10 chars limit for waypoint name?

[Rhialto]

I'm playing with GSAK Send to GPS options and in my Waypoint name I have:

 

%smart-%typ1%con1%dif1%ter1

 

where %smart is limited to 9 so the total of this string should be 14.

 

When I upload, I don't even see the "-" and there is only 10 characters.

 

What I'm doing wrong? GSAK v7.1.2.14

 

Thanks

[+Hynr]

Which model GPSr are you using. That makes a big difference.

[Rhialto]

hehe... See my sig.

[+Hynr]

I own 5 different GPSrs... each with different lengths of waypoint names ranging from 6 to 13... Mindreading is not one of my skills.... OK Vista HCx... So your max waypoint name length is what? ( 13?)

 

On the GPSr send dialog in GSAK you can select some maximum number. Is that number the same as above? or is it perhaps set to "10"? "11"?

 

Also, GPSbabel (which is GSAKs transfer mechanism) knows about various illegal characters and tosses some. Even if your GPSr allows "-", GPSbabel might be stripping them out. Try it with a colon and see if you have the same issue.

[+Mach2003]

On the send to form, there is a max length, is it set to 10?

[robertlipe]

The HC series was introduced something like a couple of days after the most recent release of GPSBabel. ("Weeks" is a reasonable unit of measure for all of this.) Garmin (to my annoyance) doesn't document waypoint name lengths and character sets per model, so when faced with a unit that we don't know about, we choose "10" to be the limit of uniqueness since the Garmin protocol spec intentionally weenies out and "10" is more right in more cases than "6" which is their recommendation.

 

I've been in contact with Garmin, we've chatted out the product IDs to be special cased to 14, and it'll be in the next release. I don't have a schedule for that, but you're welcome to sit in on the GPSBabel lists (and/or download & build the source code yourself - that IS one of the points of open source...) to see when it happens so you can then turn your eyes upon Clyde to update GSAK. But he can't respin GSAK to include this until I officially respin GPSBabel to include this undocumented Garminism.

[Rhialto]

Ok.. boo to Garmin then. I read the manual to find out what is the max chars length of the waypoint name and it is not specified, same for the Notes field when Geocaching in Compass mode.

 

I think I will write to Garmin saying I'm disapointed about those missing information.

 

So with this new information I've set %smart name to be 5 in length for now and use in the Waypoint name:

 

%smart-%typ1%con1%dif1%ter1

 

with max length of 10. So it's 5 + "-" + 4 chars.

 

Unfortunatly the "-" is not showing. GPSBabel limit?

[GreatCanadian]

are you using

 

%smart=5

 

If you're not typing the 5, then %smart just uses the caclculated name which may or may not be 5 characters

 

also, try an underscore _ instead of a hyphen -

[robertlipe]

Unfortunatly the "-" is not showing. GPSBabel limit?

The Garmin protocol spec says that only uppercase letters A-Z and digits 0-9 are valid. GPSBabel tries to follow that since some units - particularly the older ones - would crash and/or act weird if they saw a space or a dash or such in a name. On units that we know about (and we've already established that the GPSBabel in your hands predates the H series, so it falls into the "generic Garmin" code path) where we've tested lower case and diacriticals and such, we do selectively violate that and let those "forbidden" characters through.

 

So the next version you'll see knows about the three color HC models and turns on 14 char names, allows whitespace, lowercase, most punctuation, and the extended character set.

 

 

The problem is that Garmin doesn't document this stuff to developers per model, yet their own software seems to know what units won't get blasted by an umlaut or a space so there's an expecation in the users that software be able to divine all this stuff..

[+JeepinOregon]

So the next version you'll see knows about the three color HC models and turns on 14 char names, allows whitespace, lowercase, most punctuation, and the extended character set.

 

Looking forward to it!

 

As a new Vista Hcx user myself, this thread has been helpful/informative.

[+Mudfrog]

I'm playing with GSAK Send to GPS options and in my Waypoint name I have:

 

%smart-%typ1%con1%dif1%ter1

 

where %smart is limited to 9 so the total of this string should be 14.

 

When I upload, I don't even see the "-" and there is only 10 characters.

I use GSAK and have set it up to give smart name on the main line and difficulties, type cache, cache size, and last4 logs on the second line. The smart name is limited to 10 characters. I'm probably misunderstanding your question but i think you are asking how many characters your GPSr will accept. The way i found how many mine would hold was to simply input them in manually and see how many it would let me put in.

 

Unfortunatly the "-" is not showing. GPSBabel limit?

A quick question, What is "-" ?

[+Hynr]

"-" is the hyphen character (aka "dash") made with the key between the "0" and the "=" on a North American keyboard.

 

Another comment I would make is that the longer you make the waypoint name, the more cluttered the screen becomes. I have resorted to putting the diff, ter, container, and type information elsewhere (into the cache description or into custom POIs) simply because the clutteredness of the screen. I also print out paper maps where I use this as the Waypoint name:

%smart:%dif%typ1%ter%con1 %children %smart-%c_Code1

My smart names in GSAK are calculated to 6 characters length. I find that to be the shortest I can tolerate.

[Rhialto]

So the next version you'll see knows about the three color HC models and turns on 14 char names, allows whitespace, lowercase, most punctuation, and the extended character set.

 

Excellent! I believe many would come with the same problem/question until it's fixed so I hope this thread will be helpful for them. This if they do a "search", of course once it will drop on the second/third page.

 

Oh and by the way for now I went with %smart%typ1%con1%dif1%ter1 with %smart at 6. You rapidly get used to the last 4 chars (2 alpha and 2 numbers) so no need to add a "-" which is a hypen or dash or minus sign.

 

Once I will be able to enter 4 more chars I may go with adding %last4 or %drop2 (knowing this one is variable and can be 5 chars I will have to remove a char from %smart).

 

Overall I'm really glad I took the time to learn how it was working and improve the cache listing on my GPSr. When on road, it is now possible to go paperless now that I know where are the traditionals one with low diff/terr levels right from my GPSr.