Plotting Lowrance Tracks Onto Google Earth

[kidnitro]

I've had my Lowrance Expedition C for a couple weeks now- awesome unit. Hardly ever looses signal, even under significant tree cover.

 

Okay, so I've read a lot of posts about people being able to upload their tracks onto Google Earth. I downloaded GPSBabel-1.2.7 and I can't figure it out. I'm not a programmer so I tried the GPSBabelGUI program and it wouldn't recognize the data.usr file on my SD card.

 

How do you do it?

 

Thanks!

[TracknQ]

Kidnitro,

 

I use the "View in Google Earth" function in Garmin's MapSource program.

 

As an alternative, you can use GPS Visualizer on the Web.

 

TracknQ

[+Airmapper]

GPS babel should translate the file into something like GPX, and then google can read it.

 

Use the drop down for the input file and select Lowrance .usr, then files of that type will display. I recommend copying the file into a folder, so when the new file is translated it will not be on your SD card.

 

Then drop down and select the new format, probably GPX, and then name the file, and remember to put the extension on there like .GPX now hit the "process" button, and a new file in the desired format will be created in the same location as the original.

[+user13371]

GPS babel should translate the file into something like GPX, and then google can read it.

Better yet: GPSBabel can translate Lowrance's USR format directly to Google Earth's KML format. And back - the command lines are something like this:

 

USR to KML: gpsbabel -i lowranceusr -f infilename.usr -o kml -F outfilename.kml

 

KML to USR: gpsbabel -i kml -f infilename.kml -o lowranceusr -F outfilename.usr

 

NB: GPSBabel's command line options are case sensitive, -f to spec the input file, and -F to spec the output File. Most people use scripts or GUI wrappers around GPS Babel instead of invoking it directly.

 

As an aside: GPSBabel does a good job on waypoints and tracks, but not so hot on routes. USR to KML is okay, but KML to USR turns routes into tracks, not navigable.

 

Before GPSBabel supported USR format, I wrote my own program for translating USR files to and from tab delimited text. When GPSBabel starting supporting USR format, I set mine aside. But now I'm thinking of updating my own code as I'm not happy with GPSBabel translating routes out of KML.

 

I'm sure once I have my own program working, GPSBabel or some other program will leapfrog me again and do a better job

Edited May 18, 2006 by lee_rimar

[kidnitro]

Thanks for everyone's help. The problem was, I downloaded an outdated version of GPSBabelGUI. Once I downloaded and installed GOSBabelGUI-2 (Beta), everything worked great. I plotted my track onto Google Earth and it matched the features/roads on the aerial photo (almost) perfectly. I'm going to try it on the other viewing software too. Now I'm cooking with grease!!!