+The Phoenix Tree Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 (edited) Hi all, I am looking for a GPS unit that can be useful for both golfing and geocaching. Most golfing GPS units I have found seem to be for golfing only... Does anyone know of a unit that can easily be used for both? Are there golf course maps sold separately (that could be loaded into something like a 60CSx)? I am also looking into a laser rangefinder instead of a gps for golfing, but they look just as pricy. Thanks! Edited March 27, 2009 by The Phoenix Tree Quote Link to comment
+Renegade Knight Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Someone needs to invent a GPS that takes plug ins...The Oregon would be a good candidate. With Garmin someone could make a golf course map and you could load it into the GPS. Not sure anyone has. Quote Link to comment
+Low Bat Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 (edited) Someone needs to invent a GPS that takes plug ins...The Oregon would be a good candidate. With Garmin someone could make a golf course map and you could load it into the GPS. Not sure anyone has. Garmin has made a golfing GPS based on the Oregon. It's called the Approach G5. It does have a list of golf courses you can view here. It looks like a great golfing GPS, but looking over the 12 page manual I don't see any indication it can do anything else other than golf courses. Edited March 27, 2009 by Low Bat Quote Link to comment
+g-o-cashers Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 I tried loading the Approach G5 software on my Oregon a few weeks ago and it didn't take. But I'm guessing a clever person with enough time could figure out how to switch back and forth! Quote Link to comment
savant9 Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 I tried loading the Approach G5 software on my Oregon a few weeks ago and it didn't take. But I'm guessing a clever person with enough time could figure out how to switch back and forth! Exactly what I was thinking, I would be interested in messing around with that. A few questions for you, g-o-cashers.... Any idea if the Approach has Oregon 200 hardware or 300/400 hardware inside? The garmin site lists very few details of the hardware (whether it contains a baro/compass or supports wireless transfer). Is the course data map stored as a gmapprom.img file, or integrated somehow else into the actual os? What is the file structure like?' Contents of the GarminDevice.xml file? There is no data update yet listed for download or I would have taken a look at that. Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 Hi Phoenix Tree, I have two different devices that I use for Golf and GPS. One is a Garmin iQue 3600. The other is a Palm T|X. I use Intelligolf Eagle Edition on both for golf. The iQue 3600 is a Palm OS PDA with an integrated GPS receiver. It uses Garmin's older Que GPS software. I use Garmin Mobile XT on the Palm T|X for GPS, with a Garmin GPS10x bluetooth receiver. You can get Intelligolf and Mobile XT to run on most popular smartphones. Intelligolf has a bunch of courses online that you can download for free as an Intelligolf customer. You can also "survey" golf courses yourself. This is a feature that most of the dedicated golf GPS units lack. So if they don't have your favorite courses available, you're right out of luck. If you decide to try one of those laser rangefinders, be absolutely certain that you can take it back for a full refund, no questions asked. They can be a nightmare to use. It's extremely difficult to focus on the flagstick from any significant distance away. If there is a lot of "clutter" behind the flagstick, like people or bushes/trees or buildings, it's very nearly impossible to get a lock. When I first looked at them I took one of the best ones out into the parking lot and tried to get a lock on a light post across the parking lot. It was about 100 yards away. I had a terrible time trying to get a good distance and it was way thicker than a golf flagstick. I have met two people on the course who have bought them and both were disappointed. They can almost never use it to get the distance to the flagstick directly. They normally have to pick out some prominent item in the vicinity of the green that they can be sure they've got a lock on and then guesstimate the distance to the flag based on that. The solutions I mentioned above are not great for geocaching. I can get a nice compass application for the iQue 3600 but the GPS receiver in it is outdated technology so it's not very good in difficult receiving locations without an external antenna. The receiver I use with the Palm T|X is modern technology and works great anywhere. Mobile XT has an "off road" routing mode but it does not have a compass screen so it would not be the best to use for geocaching. It's virtually identical in GPS features and functions to a Nuvi. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
Bob Morphew Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 There was a post on this Forum a couple of weeks back about a website that had free golf maps and had a great tool for making your own golf course map using Google maps. If you have the interest to make your own course maps, or can find the ones you need, then the 60CSx would be well suited for your needs. Check this link: GPS Golf Course Maps Bob Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 I'm not entirely sure I see that value of a golf course map in most cases. (For the record, I've been playing golf for twenty years. I average 70 to 80 rounds a year now that I'm retired, and manage to keep my handicap index at around 12). I can understand that it would be useful in preparing to play a course you have never seen before. A view of the satellite images in Google will serve that purpose quite nicely. But for regular play, where the GPS is, in my view, the most useful, I don't understand the value of a course map. I would find it more of a distraction than an aid. Yardage is what's most importance once you're on the golf course. As you play a hole, you need to know the yardage from where your ball is to any hazard that might be in reach of your current shot. Once you are within reach of the green, you need to know the yardage from where your ball is to the flagstick. That's all you need .. one number .. the distance to something you either want to avoid or something you want to reach. I use Intelligolf Eagle edition. You survey a course and input waypoints for the front, back and middle of each green and up to three other locations of significance on each hole. These would typically be the location of a bunker or water hazard or similar object you don't want to hit into. Once you have those locations entered for all 18 holes, your GPS can now tell you the yardage from where you are standing to any of those locations on the hole you are playing. I can't overemphasize the importance of that last statement, especially if you play like me and like to wander all over the golf course sometimes. The GPS can then tell you the yardage to an intervening hazard or the green from ANYWHERE your ball might be. Of secondary value, but useful to lots of people, is the ability to keep track of your score and other statistics (fairways and greens hit, sand saves, etc.) on the electronic device. Let it do the math for your score. Also handy to be able to upload rounds to a PC so you can accumulate statistics over time and analyse and display them on charts Intelligolf, and other programs do that sort of thing on GPS-equipped PDAs and smartphones. Intelligolf also helps with keeping track of the various side-games that many golfers like to play .. closest to the pin, long drive, snake, bingo-bango-bongo, and so on. You can do the yardage thing by putting coded waypoints into any handheld GPS receiver. You don't need a golf course map for that. Or any map, for that matter. Just the waypoints. It's not nearly as handy to use as a dedicated GPS golf device or something like Intelligolf on a PDA or smartphone. And it won't keep your score and other stats. But you would have the critical golf information - yardages - and you would have a device that will also be very good for geocaching. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
+TotemLake Posted March 29, 2009 Share Posted March 29, 2009 (edited) Hi all, I am looking for a GPS unit that can be useful for both golfing and geocaching. Most golfing GPS units I have found seem to be for golfing only... Does anyone know of a unit that can easily be used for both? Are there golf course maps sold separately (that could be loaded into something like a 60CSx)? I am also looking into a laser rangefinder instead of a gps for golfing, but they look just as pricy. Thanks! PN-40. Unless the golf course was radically redesigned, you can download aerials and in some cities, high resolution aerials of the course. The only thing you won't get is current pin placement. Edited March 29, 2009 by TotemLake Quote Link to comment
+KMonster Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 (edited) There was a post on this Forum a couple of weeks back about a website that had free golf maps and had a great tool for making your own golf course map using Google maps. If you have the interest to make your own course maps, or can find the ones you need, then the 60CSx would be well suited for your needs. Check this link: GPS Golf Course Maps Bob I have found a method to load center of green pts using the above site combined with saving these points as a separate POI. This way it doesn't add to the clutter of waypoints and keeps the center of green points in one POI per golf course. I suppose you can take more time and plot more points, but center of green is good enough for me. This whole process takes less than 1/2 hour for one course (18 pts). It seems like a complicated process, but once you get the hang of it, it's fairly quick. I have poor memory, so I wrote myself some instructions. I made it a more complete version to share with all of you. I hope you find this useful. Here it is: 1. Go to www.wideopenwest.com/~don_barger/Map-page.html 2. Within the site go to Create a Map a. Locate desired golf course to map b. Select Pin Marker c. Click on center of green for hole 1 d. Select Convert e. Type in Hole 1 f. Continue until finished through hole 18 g. I don’t use the other features (fairway, green, etc.). It takes too much time. h. Select Show Points File (GPX) i. Highlight the entire file and copy to Notepad 3. In Notepad, rename file to golfcoursename.gpx and save. a. Note: I created a Golf Map subdirectory. Within that subdirectory I create a folder for each golf course where I store the gpx file. This helps when you use Garmin’s poiloader. (optional). 4. Open Garmin poiloader.exe. This can be downloaded online. a. Connect the 60csx to the computer. b. Select “Install new custom POI’s onto your device” and click next. c. Select Browse and locate the folder where the desired gpx file is located and click Next d. Verify the correct gpx file is identified. If so make sure “Ignore this file?” and “This file contains proximity points alerts” boxes are unchecked and click Next. Note: If multiple gpx files are located within the same folder, check the box “Ignore this file?” until the correct gpx file is identified. This is where unique folders for each golf map is helpful. e. The poi.gpi file will then be created and uploaded to your 60csx 5. On the 60csx, select Menu -> Menu -> Setup Icon -> Interface Icon 6. With the Garmin 60csx still connected to the computer, select USB Mass Storage. The 60csx will connect to PC 7. On the PC, open windows explorer (usually opens automatically) 8. Locate the 60csx directory 9. Open the Garmin folder 10. Open the Poi folder 11. Rename poi.gpi to golfcoursename.gpi. Unmount the 60csx and you’re done! 12. How to use the gpi files on the 60csx a. Select Find -> Custom Points of Interest Icon b. Select Menu c. Select Select Database and choose course. d. When changing from hole to hole select Find -> Custom POI and choose desired hole. KMonster Edited August 26, 2009 by KMonster Quote Link to comment
+user13371 Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 How about an app for location-aware smartphones? In general... http://youcaddy.com/index.html For iPhone: http://appshopper.com/entertainment/youcaddy-gps Quote Link to comment
+Deadelm Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 Triton 400 on up can do both with the help of custom image maps of any golf course on the earth that is covered with good imagery from google earth or msn (bing). Or as Ken pointed out, just create and load the waypoints on any good gps and you will have your yardage help. These points could easily be created using google earth, then converted to load into whatever unit. The image that TotemLake provided is a good example of what you would get with your own custom maps for the Triton. I don't know the coverage of imagery that the Delorme could provide. I have checked out a few of the golf course map sites and they seem to be limited to select areas and popular courses only. Quote Link to comment
John E Cache Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 Golf Digest has an ad for an app for GPS phones, like the iPhone and Blackberry Curve. I think there are geocaching GPS phone apps available. Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 (edited) I love the approach that KMonster documented and posted yesterday. It really makes it so much easier. My earlier suggestion above requires a fairly lengthy naming convention so the holes are associated with the correct golf course. That is, the waypoint name has to include a reference to the golf course. By using custom POI files, as KMonster laid out above, that issue goes away. You can just use Hole 1, Hole 2, etc. for any golf course. So simple. Thanks KMonster. Also, the Google Maps mashup at that link that Bob Morphew and KMonster reference lets you just point and click instead of having to read the coordinates from Google Earth and manually type them in. Much easier than my suggestion. I did three of my local courses in under an hour. Then I ran into the problem you have any time you try to use the satellite images in Google Maps/Earth for accurate coordinates .... they're seldom accurate. The calibration of the satellite images is really awful in some places. I checked one of the golf courses I just did for calibration accuracy and the calibration of the satellite image on Google is off by 380 METERS. That is, the actual point on the face of the earth is 380 meters away, on a heading of 86.26 degrees (almost due West) from the point you select on the satellite image. This is not especially good, even for someone who plays as poorly as I do. ...ken... Edited August 26, 2009 by Ken in Regina Quote Link to comment
+TotemLake Posted August 26, 2009 Share Posted August 26, 2009 This is not especially good, even for someone who plays as poorly as I do. ...ken... Mulligan? Quote Link to comment
+Deadelm Posted August 27, 2009 Share Posted August 27, 2009 That is, the actual point on the face of the earth is 380 meters away, on a heading of 86.26 degrees (almost due West) from the point you select on the satellite image. This is not especially good, even for someone who plays as poorly as I do. ...ken... I'm confused........do you meen plotting the waypoints or your golf shot Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted August 27, 2009 Share Posted August 27, 2009 That is, the actual point on the face of the earth is 380 meters away, on a heading of 86.26 degrees (almost due West) from the point you select on the satellite image. This is not especially good, even for someone who plays as poorly as I do. ...ken... I'm confused........do you meen plotting the waypoints or your golf shot You have no idea how I wish I could hit a golf ball 380 meters ... in ANY direction!!! ...ken... Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted August 27, 2009 Share Posted August 27, 2009 I tried it out today and the results are mixed. First, yesterday I used the Don Barger map page to create a GPX file for the course I would be playing today. I did as KMonster and just created a center-of-the-green pin location for all 18 holes. Then I compared the coordinates to the coordinates I have surveyed for the same golf course with Intelligolf in my iQue3600. I didn't like the differences so I manually edited the GPX file to include the coordinates from my Intelligolf survey that has been working well for me for a few years. With the course loaded as a custom POI database in my eTrex Legend HCx I set off for the golf course this morning to test it's usefulness. It's generally quite useful with KMonster's approach. I know that the greens on this course are generally about 30 yards deep so just having the centre marked is no problem. It's really easy to get the list of POIs displayed. Here's where things get a little dicey. On the screen with the POIs all listed, you can highlight any one of them and the distance is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Problem: the distance is listed in Miles or Kilometers, depending on your "Units" setting. That's not terribly useful, especially when you're close to the green and the distance reads as 0.00 (Mi or Km). Not a real big issue because you can select any individual POI to get more detailed information. If you do this, the distance readout at the bottom of the screen goes to a finer resolution. Problem: in Metric, of course, it's Meters. But I play in Yards and I only know my club distances in Yards. Switching the Units display to Statute is not as helpful as I would like because now it displays the yardage in Feet. So you need to be able to either quickly divide by 3 in your head if you use Statute, or do a Meters-to-Yards conversion in your head if you use Metric. Aside from the Units issues it seems to work great. Now I just need to add a few hazards to the file. The nice thing about it being a GPX file is that it's simple XML and really easy to edit manually. So when I do the hazards I can easily merge that with the holes I've already done so I don't have to do them again. I don't know that I'm ready to give up Intelligolf on my iQue 3600 but it's a close call at the moment. The Legend HCx is more convenient to pack around and the battery life is spectacular. After 18 holes the battery indicator is still "full" and I did not start with a fresh charge in the NiMH batteries. Overall, if I was a geocacher who golfs and owned a nice little Garmin handheld that accepts custom POI databases and wanted a basic GPS rangefinder capability, this would save a bunch of money over buying a dedicated golf GPS. It's especially good if you don't mind surveying the course yourself to get better accuracy than you'll get with Google Maps satellite images. I also did that today and have a new set of middle-of-the-green waypoints that I'm going to use to update the GPX file. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
+Deadelm Posted August 28, 2009 Share Posted August 28, 2009 The Triton gives yardage. I have five local courses mapped and prefer placing the waypoints at the front of the green. It has been a big help for club selection since I'm an occasional golfer. Quote Link to comment
+Hrethgir Posted August 28, 2009 Share Posted August 28, 2009 There's an app for that for the iPhone. Actually, and app for everything mentioned in here. Golf yardage measurements, golf course finders, and geocaching, of course. Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted August 29, 2009 Share Posted August 29, 2009 Another site annoyance ... can't go back and edit a post once someone has posted after it. In my last post I made a big deal about the eTrex Legend HCx not being as useful for golf yardages as it might be because it won't display distances in yards. I was wrong. It does display in Yards. Now that I have it displaying in Yards I will continue to play with it to see if it can replace my iQue 3600 with Intelligolf. I used a power cart today and discovered something nice about the Legend. You can just drop it into one of the cup holders in the cart so it's handy to grab whenever you want a yardage. My iQue is a PDA and will not stand up to being bounced around like that. There are a few holes where I want to know the layup yardages to avoid going into a hazard so it's worth adding those in and see if that's enough to get me to switch to my Legend as my primary golf gps. Beats heck out of having to pay big bucks for a dedicated golf gps that you can't use for anything else!!! ...ken... Quote Link to comment
jb12string Posted August 29, 2009 Share Posted August 29, 2009 One thing on laser rangefinders, some courses have reflectors on top of the pin that would greatly simplify getting a good reading Quote Link to comment
dr_barger Posted September 8, 2009 Share Posted September 8, 2009 I'm glad to hear that people are using the GPX feature of the golf mapping web page. I actually haven't tried it (I like to use the full course map drawing). I've been trying to come up with a method to correct the inaccuracy that Google Maps has in some locations that Ken eluded to above. So far, it would involve a download program that would offset all the waypoints based on an actual waypoint from the course. I'll post it on the download page when I finish the programming. Don Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted September 8, 2009 Share Posted September 8, 2009 I'm glad to hear that people are using the GPX feature of the golf mapping web page. I actually haven't tried it (I like to use the full course map drawing). The thing I like about the GPX feature is that it's really easy to manually edit it to do things like combine files or correct the location data. I have a local course with three nines that are normally played in one of three 18 hole combinations. It was dead simple to create three GPX files for the three nines using your site and then combine them into the three 18 hole combinations. Before combining them I was able to manually edit the location data to reflect my actual surveyed locations. I've done some other things with them to expand them for more locations on each hole using the coordinates I've surveyed on the course with Intelligolf. It's more work than I really care to do, though. I've been trying to come up with a method to correct the inaccuracy that Google Maps has in some locations that Ken eluded to above. So far, it would involve a download program that would offset all the waypoints based on an actual waypoint from the course. I'll post it on the download page when I finish the programming. Don That would be wonderful, Don. I'll look forward to it. I've got half a dozen more courses I would like to get onto my eTrex Legend and it would be so much easier to use your web page to create the GPX files than the extra work it takes to get the coordinates from Intelligolf. I tried to figure out a correction factor but I haven't programmed in years ... decades, actually, so I would have had to cut/paste the coordinates from the original GPX file into a spreadsheet to do the correction and cut/paste back into the GPX file. It was less work to just use the existing location data from Intelligolf so I didn't bother trying to figure out the correction factor. And the correction factor would be different for each course so your solution is far superior. If you want some help testing please give me a shout. I've done years of alpha and beta testing for inhouse and commercial software of various kinds. I've also got half a dozen different local courses physically surveyed in Intelligolf for reference. And thanks for all your work on this so far. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
dr_barger Posted September 8, 2009 Share Posted September 8, 2009 Thanks, Ken I'll start on the program. I will try to get it to work on both GPX as well as IMG files. I've been using MapEdit to correct my golf maps for Google's inaccuracy. You just window around all the features and drag them where you want them. MapEdit doesn't work with GPX files, though. So, is your favorite course Tor Hill? Don Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted September 9, 2009 Share Posted September 9, 2009 Tor Hill is where I golf the most but I wouldn't say it's my favorite. My favorite local course would probably be Deer Valley. It's a little more expensive and it's difficult enough terrain that I can't really walk it and I prefer to walk (finally got back to carrying again a couple weeks ago). ...ken... Quote Link to comment
+Mr_Green Posted September 12, 2009 Share Posted September 12, 2009 I haven’t used don barger’s site yet and it may be easier than my method. But what works for me….. i) Use Google Earth to locate the course and then mark waypoints along holes for what yardages I may want to know when I play the course (e.g. creeks, over/to sand, front/back of green). ii) Copy these waypoints into an Excel file to get them into a format that MapSource likes. iii) Open MapSource and enter the waypoints. Make a route with these waypoints (holes 1-18) and download the route to the Colorado. iv) At the course, use recreational profile, call up the route and use the ‘active’ route screen. Then simply set the format to yardages and scroll thru the waypoints you’ve made as they come up. I’ve done this for about 20 courses in and around the St. Louis area; as well as some courses I visit on vacation. Takes about an hour per course with about 50 waypoints and I haven’t had much of an issue with Google’s inaccuracy – yet (at least to where it affects my game). Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted September 12, 2009 Share Posted September 12, 2009 (edited) I haven’t used don barger’s site yet and it may be easier than my method. But what works for me….. i) Use Google Earth to locate the course and then mark waypoints along holes for what yardages I may want to know when I play the course (e.g. creeks, over/to sand, front/back of green). ii) Copy these waypoints into an Excel file to get them into a format that MapSource likes. iii) Open MapSource and enter the waypoints. Make a route with these waypoints (holes 1-18) and download the route to the Colorado. iv) At the course, use recreational profile, call up the route and use the ‘active’ route screen. Then simply set the format to yardages and scroll thru the waypoints you’ve made as they come up. I’ve done this for about 20 courses in and around the St. Louis area; as well as some courses I visit on vacation. Takes about an hour per course with about 50 waypoints and I haven’t had much of an issue with Google’s inaccuracy – yet (at least to where it affects my game). That (creating a route) gives me an idea for improving the way I'm using mine. I'll have to try it on the Legend HCx and see if it can be used the same way as on your Colorado. Can you tell me what the recreational profile is so I can see if there's some equivalent on my Legend HCx? Thanks. Now let me make a suggestion right back. Try using Don's page to get the waypoints. It works just as you're doing with Google Earth now except you end up creating a GPX file with all the waypoints in it. Each waypoint will have the name you have assigned to it (#1 Green Front, #1 To frwy bnkr, #2 Carry Crk, etc) as well as the coordinates already in the file. Mapsource is happy as a clam with the GPX file that Don's site creates. That will save you quite a bit of work, I think. Give it a whirl and see what you think. ...ken... Edited September 12, 2009 by Ken in Regina Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted September 12, 2009 Share Posted September 12, 2009 iii) Open MapSource and enter the waypoints. Make a route with these waypoints (holes 1-18) and download the route to the Colorado. Okay, I've given this a bit more thought and I have some questions. When you create the route, surely you don't include every waypoint on the course in it? That would be tedious to set up and it would make a real mess on the screen, wouldn't it? Or are you just using, say, the middle of each green as the waypoints to include in the route? I assume you are manually setting the route to force the holes into the right order? There's no way any routing algorithm in Mapsource or my Legend will get it right if I let it autoroute, even in offroad mode. Do you include the tee boxes in your setup so that you have a route that resembles the course? Sorry for all the questions but as soon as I started to think about how to actually do all this they immediately all pop up. Since you've already got something working it seems smarter to pick your brain than waste what few working neurons I have left on the question. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
+Mr_Green Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 Firstly, I’m GPS newbie and never had one until about a year ago. I’m at the bottom of the learning curve. Consequently, I don’t know what features are available for your unit but hopefully some of this will at least make things clearer about what I’m doing. Can you tell me what the recreational profile is so I can see if there's some equivalent on my Legend HCx? Thanks. The Colorado has multiple user profiles (e.g. automotive, recreational, marine, fitness, etc.). I think it’s just a way of keeping certain features appropriate to the profile (e.g. automotive sticks to roads). Maybe your Legend simply has them all in one. Now let me make a suggestion right back. Try using Don's page to get the waypoints. It works just as you're doing with Google Earth now except you end up creating a GPX file with all the waypoints in it. Each waypoint will have the name you have assigned to it (#1 Green Front, #1 To frwy bnkr, #2 Carry Crk, etc) as well as the coordinates already in the file. Mapsource is happy as a clam with the GPX file that Don's site creates. That will save you quite a bit of work, I think. Give it a whirl and see what you think. I tried this with a couple of waypoints yesterday and it should save me considerable time from my current Excel method. Thanks – a lot. Okay, I've given this a bit more thought and I have some questions. When you create the route, surely you don't include every waypoint on the course in it? That would be tedious to set up and it would make a real mess on the screen, wouldn't it? Or are you just using, say, the middle of each green as the waypoints to include in the route? I include every waypoint in the route. For some of my courses I use over 50 waypoints. Any “mess on the screen” isn’t a problem with the way they’re viewed on the Colorado. That is, they are not viewed/used like this but rather like this I assume you are manually setting the route to force the holes into the right order? There's no way any routing algorithm in Mapsource or my Legend will get it right if I let it autoroute, even in offroad mode. In MapSource you can easily put the waypoints in the right order for the route/course. They come over in the gpx file like this Then I highlight them, edit/create route using selected waypoints and move them up or down in the proper order To make sure they are in the proper order and where I want them I view the route in Google Earth Do you include the tee boxes in your setup so that you have a route that resembles the course? No. I see no need for the tee boxes. Hope this helps. Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Green. I'll have to give it a whirl this week. I've already got a couple of GPX files with greens marked from Dan's site and have them loaded as custom POI databases. All I have to do is reload them into Mapsource, manually arrange the routing order and load the route onto my Legend to see if I like that better. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
dr_barger Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 The golf map web tool will let you make both tracks and waypoints into a GPX file. So you can mark the greens with waypoints and maybe make tracks to display things like the general shape of the fairway, or outline hazards. Some people like to use tracks for planning their "strategy" for a hole. So you click on the map with your desired drive, layup shot, and chip and save it as a track to the GPS... It should show up as you play. This is actually a bonus feature of the web tool. As you click on the map, it displays the yardage of each leg. Since the points are "draggable", you can move them around to see where your drive will land with a reasonable second shot to the green. The displayed yardage updates after each drag. I've add a program to the Download Page (under the heading "Software"). It will offset all coordinates in a GPX file based on an actual GPS point. There's a help file in the program. Just download the program to a directory with your GPX files. Run the program and select a file from the list. I didn't program it to work on the IMG file format yet. I'll work on that and post it as a Ver. 2.0 Don Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 Okay, here's a progress report. 1. Don's offset program works a treat for quickly adjusting an entire GPX file of Pin points to an acrual reading of one of them. Wednesday night I used Don's web tool to create Pin points for the course I was playing Thursday. I did front/middle/back of the greens and the layup or carry points for a few hazards. I also did a couple of permanent structures on the course so I would have something that would still be in the same location today, no matter what vintage the satellite photos are. It turns out that was a smart thing to do because the sat photos for that area are 2005. I did a Pin point for the SE corner of the cart compound. When I got to the course I did a reading with my GPS .. set it on top of the corner post of the cart compound and let it average for about thirty readings. When I got home I used that reading to correct the GPX file. It pulled the variance between Google Maps satellite images and reality to between 8 to 12 feet. Before the offset adjustment the difference was generally 25 to 30 ft between Google Maps and reality. There are a number of reasons you'll never get any better than that. First, depending upon the vintage of the sat photos, the mowing patterns on the greens and other parts of the course might have changed in teh intervening years. Second, you can't zoom in tight enough in the web tool to get any finer accuracy when you click to locate the Pin point. (This is a shortcoming of Google Maps, not Don's web tool. It's controlled by the resolution of the sat photos of the area, I think.) And finally, your GPS simply won't give you any better accuracy, even with averaging. 2. Usage Preference -- I have tried KMonster's original tip. That tip is to just create Pin points for anything you are interested in. Front/middle/back of greens, carry or layup points on hazards and so on. Then use the GPX file to create custom POIs .. one custom POI database for each golf course. Then I tried Mr. Green's suggestion for loading the GPX file into Mapsource and creating a route with the waypoints. I have used both approaches on the course. I've mentioned before that the only thing I care about on the course is the yardage from where I am to some other point on the course .. the green or a carry or layup point for a hazard. For me, anything else is just a waste of time. So I just want the quickest way to get the yardage to the next point I'm interested in. Here's what I've found works best for me. I set the Find function on my Legend HCx so that it finds "Near Current Location". That will normally make it so any list of points I get will require minimal scrolling to get the point of current interest. In most situations it doesn't really matter if I search Waypoints (from Mr. Green's method) or search Custom POIs (from KMonster's method). In either case I get a list of the Pin points with the list ordered from nearest to farthest .. exactly the same list in most cases. For me there is one unusual situation that causes me to prefer KMonster's approach of using Custom POIs. Two of the courses I play regularly are right across the road from each other. On a small number of holes I get a mixture of points from both courses in the Find list if I have the Pin points loaded as regular Waypoints. If I load them as custom POIs, one custom POI database for each course, I can select a single POI database. That way the Find list only includes the points for the course I have selected. It never includes any nearby irrelevant points. I have discovered with the playing around I've been doing that using the custom POI approach also allows me to manage things much easier. If I want to make changes to a single course, it's way easy to delete just the custom POI database for that course from the GPS and replace it with the new one. It also means I don't have to get creative with how I name the Pin points. I can just use "Hole #1" (or whatever) for the first hole of every course. So that's where I'm at so far. I've got three of my local courses in custom POI databases and I've adjusted one of them using Don's offset adjustment program. I've also got the yardage markers on my favorite driving range in a POI database. Now that I've got a usage approach that suits me I'm going to add a couple more courses and and some more Pin points in the courses I've already done, take some actual readings and do the offset adjustment on them. Thanks, Don, for a great web tool and especially for being so responsive to the comment on accuracy of the Google Maps satellite image calibration. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
scotthsi Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 GPS on a golf course. If you guys really want to cheap, petition Garmin for an all-in-one golf GPS and laser finder/designator combo unit. Quote Link to comment
Ken in Regina Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 GPS on a golf course. If you guys really want to cheap, petition Garmin for an all-in-one golf GPS and laser finder/designator combo unit. Did you mean "...want to [be] cheap" or "...want to cheat"? I've already asked Garmin for add-on firmware for my Legend HCx to make it more suitable for golf yardage use while still allowing its excellent general purpose GPS functionality. I'm hoping lots of others will, too. Not that I hold out a lot of hope of Garmin listening. ...ken... Quote Link to comment
+bittsen Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 Any GPSr should work if you just run the course once. Waymark the holes and you are good to go. Quote Link to comment
scotthsi Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 Maybe you can ask Garmin to work in Rodney Dangerfield's super duper cheating putter from Caddy Shack while you're at it. Quote Link to comment
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