POIs for benchmarks?

[Wintertime]

This was buried in a thread I had started about Macs, but since I had a later question that wasn't platform-specific, I thought I'd give it its own thread...

 

Have any of you used the POI capability on a Garmin GPSr to store benchmarks? If so, are you able to view entire NGS datasheets? I found a couple of old threads from people who briefly remarked that they were indeed using POIs for benchmarks, but there was no mention of whether they had stored full NGS datasheets or just coordinates. Elsewhere on the Groundspeak forums, I found threads that mentioned a 30-character limit in the "Comments" field. Obviously, that wouldn't work for NGS datasheets.

 

What I'm looking at is reserving the Geocaches section of my eTrex 20 for, well, geocaches, then putting benchmark .gpx files as POIs on a micro-SD card, with a separate file for each county. Does that sound like a plan?

 

Any and all details of how you're using POIs on a Garmin GPSr would be most appreciated!

 

Patty

[+LSUFan]

 

Any and all details of how you're using POIs on a Garmin GPSr would be most appreciated!

 

Patty

 

Patty, if you are a GSAK user, then it is easy to do after a little initial preparation and learning curve. Garmin has it's own piece of software called POI Loader for placing poi's on its units. However, you first must take the datasheets, and get them sorted to your liking....which is what GSAK can do.

 

This forum below is about placing benchmark POI's on the Garmin Nuvi......but CallowayMT also placed them on his Garmin 62, and he might can answer your questions concerning a Garmin handheld instead of the Nuvi.

 

And yes, these benchmark poi files store the entire datasheet (at least on the Nuvi).

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=267951

 

From what I have read on the Garmin site, I believe you can load just a direct gpx file into the POI loader software and make your own. You might can bypass GSAK all the way.I bought my son a Garmin Dakota a few months ago. I will play with it some this weekend and see what it takes to put the datasheet poi's on it......and if I can do it without GSAK in keeping all the datasheet information intact.

Edited September 30, 2011 by LSUFan

[+PhotonWU]

This was buried in a thread I had started about Macs, but since I had a later question that wasn't platform-specific, I thought I'd give it its own thread...

 

Have any of you used the POI capability on a Garmin GPSr to store benchmarks? If so, are you able to view entire NGS datasheets? I found a couple of old threads from people who briefly remarked that they were indeed using POIs for benchmarks, but there was no mention of whether they had stored full NGS datasheets or just coordinates. Elsewhere on the Groundspeak forums, I found threads that mentioned a 30-character limit in the "Comments" field. Obviously, that wouldn't work for NGS datasheets.

 

What I'm looking at is reserving the Geocaches section of my eTrex 20 for, well, geocaches, then putting benchmark .gpx files as POIs on a micro-SD card, with a separate file for each county. Does that sound like a plan?

 

Any and all details of how you're using POIs on a Garmin GPSr would be most appreciated!

 

Patty

 

I can see the entire data sheet when storing benchmark as POIs on my Garmin 62s. I used MapSource and added pasted the datasheet into the comments field, then saved the files as GPX. The GPX file can be loaded int the Garmin POI loader and put on the GPSr. Ther is probably a much better way, but it is possible to get the entire data sheet to show.

[Wintertime]

Thanks, "LSUFan," please do let me know what you find out with the Dakota.

 

At the moment, I'm just trying to understand how one views and uses POIs; I'll worry about creating them later. I downloaded and installed some last night, but (1) I'm having trouble selecting the POI file of my choice, and (2) I'm not seeing onscreen all the text that's in the POI file. I created a POI file of five local airports and another of five attractions at Disneyland, but when I go to "Extras" to select a database, I get an error message when I try to select the one for Disneyland, and even on the airport one, it only displays a description of one airport. Perhaps the POI files aren't quite right; I used a free site I found linked from Garmin's website.

 

Does anyone here have a smallish Garmin-compatible POI file of NGS datasheets that I could use as a test POI? One that's known to be a valid file that provides complete datasheets? Perhaps one county of California? If so, please contact me through the forums and I'll give you an email address where you can send it. (I don't think you can send attachments through Groundspeak's email system.)

 

Thanks!

Patty

[+EdrickV]

I made a test file, and and have compared the intermediate .gpx file the macro creates with a regular saved .gpx file of the same benchmarks, and I think regular benchmark .gpx files sent to POI Loader would just show the benchmark name. The datasheet is normally stored in the Groundspeak "long description" attribute, but the macro puts it in the "desc" instead. Will send a PM about the test file.

 

Also, it seems I'm using a slightly different macro then the one I posted before, I'm using the one from here:

http://sites.google.com/site/jjreds012/download

That site specifically mentions compatibility with Colorado and Oregon units, not just Nuvi units. The trick of course is that this was made for Windows computers rather then Macs.

Edited October 1, 2011 by EdrickV

[Wintertime]

PhotonWU, thank you for relating your experience with the Garmin 62. I tried something similar with BaseCamp, pasting the datasheet into the "Comments" field, and it worked pretty well. The whole thing showed up on my eTrex, so obviously the character limit for that field is ample for an NGS datasheet. There was no formatting, though, (not even line breaks), so it was kinda hard to read. But definitely a solution for getting a few datasheets onto the GPSr quickly and easily.

 

Edrick kindly sent me a test .gpi file generated from GSAK using a macro intended for geocaches. It had some pretty nice formatting in it.

 

The formatting that an NGS datasheet acquires when it's loaded as a geocache is very spiffy; if we could just tweak that a bit (such as to get rid of the "Difficulty" and "Terrain" attributes), I think we'd have a real winner on our hands. I'm willing to try GSAK on WINE if needed, but maybe if we come up with a perfect macro for NGS datasheets, someone who has GSAK would be willing to run some states through it and share them with those of us who don't have GSAK.

 

Patty

[+EdrickV]

Getting rid of the (D:1/T:1) would not be that hard to do via editing the macro.

[Wintertime]

Okay, we're making progress! Edrick and Kurt kindly sent me some sample POI files that worked fine both on the eTrex and on the new micro-SD card I just bought.

 

But when I try to make my own, I'm losing most of the data for each mark. :-( I installed WINE (Crossover) last night along with GSAK and generated a GPX file from some sample marks. When I double-clicked on a file in GSAK, a complete datasheet for that mark was displayed in my browser. But when I sent the GPX file to my eTrex via POI Loader, all I got were coordinates and stamping and PID. I just tried BMGPX and had the same problem; the GPX file for Santa Clara county is 6.3MB, but the GPI file generated by POI Loader is only 70KB--it appears to have only PIDs and stampings, not even coordinates!

 

So, any ideas on how to make POI Loader behave, if indeed that's where the problem lies? (And it sure seems to be, as the GPX input files are fine.) There are no preference settings on POI Loader, so maybe it just doesn't like benchmark files?

 

Patty

[+EdrickV]

1. You need to get the macro and use that rather then just saving a .gpx file. See #6 here:

http://sites.google.com/site/jjreds012/download

 

2. I would recommend trying NGS-GPX under Wine to see if it will work, because the files it creates are likely to be better formatted then those made by BMGPX, and BMGPX may not work once they impliment the datasheet changes mentioned in another thread here. (NGS-GPX will need updating too, but the author is active here and aware of it, don't know about BMGPX's author. )

http://ngs.tsqmadness.com/help/index.html

 

Edit: Minor note, the part of the macro that runs POI Loader probably won't work with the Mac version, but you can just use it to create the .gpx files and run POI Loader yourself.

Edited October 3, 2011 by EdrickV

[Wintertime]

1. You need to get the macro and use that rather then just saving a .gpx file.

If you mean a macro for GSAK, that's what I used to generate a GPX file from GSAK. The GPX file looked fine, but most of the data is getting stripped somewhere between there and my eTrex. I just tried the other macro you suggested, and it won't even run; it's giving me an error about a missing "TourGuideTools.zip" file. But the download site for that one doesn't mention eTrexes, so it may just be a compatibility issue with the new units.

 

2. I would recommend trying NGS-GPX under Wine to see if it will work, because the files it creates are likely to be better formatted then those made by BMGPX

Yeah, tried that earlier today. It installed, but won't run. :-(

 

Patty

Edited October 3, 2011 by Wintertime

[+EdrickV]

That thing about TourGuideTools.zip is odd because the zip file is actually encoded into the script. Maybe it's having trouble unzipping it because of Wine not having the right DLLs. If you know where GSAK stores it's data files I could send you the zip file it's trying to unzip and you could do it manually. (The data folder should have a TourGuide_Tools folder in it which is where the files in the zip file, and the zip file itself, go.) Don't know if there would be other issues later on or not.

 

As far as the macro you mentioned, do you know what it is called or where you got it? I suspect the datasheet info is in the .gpx file, it's just not encoded the right way for a POI file for POI Loader. (The datasheet is normally stored in a Groundspeak:long_description attribute, but POI Loader doesn't know about Geocaches so doesn't support Groundspeak extentions to the gpx format. For our purposes, you want the datasheet in the desc attribute.

 

As far as NGS-GPX, I think it might use a .net framework or Visual Basic runtime library (though it's not mentioned on the site) so that may be what is causing problems.

 

In theory the easiest way to get past these issues would be to have a Windows PC to use (either a regular one or an emulated/dual boot setup) but at a minimum that would require a copy of Windows. So ultimately I'm not really sure what you could do.

Edited October 3, 2011 by EdrickV

[Wintertime]

I just found this comment on a review of the eTrex 20 on Amazon:

 

The only drawback I've found so far is that this model line is so new, that GSAK (a utility program used for Geocaching) doesn't have a specific protocol for interfacing with it. This is a relatively minor inconvenience, and one I suspect will be remedied in one of the next revisions of GSAK. Until then, I can load Cache information a couple of other ways.

So that may explain my problems with GSAK. I'll follow up with F-X about NGS-GPX.

 

Patty

[+EdrickV]

Using the Nuvi macro, you aren't using GSAK to load the caches onto the GPS anyways, you use it to create GPX files and POI Loader to load the caches. (And using GSAK through WINE, it might not be able to transfer cache data directly anyways.)

 

Edit: And since you wouldn't have the windows POI Loader either, with GSAK you'd just be creating the formatted .gpx files.

Edited October 4, 2011 by EdrickV