Benchmark Software

[+GeckoGeek]

quote:

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Originally posted by RogBarn:

... let me say that the software solutions for benchmarking are not very good right now. Hopefully, someone will step in and help out. At any rate, this is what I do: Get the datasheets in zipped form from the yearly archived benchmark section of the NGS site. You will need the misc file that includes the list of counties to know what file number represents which county for your state. BMGPX, Watcher and EasyGPS are software programs that have been referenced around here, sorry but I don't have time right now to look up links. Maybe someone else can help. BMGPX will take datasheets and create a GPX file. Watcher can read and write GPX files but since it is designed for caches and not benchmarks, it is far from a good solution. However it can be used to zero in on a area of benchmarks to help make a smaller file. EasyGPS can read GPX files and can upload the waypoints to your GPS. There is some small bug somewhere and you will need to do a quick fix to some (all?) GPX files before trying to use EasyGPS to read them. I think ClayJar (maker of Watcher) has the details, I have to look it up every time I need to use it.

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Thanks for that info. I'll give it a shot. Since the subject drifted a bit, I thought I'd start a new subject line.

 

Any ideas on Palm software? I find the descriptions are very important to locating the station. GPS devices that I know don't hold that kind of info. I did play with CacheMate. It looks like a workable solution but I'm disappointed it doesn't allow me to sort the listings by location, nor does it talk to a GPS unit. I will be doing some traveling, but I wanted to limit the use of the laptop and use my Palm for most of my work once I have a large database loaded.

[+TeamThompson]

Hi,

Have a look at GPX2HTML and Plucker.

 

I recently discovered that old dates cause troubles for both tools so you probably want to go through the GPX files and replace any dates prior to 1980 with more recent dates. The dates don't make a big difference in the grand scheme of things so this is a low impact change.

 

I found that GPX2HTML worked better for me than GPXSpinner (though I prefer the results that GPXSpinner produces for caches).

 

After processing the GPX file into HTML, Plucker does a very nice job of putting it into a form that can be read on the Palm.

 

Cheers,

Bruce.

[dboggny]

quote:

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Originally posted by GeckoGeek:

 

Any ideas on Palm software? I find the descriptions are very important to locating the station. GPS devices that I know don't hold that kind of info. I did play with CacheMate. It looks like a workable solution but I'm disappointed it doesn't allow me to sort the listings by location, nor does it talk to a GPS unit. I will be doing some traveling, but I wanted to limit the use of the laptop and use my Palm for most of my work once I have a large database loaded.

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after using bmgpx, which creates a gpx file from the county dat file, you can run the gpx file through gpxpalmdoc which converts gpx into a simple palmdoc which can be read with a free palm reader or the free "cspotrun"

 

what else might you be looking for? now that bmgpx can create a gpx file with much of the information in it, you can put that gpx file through watcher and even gpsbabel i think and convert it into any number of formats depending on what your doing.

 

I like these programs (especially fuzzy's gpxtopalmdoc converter) since it creates documents that dont suck up a lot of the palm memory.

 

any other questions i can try and help with, just ask. this community has really provided a number of solutions to various needs and most of them are free.

 

SR and dboggny.

[+GeckoGeek]

quote:

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Originally posted by sranddboggny.us:

what else might you be looking for?

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OK, here's the situation I'm anticipating: Next summer I'll be off on vacation with family. I'll know in advance where we'll be, but I won't know for sure what we will be doing day to day since it's a group decision. I can use my laptop during the evenings for prep, but I'll only have dial-up and I need to limit my time. During the day I'll have to rely on my palm since a laptop is just too bulk to haul around and still enjoy one's self.

 

I've also got my more immediate need to track my local hunting. I want to quite having to print out each site I plan to visit. I also need a more systematic approach. In trying to work from the website I find that I keep looking at the same BMs over and over.

 

My "wish list":

 

- A database of all the benchmarks/stations in a given area. I'd have to download it via my laptop, but it needs to be reasonably sized.

- The data needs to be editable on the Palm. The problem with downloading static data such as screens of Geocaching.com is that it's hard to mark any notes or cross off things that have been done.

- I also want to be able to look at the details of any item I'll rank it as to difficulty (it is on the sidewalk or is it a 30 minute hike?) and if there's some indication that it may be hard to find (someone logged "not found").

- I want to be able to note if the coordinates are "scaled" or "adjusted".

- I want to be able to indicate what kind of BM is this - if it's a disk, or structure. I know that's there, but a lot of times I see "not listed" when the text shows it's a disk.

- I want to be able to list BM's by their location from "here" or along a route. I guess I could use my GPS to do that once it's loaded, but it would be nice to do that on the Palm as well.

- I need a way to pass the coordinates to my GPS. Right now it looks like I have to take a file and send it to another program. I'll do that if I have to, but it would be nice to do it from my database above.

- I'd like the database to track if I've completed a hunt. That way I can drop it from the list as I select my next one.

- I want the ability to list the results of my hunt. Not just a place to put the info, but to be able to show me which items I need to input into geocaching.com.

 

I'm sure there's others, but that's a start.

[+Kordite]

My PDA solution, and it's far from being the best one, is to use an application called WordToGo. It allows you to view and edit MSWord files on your PDA. I get the file from the NGS site and upload it to my PDA using this application. For Allegheny County, PA, its about a 2 meg file.

 

The problem is, the NGS data has each line with the benchmark designation at the begining. This does not word wrap very well on the small PDA display. It also has the "The horizontal coordinates. . . " disclaimer included with every entry. If I could strip those things out it would work a whole lot better.

 

Using BMGPX it is relatively quick and easy to load it up this way.

 

[+GeckoGeek]

I just read that CacheMate just released version 2.0 which includes sorting by distance from a location. I'll have to check into it some more.

[+rogbarn]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kordite: The problem is, the NGS data has each line with the benchmark designation at the begining. This does not word wrap very well on the small PDA display. It also has the "The horizontal coordinates. . . " disclaimer included with every entry. If I could strip those things out it would work a whole lot better.

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I wrote a program that runs on a VAX machine that strips out a bunch of stuff from the datasheet. I think it takes out everything from the dashed line under the NAVD 88 line to the first line with an underscore after the PID (usually MARKER). This includes all the stuff on geoid height, various verbage and superseded survey control. It reduces the number of lines by roughly 1/3. If you want, I can grab Allegheny County, run it thru and email you a zipped copy to see how it works for you.

[+Green Toad]

RogBarn,

 

I'd like a copy of it too, if you don't mind!

 

Thanks.

 

-stroh

 

-Technology...I have no idea what I would do without my GPSr, my TiVo, or my Computer with a DSL connection. I guess I would spend more time with my wife!

[+GeckoGeek]

An update: So far CacheMate seems like the direction to go, but I find it's maximum description length to be a problem. I'm trying to see how much I can slim down the NGS datasheets. Right now I'm working on the datasheet side rather then the GPX side because given my crude programming skills it's easier to process to the raw data.

[+GeckoGeek]

I forgot to add. Something else I'd like is to combine the NGS datasheets with the logs here on GeoCaching. That way I can concentrate on finding marks no one else has as well as getting in idea if a mark is going to be difficult to find. Anybody know of good tools to merge the data without bulking everything back up?

[BeachBum22]

I'm new, so I'm not sure what people are looking for software wise. I'm going on a day trip tomorrow and I don't have the time or energy to do the usual - print a datasheet for everything I might go looking for, so I threw together a VB program that grabbed the whole works (all the data sheets) and puts them in a local file that I can view on a notebook with a browser.

 

I downloaded the LOC file for all the benchmarks in a 10 mile area, and created a text input list of the PID numbers for the VB program. Here's a sample:

 

Sample Data Sheets

 

Big text so I can read it on a Libretto in the car....

 

The LOC file looks like it's XML text, which I haven't figured out yet, but the easiest way would be for the VB program to parse the LOC file, pick out the PID's and then make the data sheet file.

 

What I have now is quick and dirty, and suits my purposes, but if it's something other people could use, I'd be glad to continue working on it. Never seen a PDA, does that have a browser?

 

BeachBum22

In the Land of Many Bridges, each of which usually has two benchmarks

[+GeckoGeek]

An update. CacheMate is coming along very well. I'm having a minor issue with BMGPX as it seems to add a bogus BM at the end of the file.

 

My question now is just what program can I use to edit the GPX so I can set some values for difficulty, etc before I send this off to my PDA? EasyGPS doesn't seem to do much more then deal with the GPS. It doesn't work with Cache info at all. Any decent free/cheap editors?

[+parkrrrr]

quote:

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Originally posted by GeckoGeek:

An update. CacheMate is coming along very well. I'm having a minor issue with BMGPX as it seems to add a bogus BM at the end of the file.

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That might be a problem with your .dat file. I certainly don't see it happening with any of the files I downloaded for Indiana; could you tell me which county and state you're seeing it with? Are you getting your .dat files from the Archived Datasheets page at NGS, or from somewhere else? I can see that you might have problems if you cut and paste the results of a query, since that might add spurious blank lines at the end of your .dat file.

 

[+GeckoGeek]

quote:

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Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy:

That might be a problem with your .dat file. I certainly don't see it happening with any of the files I downloaded for Indiana; could you tell me which county and state you're seeing it with? Are you getting your .dat files from the Archived Datasheets page at NGS, or from somewhere else?

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Honolulu, HI. Yes, I get it from the NGS. I don't see anything odd unless it's the "retrival complete" at the end.

[+parkrrrr]

quote:

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Originally posted by GeckoGeek:

I don't see anything odd unless it's the "retrival complete" at the end.

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Yep, that was it. That's the first time I've seen that. I made a tiny change to bmgpx to ignore that line; you can get updated binaries and source at the usual places.

 

[+GeckoGeek]

quote:

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Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy:

I made a tiny change to bmgpx to ignore that line; you can get updated binaries and source at the usual places.

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Cool. I don't suppose I can talk you into some ideas of limiting the information that ends up in the description? I did a program and it seems to cut the resulting GPX file down to 60% of the old size.

[+parkrrrr]

Sure! I'm open to suggestions. I'm also open to source patches (the source to bmgpx can be found at http://parkrrrr.com/bmgpx-src.zip and is GPL.)

 

[+JeremyA]

Hi Fuzzy,

I just wanted to say thanks for distributing the source code of bmgpx - After a quick recompile I'm now able to use it on my Mac.

JeremyA

[+GeckoGeek]

quote:

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Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy:

Sure! I'm open to suggestions. I'm also open to source patches (the source to bmgpx can be found at http://parkrrrr.com/bmgpx-src.zip and is GPL.)

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As if I could read "C". I was going to work on some changes, but I think my own "slim" program has done the job. Once I've invested the effort to update the database with difficulty ratings, I don't think I'll be doing to transfer all that often, so having to use 2 programs isn't that big a deal.

 

If anyone is interested, I can tell you what I trimmed out of the datasheets and/or work out something on the program.