City Navigator roads underneath the Topo parks, but they end up a bit "freckled" like this:

    yosemite.jpg

    This is acceptable to me, but maybe not for everyone (you can tweak your own if you want). One more thing that needed tweaking was the polygons for urban boundaries (city designations). By default, they were covering city areas, which obscured all the roads for the city. Not very helpful. I didn't want to ditch them completely (also didn't want to recompile the maps...) so I turned them into a very low density dot pattern like this:

    urban.jpg

     

    So, feel free to download my TYP file and use it as-is or you can use this fantastic online editor to tweak it to your liking. Enjoy!

  19. Are there any maps of Europe (Germany, England, France) that can be had for low or no cost? We are taking a vacation there this summer and I can't justify $150 for the Garmin maps for just one week. This would be for my Legend HCx.

     

    Any insights appreciated.

    Check http://mapcenter2.cgpsmapper.com or for a little more work but possibly better results, http://www.openstreetmap.org (go to the Wiki and look for a project called mkgmap).

  20. Hmm.... Playing around with this a bit more I think it still needs some tweaking. Place name POIs are duplicated, so those need to go in the DeleteFeature section. Also, polygons like state park areas cover the City Navigator roads (boo!), but unfortunately that's inherent to the transparent map, so that can't be fixed. Too bad the City Navigator maps can't be made transparent... Anyway, I might just delete those polygons (but they're nice to have...). I'm planning to take it out on a caching trip this weekend so hopefully I'll find any more bugs so I can regenerate the Topo combined maps.

  21. Not sure why you're getting the first warning since the combined segment covers a smaller area than 10 degrees, cgpsmapper can handle segments larger than that anyway so I'm not sure why it gives a warning about it.

     

    The "skipped because of wrong data" is normal. I get it all the time. I don't know what it means but I have a program that will gather statistics for the maps and I ran it on the original map and on the combined map and the results are the same.

    I guess I'll see what I get. By the way, do you have any examples of config files where you've removed the background polygon (made a transparent map)? Since I have City Navigator, I'd really like to do as you described and make this map set be transparent and remove the streets and just leave basically the contours and water features.

    Well, it seemed to work okay. I made the maps transparent and removed all the roads so that it just uses the City Navigator roads. I also took out some other POIs that should be duplicates between the map sets. So now I can see the topo contours and water features on top of City Navigator. Cool! Unfortunately, due to problems in the Topo source, some trails are marked as residential roads (they could have at least made them unpaved roads!). I also saw some incomplete/broken contour lines near where the original segments split, but that problem is also in the source data and not related to the combining process.

     

    In case anyone wants to recreate that, here's the contents of the config file I used:

    [IMGIDChanges]
    Preprocess=N
    Transparent=Y
    TreSize=5000
    TreMargin=0.000000
    RgnLimit=1024
    
    [DeleteFeature]
    Point 0x5901;Large airport
    Point 0x5902;Medium airport
    Point 0x5903;Small airport
    Point 0x640e;Park
    Point 0x6410;School
    Polyline 0x0;Any road
    Polyline 0x1;Major highway
    Polyline 0x2;Principal highway
    Polyline 0x3;Other highway road
    Polyline 0x4;Arterial road
    Polyline 0x5;Collector road
    Polyline 0x6;Residential Street
    Polyline 0x8;Highway ramp, low-speed
    ;Polyline 0xa;Unpaved road Keep for now
    Polyline 0x27;Airport runway centerline
    ;Polygon
    

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