gpsvisualizer

I like Maporama because you can re-center the map if it's not exactly where you wanted it, and it'll show you the coordinates of the new center.

Mapropa??

It seems this comes up several times a week. Isn't it in the FAQ? Anyway, you can try this too: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=waypoints

If it was a cache, it's not one in the geocaching.com database. (Scotchtown is at about N46.2376/W60.0959 if you want to search.)

Your file looks fine; for simplicity's sake, you could drop the "alt" field altogether, of course. As for the geocaching links, just switch "Geocache" with the cache code in those rows, like so: GCA693,Geocache,13.19543,-59.50907,0 GCA952,Geocache,13.08323,-59.60262,0 GCADDE,Geocache,13.27353,-59.58468,0 etc. And then you should be able to click on those, for what it's worth.

By the way, if you use that waypoint form, and some of the points you enter are geocaches, make sure you put the cache code (e.g., GCAB123) in the "name" field (rather than "desc") -- if you do that, GPS Visualizer will automatically link the waypoint marker to the "cache details" page on geocaching.com when you click on it.

Or, in the spirit of shameless self-promotion, GPS Visualizer: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=waypoints

The Landsat maps seem to be available again, and Barbados doesn't look half-bad on there. Try going to the GPS Visualizer waypoint entry form and entering this text into the box: name,desc,latitude,longitude Barbados,Somewhere in Bridgetown,13.0923,-59.6118 (To find the specific coordinates you need in Barbados via the satellite imagery, try using NASA's Landsat browser -- it displays the coordinates of the center of the map below the image.)

Maporama works well. Note that Maporama will give you the coordinates in decimals, NOT degrees/minutes/seconds. If you need to convert to DMS, try http://jeeep.com/details/coord/.

If you do start going after Canadian benchmarks and you want to make some maps, GPS Visualizer has very nice Canadian background choices available. (Input to GPS Visualizer can be in the form of geocaching.com LOC files, GPX files, plain text, you name it.)

Normally, I'd suggest Maporama -- it lets you zoom in and center your map, then read the coordinates off the bottom of the page -- but their Barbados map is pretty low-res. It might help a little though. Same deal with MultiMap: you can see Barbados, but you can't get a lot of detail. You might also try the Landsat image browser at http://onearth.jpl.nasa.gov/ -- unfortunately it seems to be down at the moment. Once you've got some points jotted down, try running them through GPS Visualizer using the Landsat background map (assuming the Landsat site will be back up shortly, I hope) to get an overview and make sure none of your points are knee-deep in the Atlantic. Adam

But to go straight to the page on GPS Visualizer that lets you type in coordinates: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=waypoints

22 MB???!!!

If you have the street addresses of the hotels, try typing them into http://www.maporama.com/ -- it will give you the coordinates of the center of your map.

I originally wrote GPS Visualizer a couple summers ago because I wanted to make a map of a disc golf course -- so I can vouch for its mapmaking ability! One advantage of using GPS Visualizer over some other programs is that the maps it creates are vector drawings, meaning they're fully editable in a graphics program like Illustrator. Of course, no matter what program you use, I'd go over all the trails at least two or three times to make sure you've got good data.

Here's a site that will convert coordinates from Degrees/Minutes/Seconds or Degrees/M.inutes to simple decimals: http://www.jeeep.com/details/coord/ Then you can plug in your coordinates here to get a map of the area in SVG format: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=waypoints (Interestingly, there are a few mapping sites (Maporama, Multimap, etc.) that will tell you the coordinates of the map you're looking at, but far fewer that let you specify coordinates and return a map.) Oh, by the way, if you download the .loc file from the page of the cache you're interested in, you can upload that file directly to GPS Visualizer and save yourself some typing.

Yeah, it's relatively new; I didn't add it at first because I thought the contour lines didn't have much detail... but when I realized they're the same data available in the "Toporama" Web site, I figured what the heck. The biggest problem with the topo option is that in large maps of rugged terrain, all you see is brown! I did fix it so that once you're at a scale larger than 1:250000, it uses fewer contour lines (it also removes minor roads, trails, buildings, place names, etc.), but I can't control it any more than that.

Dang, PDOP, that's an old thread! I think that was right after I figured out how to read geocaching.com XML files.

For people who've used GPS Visualizer before, this message is here to announce that while the Canadian background maps (CanImage satellite & NRCan political) were gone for a while, they're back, hopefully to stay. (They're still very slow, but there isn't anything I can do about that! ) But I'm also posting this as an introduction for people who haven't heard of GPS Visualizer before... it's a valuable resource for GPS users in Canada, as I've heard that a lot of the software out there doesn't have very good coverage outside the U.S. So check it out: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ -- and let me know if you have any questions or problems. Adam Schneider

No, it's working; it's just slow, as usual. Were you the one trying to make a map near W77.7/N45.4? If so, there's something else going on: there are some big holes in the "CanImage" data, and your map fell right into one of them, so the background loaded, but it was all white. The NRCan political map should work fine, as should the "Worldwide" 30m Landsat data. (Click here to see the CanImage coverage)

Actually, I've written to them twice, and didn't get a response. And it's not all that new; GPS Visualizer has existed for a year and a half, and has been able to read geocaching.com files since last August.

I still want to know who you have to sleep with to get your site added to that list...

My sincere apologies if anyone's tried to get into GPS Visualizer tonight and come across a refused connection or an Apache test page... Apparently the sysadmin of the server upon which GPS Visualizer resides is upgrading some things, and there have been some glitches. Hopefully it should be working again by morning. (Update, 11:22 PM CDT: It seems to be back up.)

"Single-point map width" is never considered if there's more than one waypoint. What you need to do is specify a very large "margin" and a relatively small "maximum dimension." For instance, let's say you have two points that are more or less at the same latitude, so you've been getting a skinny horizontal map. If you make the max. dim. 100 and the margin 200, your points will be 100 pixels apart, but the overall map will be 500 pixels wide and 400 pixels high -- which is probably closer to what you wanted.

I guess it was easier than I thought. You can now enter comma-delimited data directly into this form: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=waypoints Let me know if there are any problems. Adam