Is there a difference to the GPX file saved in the 60CSX Internal Memory and Memory card?

[Sgt_Strider]

I remember someone telling me in the past that the track file saved to the internal memory of the Garmin 60CSX differs from the track file saved on to the memory card. Is there any truth to this? I remember someone saying the altitude is not written to the memory.

 

The reason why I asked this is that my micro-SD card died the other day and I lost one track file on the card . However, the tracklog was saved to the internal memory. Although I have never retrieved a tracklog from the internal memory before, I'll have no choice, but to do so soon as that's the only record left of that trip. Any comments on this?

 

Furthermore, I want to confirm that the steps to retrieving the tracklog from the memory is:

 

In MapSource click Receive From Device, select Tracks (or waypoints, routes, maps), click OK.

 

Will this option give me the ability to save the file as a GPX file?

 

Also, since I rarely ever save a track into the internal memory, I just want to ask if the steps that I took to save the tracklog was correct?

 

Click "save" and then click ok with the default options and the file will be saved into the internal memory

 

How does the GPX unit decide on the filename if it contains GPS data from a different date? For example, let's say that I have data on 10/16 and 10/17. If I click save on 10/17, then I suppose all data from the two days will be saved together. Is that correct?

 

I know this will sound anal, but I've lost confidence in using the memory card now. I think from now on I'm going to save all of my tracks to the internal memory and just retrieve it every couple of days. How do I ensure that all tracks are saved on a daily basis and no points are overwritten?

 

The way I see it now is to save the track once it reaches 95%, save it to the internal memory, click "clear" to clear the memory so that it starts back at 0% to start recording. Then rinse and repeat everytime it reaches 95%. Do you guys think this is the best approach here? I need to make sure all of the points are recorded as I'm doing geotagging with my photos and every missed point may mean a missed opportunity to geotag a photo!

 

Thx for the help in advance guys!

[+Red90]

The tracks on the card are the same as the "Active Log". The active track is up to 10000 points. "Saved" tracks (ones manually saved within the unit) are stripped of time/date and elevation plus they are filtered to 500 points.

[Sgt_Strider]

The tracks on the card are the same as the "Active Log". The active track is up to 10000 points. "Saved" tracks (ones manually saved within the unit) are stripped of time/date and elevation plus they are filtered to 500 points.

 

Whoa?! If the time/date are stripped from the tracklog, how do I geotag my photos? Geotagging programs relies on the time to synchronize the points with the JPG and RAW photos. Am I screwed if I were to use the file saved on to the internal memory and later retrieve it with Map Point?

 

It's a good thing that I didn't clear the memory even though I've saved the track to my log. How do I retrieve the track that is still active? I currently don't have a micro-SD in the GPS unit. Is there a way to move the full tracklog on to the memory card if I put one in?

 

How do I know when I have exceeded 500 points? The GPS unit said only 56% is full.

[+Red90]

When you upload with Mapsource, then tracks will be called "Active Log xxxxx" Those are the raw tracks with no stripping. These are the same as what is automatically stored to the card.

 

The "saved" tracks are ones that you manually save and will have whatever name you give them. They are useless as information is stripped. Do NOT manually save any tracks on the unit....

 

You could move the active track to the card, but I do not see any point. Once hooked to a computer save the tracks to the computer.

[Sgt_Strider]

When you upload with Mapsource, then tracks will be called "Active Log xxxxx" Those are the raw tracks with no stripping. These are the same as what is automatically stored to the card.

 

The "saved" tracks are ones that you manually save and will have whatever name you give them. They are useless as information is stripped. Do NOT manually save any tracks on the unit....

 

You could move the active track to the card, but I do not see any point. Once hooked to a computer save the tracks to the computer.

 

Red90,

 

Ok you have me very paranoid about this. Can you be extremely specific on what I need to do to get the active tracklog off my Garmin 60CSX and on to my computer with Mapsource? I'll plug the GPS unit on to my computer with a USB cable and you'll lead the way on how to retrieve it from my computer.

 

Ok, now I realize how foolish I was for clearing the memory and save the track on to the internal memory. Since I've said that I'm geotagging my photos, is there any way that I can utilize the data that from the tracklog that is saved on to the GPS' internal memory? I really didn't have a choice on to saving the tracklog to a memory card as I didn't have a spare micro-SD ready!

[+Red90]

If you cleared the tracklog, it is gone.

 

Open Mapsource. Receive from GPS. That loads all internal tracklogs.

[Sgt_Strider]

If you cleared the tracklog, it is gone.

 

Open Mapsource. Receive from GPS. That loads all internal tracklogs.

 

I cleared the log from yesterday's trip so I guess that's a goner. I didn't clear today's log even though I saved it to the internal memory. So iare these the proper steps then since you don't want to go into details?

 

In MapSource click Receive From Device, select Tracks (or waypoints, routes, maps), click OK.

 

From there, how do I ensure that all the track information from the active track (October 15th, 2009) is retrieved by Mapsource on to the computer? Furthermore, when I click to save from Mapsource, can I select the directory to save on the computer? Please be as detailed as you can as I'm very paranoid I'll mess this thing up and lose another day worth of information!

 

Also, in regards to the saved track from yesterday (October 14th, 2009). Is there any way that I can make use of the track saved on to the internal memory for geotagging purposes?

[Grasscatcher]

SS,

I'll see if I can help.......

 

You are SOL on using yesterday's "saved" track for geotagging. Reason? because,you have cleared the memory and,when you "save" a track to internal memory, as Red90 said, the unit strips time,elevation, date away. (and the time of the trackpoint is what would be used for geotagging)

 

Since you have not cleared TODAY's memory, download today's trip and what you will see in Mapsource is "two" tracks. One will be named "Active Log" and the other will have whatever name it was named when you saved it.

 

"Active Log" will have ALL the data whereas the "saved" track will "look" the same when displayed, but will have time, elevation, date missing. Look at "track properties" on each of those two files, compare which columns are present/or missing.

 

When you log tracks to the card, it logs ALL the data there also, so for geotagging, you MUST use either the "Card file" or the Active Log .

 

When you "Clear Track Log" on your unit, what you are doing is deleting the Active Log from memory,( what you see as the breadcrumb trail on the GPS screen). Clearing the track log DOES NOT delete anything from the card, if you have been logging to the card also.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited October 15, 2009 by Grasscatcher

[Grasscatcher]

SS,

The best of all situations is to ALWAYS log to the card and OCCASIONALLY transfer those gpx files to your PC. You can sort through those at your leisure to determine which to keep and which to delete.

 

I went back and read your OP again.

 

Anytime you have your unit on, it is logging info to the active log, as seen as the breadcrumb track on your screen. It continues day to day to day up until it gets up to 10,000 trackpoints. Depending on how your options are set determines what it does at that point.

It is logging data to the internal memory....not saving a gpx file to the memory.

 

Logging tracks to the card is a separate, different action. Each calendar day(when the GPS is on) your unit starts a new gpx file (named by date) on the card. Also, in addition, everytime you turn your unit off and back on it starts a new gpx file on the card, and also when you "clear track log" a new gpx file is started on the card.

 

GPX files on the card are only accessible through your PC.

Edited October 15, 2009 by Grasscatcher

[segler999]

I use a 60Cx as follows:

 

1. If you save a tracklog within the gpsr deliberately it will be nearly useless. So, don't ever save a tracklog within the gpsr. Never.

 

2. In Settings turn on "track logging to the memory card" and leave it on as a default. The gpx files so created have all data with nothing stripped. Files are based on dates. The files are fairly small (text xml files) so card size is not much of a limitation.

 

3. The active tracklog in the gpsr memory can be downloaded to a file with Mapsource. Save it off as a gpx file. The active tracklog wraps after 10,000 points inside the gpsr, but it keeps on saving to the card (see #2 above) until you turn off the gpsr.

[robertlipe]

The rules are kind of gnarly, but they're all spelled out at http://www.gpsfaqs.org/faqs/garmin/xseries...csx/tracks.html

 

For geotagging, saved tracks (as opposed to stored tracks) are better than nothing - but not by a great amount.

[Grasscatcher]

Segler999,

"1. If you save a tracklog within the gpsr deliberately it will be nearly useless. So, don't ever save a tracklog within the gpsr. Never."

 

Isn't that bad advise?....what if the user wants to use the trackback function?

Without the track saved in internal memory, and trackback, the only way to follow the same route back is visually following the breadcrumb trail on the screen.

What if the user wants to use that track to follow in the future? Even an active log track or card gpx file ,when reinstalled /reloaded into the GPS, is reduced to 500 TP and data stripped. (unless renamed as Active Log when reloaded)

It's not a one size fits all. Both types (saved & card gpx) are equally useful., but for totally different applications. Saved files for use on the unit itself, and active log or card gpx files for use on the PC with ALL the data accessible for geotagging, more accurate mapping, etc.

[Sgt_Strider]

SS,

I'll see if I can help.......

 

You are SOL on using yesterday's "saved" track for geotagging. Reason? because,you have cleared the memory and,when you "save" a track to internal memory, as Red90 said, the unit strips time,elevation, date away. (and the time of the trackpoint is what would be used for geotagging)

 

Since you have not cleared TODAY's memory, download today's trip and what you will see in Mapsource is "two" tracks. One will be named "Active Log" and the other will have whatever name it was named when you saved it.

 

"Active Log" will have ALL the data whereas the "saved" track will "look" the same when displayed, but will have time, elevation, date missing. Look at "track properties" on each of those two files, compare which columns are present/or missing.

 

When you log tracks to the card, it logs ALL the data there also, so for geotagging, you MUST use either the "Card file" or the Active Log .

 

When you "Clear Track Log" on your unit, what you are doing is deleting the Active Log from memory,( what you see as the breadcrumb trail on the GPS screen). Clearing the track log DOES NOT delete anything from the card, if you have been logging to the card also.

 

Hope this helps.

 

There is a slight problem with your approach. When I connected my GPS to Mapsource and receive the tracks, I got more than one active track. There are a total of 71 active tracks. I decided to use "ctrl" and select all 71 tracks and save it as a GPX file since they're all dated as 10/15/2009 as Mapsource indicated. The GPX file is 1.53MB which is rather big for a 1 day file. I'm not quite sure why that's the case. In general, none of my previous GPX files are over 1MB unless I did a lot of moving. Certainly I didn't do that much moving yesterday (probably moved over 150miles and the unit is recording constantly as I set it to record most often).

 

When I used a program like G7to open up the GPX file, everything seems like a mess. The first 25% of the track have data from October 15th, 2009, then the next 50% is October 16th, 2009, and the final remaining 25% is October 15th, 2009. I checked my previous tracklogs that were saved to the microSD and they didn't have the same "problem" that I just notice. Is there something wrong that I did when I transferred the files over to Mapsource?

 

Basically, what I want is this, I want to save all of the data from October 15th, 2009 as one GPX file as it contains all of the essential information for geotagging. How do I do this? Should I have selected all 71 active tracks in Mapsource to save as a GPX file? How do I know which track to save? I don't want to take any risks here and want all of the GPS information that the unit recorded.

 

One final thing and since I'm not too sure how this works, I'm not going to clear the memory on the unit. I just bought a new micro-SD and I'll stick that into the unit. Will it start recording data for October 16th, 2009? The track menu indicate that the unit is currently 55% full. So even though it's 55% full, I'm assuming that the first 55% of the data that has been recorded to the active track of the unit, they're not going to be transferred over to the micro-SD card right? As soon as I insert the micro-SD card in, then only data from the moment that the GPS unit is turned on will be recorded?

 

Btw, I'm currently in Shanghai so the timezone has been set to GMT+8 and I know the information in the track are saved in the UTC time zone.

 

Again, I don't want to take any risks here so I'm not going to clear the memory so that all data from the active track of October 15th, 2009 will be preserved until I receive some clear instructions on how to make sure every trace of info is saved properly. Since the unit's track menu indicate it's 55% full, I'm going to let it run until it reaches 99%. What happens once it reaches 99%? Will it start deleting old data from the unit to record new data? I don't have the "wrap log" option on the unit ticked. Since that option isn't ticked, I'm assuming that no further coordinates will be recorded to the GPS' active track, but it'll continue to write to the micro-SD? Will there be any detrimental effects to leaving the GPS active track at 99% while there is a micro-SD in the GPS?

 

One last thing and that is whether I'm capable of viewing the GPX files that are stored on the micro-SD on the GPS itself? Can I view file sizes from the Garmin unit? I can't seem to be able to do so. If I can, then at least I know the unit is recording information on to the memory card and I won't have to be afraid that something screwy is happening.

 

Sorry for the long post, but if you can answer all of my questions precisely then at least it'll help alleviate the paranoia in me! Thx for the help in advance bud!

[Sgt_Strider]

Can someone please address my post above? It's very important to me! Thx!

[+bjb670]

SS,

I'll see if I can help.......

 

You are SOL on using yesterday's "saved" track for geotagging. Reason? because,you have cleared the memory and,when you "save" a track to internal memory, as Red90 said, the unit strips time,elevation, date away. (and the time of the trackpoint is what would be used for geotagging)

 

Since you have not cleared TODAY's memory, download today's trip and what you will see in Mapsource is "two" tracks. One will be named "Active Log" and the other will have whatever name it was named when you saved it.

 

"Active Log" will have ALL the data whereas the "saved" track will "look" the same when displayed, but will have time, elevation, date missing. Look at "track properties" on each of those two files, compare which columns are present/or missing.

 

When you log tracks to the card, it logs ALL the data there also, so for geotagging, you MUST use either the "Card file" or the Active Log .

 

When you "Clear Track Log" on your unit, what you are doing is deleting the Active Log from memory,( what you see as the breadcrumb trail on the GPS screen). Clearing the track log DOES NOT delete anything from the card, if you have been logging to the card also.

 

Hope this helps.

 

There is a slight problem with your approach. When I connected my GPS to Mapsource and receive the tracks, I got more than one active track. There are a total of 71 active tracks. I decided to use "ctrl" and select all 71 tracks and save it as a GPX file since they're all dated as 10/15/2009 as Mapsource indicated. The GPX file is 1.53MB which is rather big for a 1 day file. I'm not quite sure why that's the case. In general, none of my previous GPX files are over 1MB unless I did a lot of moving. Certainly I didn't do that much moving yesterday (probably moved over 150miles and the unit is recording constantly as I set it to record most often).

 

When I used a program like G7to open up the GPX file, everything seems like a mess. The first 25% of the track have data from October 15th, 2009, then the next 50% is October 16th, 2009, and the final remaining 25% is October 15th, 2009. I checked my previous tracklogs that were saved to the microSD and they didn't have the same "problem" that I just notice. Is there something wrong that I did when I transferred the files over to Mapsource?

 

Basically, what I want is this, I want to save all of the data from October 15th, 2009 as one GPX file as it contains all of the essential information for geotagging. How do I do this? Should I have selected all 71 active tracks in Mapsource to save as a GPX file? How do I know which track to save? I don't want to take any risks here and want all of the GPS information that the unit recorded.

 

One final thing and since I'm not too sure how this works, I'm not going to clear the memory on the unit. I just bought a new micro-SD and I'll stick that into the unit. Will it start recording data for October 16th, 2009? The track menu indicate that the unit is currently 55% full. So even though it's 55% full, I'm assuming that the first 55% of the data that has been recorded to the active track of the unit, they're not going to be transferred over to the micro-SD card right? As soon as I insert the micro-SD card in, then only data from the moment that the GPS unit is turned on will be recorded?

 

Btw, I'm currently in Shanghai so the timezone has been set to GMT+8 and I know the information in the track are saved in the UTC time zone.

 

Again, I don't want to take any risks here so I'm not going to clear the memory so that all data from the active track of October 15th, 2009 will be preserved until I receive some clear instructions on how to make sure every trace of info is saved properly. Since the unit's track menu indicate it's 55% full, I'm going to let it run until it reaches 99%. What happens once it reaches 99%? Will it start deleting old data from the unit to record new data? I don't have the "wrap log" option on the unit ticked. Since that option isn't ticked, I'm assuming that no further coordinates will be recorded to the GPS' active track, but it'll continue to write to the micro-SD? Will there be any detrimental effects to leaving the GPS active track at 99% while there is a micro-SD in the GPS?

 

One last thing and that is whether I'm capable of viewing the GPX files that are stored on the micro-SD on the GPS itself? Can I view file sizes from the Garmin unit? I can't seem to be able to do so. If I can, then at least I know the unit is recording information on to the memory card and I won't have to be afraid that something screwy is happening.

 

Sorry for the long post, but if you can answer all of my questions precisely then at least it'll help alleviate the paranoia in me! Thx for the help in advance bud!

 

 

If you opened up all your tracks, you mentioned something about 71 different ones. there is an option to join selected tracks, you can just highlight everything from the same date, right click and then "join selected tracks"

 

If you dont have a sd card in now, and you put one in, it will not log the current active log. It will just start logging from the time you put the card in and turn the unit on.

 

If you let the unit get to 99% and you have the wrap feature off, it will just stop logging data, if wrap is on, it will start overwriting the oldest tracks.

 

I think the only way to view the GPX files is to put the garmin into usb mode then copy them from the card to your computer. also i dont think you can see file sizes, but assuming you have the correct choices checked on the garmin, and the card is in it should be logging.

 

From what i read and understand, you should choose to log the data to your sd card. and you should occasionally remove them from the card (where they will be logged by date).

 

I personally log to the sd card, and i clear the tracklog on my vista hcx when it gets full, which does not affect the logs on the card.