60CX distance measuring, WP projection...

[Suscrofa]

Crazy but the tool to measure distance on the GPS (display a map, use MENU to get function) display in meters below 1000 so with a 1m resolution but from 1000m up switch to km which is normal BUT THEN ONLY display 1 digit after the decimal point, so the resolution goes down to 100 m !!! This is stupid, are these guys at Garmin engineers ? Can they try to display as much significant digits as possible ? This is BASIC programming.

Same issue when projecting a WP !

 

Also, they only work in degrees, can't input angle with more than one degree resolution, not very nice !

 

The routines to handles decimal degree, minutes, seconds etc are already in the GPS, can they use them or what ?

Same with the routines to convert units ! I wonder if part of their problem is a mix up with routines spread all over the places in the firmware. I have seen this in software I had reviewed in the past ! Stick to only ONE way to represent data (be it angle, date, length etc...) and use conversion routines only at the I/O level !

[+hurley_108]

Write to Garmin through the tech support forms. I have on a few occasions about things I've wished the CSx did better.

[+Sputnik 57]

When projecting a waypoint (MARK->MENU->Project Waypoint), cursor over to the little 'mi' in the lower right corner and hit ENTR. A hidden menu pops up right there and lets you change the projection units to mi, ft, yd, km, m, nm. From there, you can select miles, feet, yards, kilometers, meters or nautical miles. This thread talks more about it, and offers a screen shot. You can also cursor over to the Degree field and change it from degrees to other units, including mils (milliradians) if I recall correctly, which is less than 1/17th of a degree (360°=6400 mils).

[Suscrofa]

When projecting a waypoint (MARK->MENU->Project Waypoint), cursor over to the little 'mi' in the lower right corner and hit ENTR. A hidden menu pops up right there and lets you change the projection units to mi, ft, yd, km, m, nm. From there, you can select miles, feet, yards, kilometers, meters or nautical miles. This thread talks more about it, and offers a screen shot. You can also cursor over to the Degree field and change it from degrees to other units, including mils (milliradians) if I recall correctly, which is less than 1/17th of a degree (360°=6400 mils).

 

True, you can change the units for WP but it does not really solve the problem as for angle I have to convert and for length, I am not interested in feet, miles, just want to stick to meter ! Keep in mind there is only ONE unit for length in metric, the meter ! kilo means a 1000, so the normal way is to let input in any way you want, the system has to automatically adjust to display as much significant digits as possible, using the prefix k when necessary to keep the number of digits compatible with the size of the display. Of course, no point in displaying cm when the accuracy is of the m order !

 

The confusion in writing programs this way is most probably the programmers are confused by the various different units used in the english system and related by various conversion factor (3 feet in a yard, that many yard in a mile etc...). In SI, you don't bother with this !!!

[GeoBobC]

You can project a waypoint up to 9999.99 meters.