How Tracks Work?

[+ECO Trekkers]

My Garman Geko 301 is new to me and my first GPS. I've bought it for map making and GeoCaching. My main interests are to mark waypoints and find waypoints. Yesterday on a snowshoe trip I played with the Trackback feature for the first time. The GPS keeps guiding you from one "bread crumb" to the next. The distance between "bread crumbs" varied from 0.26 miles to 250'. It seemed to depend on how straight or curvy my track was. If I'm understanding correctly what's happening the GPS is creating waypoints along the track and spacing them closer or farther apart depending on how straight or curvy your track is. If this is the case can you adjust the sensitivity? By that I mean how often it creates waypoints along the track?

 

Also does anyone have any comments on the difference between tracks and routes? I haven't quite sorted out the best uses for each yet.

[+Team GPSaxophone]

I think that if you're in battery saving mode, there is more time between breadcrumbs. In normal mode, I think it leaves one per second (on my Etrex Venture anyway). If it's leaving one crumb per second, they should be spaced close together when you're walking and further apart when driving (or flying). It might also take into account leaving a breadcrumb when your velocity changes (speed and/or direction)

[+Prime Suspect]

My Garman Geko 301 is new to me and my first GPS. I've bought it for map making and GeoCaching. My main interests are to mark waypoints and find waypoints. Yesterday on a snowshoe trip I played with the Trackback feature for the first time. The GPS keeps guiding you from one "bread crumb" to the next. The distance between  "bread crumbs" varied from 0.26 miles to 250'. It seemed to depend on how straight or curvy my track was. If I'm understanding correctly what's happening the GPS is creating waypoints along the track and spacing them closer or farther apart depending on how straight or curvy your track is. If this is the case can you adjust the sensitivity? By that I mean how often it creates waypoints along the track?

 

Also does anyone have any comments on the difference between tracks and routes? I haven't quite sorted out the best uses for each yet.

If you have it set for AUTO, then it uses an algorithm based on several factors to determine when to store a track point. You should be able to override this in the setup menu to force a track point based on either a specific time or distance.

 

Routes are planned ahead of time, while tracks are created as you move around. Tracks are generally good for finding your way back to the start, or for uploading to a mapping program to see where you went.

 

You can navigate a route (with the GPS telling you direction and distance to the next waypoint), but the only way to navigate a track is visually on the map display.

 

Most units have some sort of track-back feature. This takes a track log and converts it into a temporary route that can use the navigation features. It takes the many (it could be in the thousands) track points, and attempts to distill them down into a handful of waypoints, and links them into a route to follow.

Edited December 2, 2003 by Prime Suspect