Lowrance Vs. Gsak (or Others)

[+geobudman]

Does anyone know of a GOOD, inexpensive software package that allows for the easy conversion/use of .loc to .usr files that does not require aditional programming. ( for the non-geeks) out there? I might even (okay, thats an understatement) become a paying member. GSAK appears to be the "be all, end all" for the Garmin/Magellan users, but you must understand the programmers language, or you must build a "macro" ( whateverintheheck that is) to use it with your current Lowrance Unit, or even the one I use. I don't expect anyone to give away their time and efforts, but I would really appreciate some input on this. My Lowrance uses an sd/mmc card, and to the best of my feeble abilty, none of the more well-known applications EASILY suports it.

 

I would love for the GSAK guy (Hello, Clyde) to incorporate a very user-friendly format for us Lowrance users.

 

<END RANT>

 

Thanks for listening---I don't mean to come off as harsh as it sounds!

 

Love,

Geobudman

Edited November 4, 2005 by geobudman

[+IV_Warrior]

How about FREE?

 

GPSBabel will do the conversion, and the "front end" is a "select the right option from the dropdown box" piece of cake to use.

[+geobudman]

I have 'Babel",but as best I can tell, it doesn't suport EASY (me not smart) SD/?MMC card use.

 

How do you do it?

 

I absolutely have fallen in heat with with Caching, but I, for the life of me can not do the Spanish!

 

Help. guys!

[+IV_Warrior]

Are you using the "front end"?

 

I assume you have a card reader, and it's assigned a drive letter. In the "output file" box just put the path you want the file to go to. If the reader is assigned as drive E, something like

 

E:\caches.usr

 

that's how I do it when making files for my Meridian's SD card (with a different file type, obviously)

[+briansnat]

I have 'Babel",but as best I can tell, it doesn't suport EASY (me not smart) SD/?MMC card use.

 

How do you do it?

 

I absolutely have fallen in heat with with Caching, but I, for the life of me can not do the Spanish!

 

Help. guys!

Sure it does. All you have to do is use GPSBable to convert your LOC or GPX files to Lowrance's USR files.

 

From there its just a matter of dragging and dropping the USR file to your MMC card.

[+geobudman]

As far as dragging and dropping, the "open" part of gpsbabel lists "'Usr". but the "output" lists do NOT include .usr files that I can find.

[+PDOP's]

Geobudman

 

As far as GSAK is concerned you do not have to write a macro to get USR files. From the main menu simply go to File, Export, Custom Export and enter the following in the "Statement to run" field.

"C:\Program Files\GSAK\GPSBabel.exe" -i gpx -f "C:\Program Files\GSAK\temp\babel.gpx" -o lowranceusr -F  "F:\Geocaches.usr"

Enter this as one line in GSAK

 

Save the settings with a name that makes sense to you.

 

In my example the USR file Geocaches.usr will be written to the F: drive (card reader on my PC) Changes the drive letter to match your requirements.

 

The next release of GSAK will have direct support for Lowrance USR files and allow custom waypoint names and assigning icons to cache types.

Edited November 4, 2005 by PDOP's

[+hogrod]

Geobudman

 

As far as GSAK is concerned you do not have to write a macro to get USR files. From the main menu simply go to File, Export, Custom Export and enter the following in the "Statement to run" field.

"C:\Program Files\GSAK\GPSBabel.exe" -i gpx -f "C:\Program Files\GSAK\temp\babel.gpx" -o lowranceusr -F  "F:\Geocaches.usr"

Enter this as one line in GSAK

 

Save the settings with a name that makes sense to you.

 

In my example the USR file Geocaches.usr will be written to the F: drive (card reader on my PC) Changes the drive letter to match your requirements.

 

The next release of GSAK will have direct support for Lowrance USR files and allow custom waypoint names and assigning icons to cache types.

seems that if you can add this custom export for lowrance to gsak, maybe this should just be a in there by default. only thing that would need to be changed would be the drive letter. seems simple to just ask to have this added to gsak since them it would support lowrance too.

[+IVxIV]

I think I heard the next release of GSAK will incorporate the Lowrance USR file format without needing that macro line command.

 

Better still too,, I believe the Lowrance waypoint data feed has the capacity of managing what icon to use for the waypoints, so you can pick & choose which one(s) you want.

[+IV_Warrior]

Geobudman

 

As far as GSAK is concerned you do not have to write a macro to get USR files.  From the main menu simply go to File, Export, Custom Export and enter the following in the "Statement to run" field.

"C:\Program Files\GSAK\GPSBabel.exe" -i gpx -f "C:\Program Files\GSAK\temp\babel.gpx" -o lowranceusr -F  "F:\Geocaches.usr"

Enter this as one line in GSAK

 

Save the settings with a name that makes sense to you.

 

In my example the USR file Geocaches.usr will be written to the F: drive (card reader on my PC) Changes the drive letter to match your requirements.

 

The next release of GSAK will have direct support for Lowrance USR files and allow custom waypoint names and assigning icons to cache types.

seems that if you can add this custom export for lowrance to gsak, maybe this should just be a in there by default. only thing that would need to be changed would be the drive letter. seems simple to just ask to have this added to gsak since them it would support lowrance too.

I don't know when GPSBabel added the support for Lowrance. Since GSAK uses Babel to do the grunt work, if Babel added it AFTER the last release of GSAK, that would explain why GSAK doesn't have it yet.

[+PDOP's]

I don't know when GPSBabel added the support for Lowrance. Since GSAK uses Babel to do the grunt work, if Babel added it AFTER the last release of GSAK, that would explain why GSAK doesn't have it yet.

This past April. So you could say that GSAK has supported Lowrance USR files since that time via the custom export function.

 

The direct support for Lowrance USR files probably had to wait to make it to the top of Clyde's after a few more requests bu GSAK users.

[robertlipe]

Thanx to those that helped the OP with the steps to make this work.

 

http://www.gpsbabel.org/changes.html shows that lowranceusr waypoint support was added 2005-03-12 and the next official GPSBabel release thirteen days later included it.

 

GPSBabel supports over 80 formats plus 11 filters. What's wildly important to the Glider plane community or bike racing crowd doesn't matter so much to the GSAK base and vice versa. It's not suprising that GPSBabel (which supports user bases other than geocaching) supports things that aren't immediately promoted to front-button status in GSAK. PDOP's instructions above seem like perfectly viable solution.

 

I have the definite impression that the Lowrance user base is smaller than anything we see from the handheld Garmin or Magellan models, so it's not unsuprising that it didn't make push button status right away. It'll get better as more there are more Lowrance customers/users.

 

/me checks http://sourceforge.net/project/project_don...?group_id=58972, observes the strings lowrance and ifinder occur zero times, but I have heard a tinkle of requests from the GSAK base. Ifinder is reasonbly well supported these days.

 

I can't speak for sure what determines how Clyde spends his days, but I know that how I spend GPSBabel development time is based on how many folks show interest and are willing to help share in the development costs.

[+megamapper]

Does anyone know of a GOOD, inexpensive software package that allows for the easy conversion/use of .loc to .usr files that does not require aditional programming. ( for the non-geeks) out there?    I might even (okay, thats an understatement) become a paying member.  GSAK appears to be the "be all, end all" for the Garmin/Magellan users, but you must understand the programmers language,  or you must build a "macro" ( whateverintheheck that is) to use it with your current Lowrance Unit, or even the one I use.  I don't expect anyone to give away their time and efforts, but I would really appreciate some input on this.  My Lowrance uses an sd/mmc card, and to the best of my feeble abilty, none of the more well-known applications EASILY suports it.

 

I would love for the GSAK guy (Hello, Clyde) to incorporate a very user-friendly format for us Lowrance users. 

 

<END RANT> 

 

Thanks for listening---I don't mean to come off as harsh as it sounds!

 

Love,

Geobudman

 

OK, hopefully this will make your life a little nicer. I am not sure if it will work on WIN95, WIN98, WIN/ME. I've attempted to make it 'compatable' with these versions of windows, but I'm not sure. I am reasonably sure it likes NT 4.0, Win 2000, Win XP, Win 2003.

 

Download GSAK 1.2.7, and install it on your computer. (Unzip the files someplace on your C drive ). There is a GUI version which is really 'stripped down' and does not have all the options available. So for me, I ended up falling back to the command line version which is much richer in capabilities.

 

So to make your lives a little nicer:

 

Download Download GSAK 1.2.7, and unzip the files some-place on your computers C drive.

 

Next, download the GPSBABEL Wrapper and save it directly to your desktop.

 

When you run it, it will automatically:

1. Locate the copy of GPSBABEL.EXE

2. Figure out what command line options are available.

3. Guide you through a wizard like process for doing the conversions.

4. Remember what you did, so you can more easily re-run the conversions.

 

Issues:

Dunno if it works on WIN98/95/ME?

 

The search may locate an older copy of GPSBABEL.EXE. The third screen will show you which copy of GPSBABEL.EXE was located on the 3rd screen. If you find that it is running the wrong copy, then simply rename the bad copy temorarily and run wrapper once, then rename the file back, if you're so inclined. Remember to check that you have the current version, which should be 1.2.7. I've noticed an ancient version of GPSBABEL in the Google Earth directory!

 

The program is written using Wise installer. That means it needs admin rights to the desktop. It sucks, but what do you expect for a free program. It also writes to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GPSBABEL registry keys for storing various settings.

 

The program does not support GPSBABEL filtering options.

 

The program does not properly support SERIAL / USB gps's very well. It will try to add a -f <file> option to the command.

 

That's about the only issues I can see coming up.

 

Regards,

---- Megamapper -----