Paperless Benchmarking

[+Team Laxson]

I've been follwing the paperless benchmarking thread(s), and I've started to create a (hopefully) helpful document. Please offer your suggestions to make this document more user-friendly.

 

Paperless Tutorial

 

If you're ever in Colorado, check this out:

 

Benchmarking in Colorado

[monkeykat]

Thanks for the tutorial, I found it very helpful, and a great start to paperless benchmarking.

[monkeykat]

I have been doing a little work on paperless benchmarking after I spent an hour one day printing and hole-punching data sheets for a recent weekend of benchmarking. "There's got to be a better way.", I thought.

 

I investigated a lot of the paperless caching msgs and went and bought myself a palm m500. The m500 has a black and white screen so it does not use as much batteries as a color screen, and it is sharper when outdoors. The palm I bought was used on ebay, and I got it for $28 ($7 was shipping fees). This particular model cost several hundreds of dollars when they first came out in 2001. I think it is a great target for begining paperless benchmarking because most people look for the color screens, so you can buy these pretty cheap. Plus, I think B/W screens are better for outdoors, as there is more contrast. This model also has a SD Card slot for additional memory.

 

Next I was a little disappointed with the Cachemate software, as there seemed to be multiple screens, and a lot of "clicking" to do to get tot he information I wanted. So I decided to write up a program to look at the data sheets from a text format, filter out the data I need, and display it on the palm screen. I know you can just take the data sheets in txt format and view them on your palm, but the formatting is all off because the palm screens are only about 30 chars wide.

 

I created a software program that uses a perl script to parse through a data sheet file and store what I think is the most valuable information in a more readable format for the palm. It saves the following fields from the data sheet:

 

1. BM Designation

2. PID

3. State/County

4. Quad

5. Text about scaled or adjusted

6. Marker type

7. Setting

8. Stability

9. History - Dates and Descriptions

[monkeykat]

Now I know there are a lot of valuable fields I have left out. But I think having this data, and the descriptions of where the marks lay, is valuable enough to find them and any RMs in the area. For a more detailed difficult search, you would probably want the Reference Objects and survey control data. But for most finds I think this may be ample.

 

Here are some examples of a data sheet txt file, and its outputted palm file. I use the TIBR book reader software to convert the txt file to a palm formatted file.

 

Data Sheet Text File of 3 Benchmarks

Output for the Palm Pilot in TXT format

 

To run the perl script, you will need to have perl installed on your PC. Not everybody has this, but man perl is so good at parsing. If maybe there is significant interest I may try to port to a windows friendly version.

 

Active State Perl is Free

Zip file with Benchmarking Perl Script in it

 

I find it best to do your data sheet query, and then sort by PID. The script will take an filename as input (the data file to parse) and prompt you for the number of PIDs you want in a file. The default is 10. If you have a large number of marks to search through, it could take a long time to scroll through them to find the mark you want. I found 10 to be a good number per file. The script will output a file using the first PID in the file as a filename (thats why it is good to sort first, so your files will be closest to alphabetized). The script accepts files in data sheet text or html format.

 

I have a 1GB MicroSD card in my GPS for storing map data, and I took the 64MB MicroSD card that came with the garmin vista CX I have and put it (with an adapter) into the palm m500. I can now store 64MB of benchmark text files on the palm.

[monkeykat]

I wrote this script for fun, and it is suitable for my benchmarking purposes so far. I'm offering it out to the community in case anyone else would find it useful. If you are interested in trying it, I welcome your input, and am more than happy to assist you in using it.

 

Are there fields that you feel should definitely be included? Is there a different format you would like to see? More user customizing? One thing I plan on doing is introducing a variable for column width. Right now it is set to 30, but I could see someone wanting to set it manually. In case your palm has better resolution and can handle 40 lines or something.

 

Enjoy.

 

Data Sheet Parsing Script

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I tried your PERL script and it worked fine. I changed the column width to 79 for better readability on my regular computer screen.

 

I don't use paperless benchmarking or a palm, but I have some suggestions:

 

1. have the printout simply say whether the mark is horizontally scaled or adjusted instead of outputting that paragraph about +/- 6 seconds

 

2. JV1973 has a box score (ASCII dashes and | making a box) and your program does not yet seem to include that in its output. The box score is extremely necessary for good benchmark hunting when it exists.

 

3. It would save space to delete all of the HISTORY lines except for the MONUMENTED one. The texts already have the dates and conditions. The conditions cited are not totally important when in the field. Once in a while, the text fails to contain the condition, but that is very rare.

 

4. I'd also recommend removing the STABILITY and SATELLITE lines since they are not valuable as information to find the mark. Those lines tend to be long too.

 

5. After the history lines, there's a double blank line.

Also there's 2 empty lines of asterisks at the beginning of each PID.

You could also delete the PID line, since the PID is shown with asterisks just a couple lines up.

This may seem picky but I've made a script too (for GAWK; not to get into a religious discussion of AWK vs PERL here ), and looked for all places to reduce the number of lines of output.

 

6. In the MARKER, SETTING, and STABILITY lines, you might consider deleting their "CD =" parts.

 

7. The "STATION RECOVERY (DATE) lines and their following blank line could be deleted too.

[monkeykat]

I agree BDT, when you think about it, just 2 or 3 extra lines where they aren't needed in a file of 10 PIDs ends up costing you 20-30 extra lines, which can be 2-3 pages on a palm. Thanks for the input, and I'll have to try and find some time to do a little fine tuning before the contest begins. (Although I think I have some time to spare, as we still have a couple feet of snow on the ground here).

 

I'm thinking of prompting the user for a "lite" option, and "heavy" output options that would include extras like the ascii box of detailed directions.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Heh, it only takes one time, when you're far from home, looking for a triangulation station and find one or two reference marks and no triangulation station and think: GAAAAAK, I wish I had brought the box score information for this - I will NEVER leave home without it again!!!

 

Here was my 'one time'.

Edited February 20, 2007 by Black Dog Trackers

[+GEO*Trailblazer 1]

I wish they had search along a route with benchmarks too.

 

This is kinda the way I do it.

In GPSTrackmaker you can add all the details and send to GPS or.

I also add the Bearings, azimuth and RM's and their respective coordinates and lines and lengths into my GPS.

This is for Triangulation stations.

I can also save it for use at a future time.

I also have it in my PDA through my slow way,MS Word,but hey it works for me.

And without me being knowledgeable about writing script I find it easy for me.

 

But I predefine a trip.

I add all the data I can..500 at a time into my GPS.

Have more in the PDA as well,but find it to cumbersome while traveling distances to have the Whole County's or State's.

 

You can also use them with each other GPSTrackmaker and GSAK by exporting the type files you want where you want.

Whether it is Streets and Trips,Topozone,GoogleEarth and many I forget about.

 

Just the ramblings of a GEO*