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Pocket Pc And Gps


KG7JE

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Mapopolis and GPXSonar

I secound those 2 as requirements.

 

You'll also want to look at GPS tuner or Vito Navigator II for getting to the cache after you get out of the car. You can download trials of both for free. Just make sure to do it when you have time to decide which one you like. My tuner evaluation expired and I'm not sure if its the one I want. I've been playing with both of them but haven't decided which I like better. I've been leaning toward tuner because it can open a GPX file for waypoints while vito requires me to convert my gpx file to a loc file. Another really interesting feature of tuner that I haven't attempted yet is that I can use any jpg, like a aerial photo, as a map. All I need are 2 known points on the jpg to calibrate it.

 

The ultimate pocketPC application would tie these 3 applications together, but there isn't anything like that.... yet....

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I have a IPAQ 2215 and bought the Ambicon CF card GPS at Circuit City. This unit comes with an auxilliary antenna which greatly improves the signal. The software that comes with it is a trial version of Pocket Map.

 

To update the trial version would cost $80.00.

 

I found that the GPS worked great if you were in a car but the unit would not work reliably without the auxilliary antenna when geocaching. The display is great but it is awkward to use with the antenna attached and walking.

 

I thought it was too much to pay for the included trial software upgrade and looked around and found Mapopolis. They have basic navigation software which is very detailed for a subscription of $30 a year or a routing detail software for $99 a year. The benefit is you can have the latest upgrade by downloading. The software includes Canada and Europe. They do have a CD but it does not include upgrades or Canada and Europe. You can download all the data to your computer or make your own CD's. I found the detail very accurate.

 

Well, I returned the CF card GPS and bought instead a Magellan Gold which with a cable I could hook up to my Pocket Pc for voice routing when in the car and use by hand when geocaching. Mapopolis will actually route you by voice turn by turn,

 

I may buy the Direct Route for the Magellan Gold but for now I put the waypoints on the Pocket PC and use the Magellan while in the field.

 

One side point:

I also have Microsoft streets and find that the address search and location is a lot faster on the Pocket PC probably because it has less data to search.

 

So my vote goes to Mapopolis and I use GPXSonar also.

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One side point:

I also have Microsoft streets and find that the address search and location is a lot faster on the Pocket PC probably because it has less data to search.

 

So my vote goes to Mapopolis and I use GPXSonar also.

Streets and trips is very limited in the size of the map that you can export to it. You can only search the map that you have open. In mapopolis searching is much faster if you don't have every map open at once. You can open a whole states worth of maps (each county is a map) but searching can be very slow. I ussually just open a half dozen countys and searching is acceptable.

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Thanks for the info. I'll pull some demo versions and take a look.

 

I have the Compaq IPAQ 3670 to which I added the NEXPAK sleeve (with battery and dual card slots). Added the Transplant CF GPSr with WAAS turned on. I'm an IFR pilot waiting for my medical to renew (had blood clots into my lungs from surgery on a broken knee :rolleyes: ). I've found the PocketFMS for pilots but it isn't fine grained enough for hunting the caches.

 

The GarmapCE with NMEAMon is an interesting pair (without waypoints). At least I can set the unit down and watch it wander around. After a few minutes it gives an idea of where the real "center" is located.

 

Thanks again!

 

--KG7JE

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I had a demo of GPS tuner and vito navigator 2, I registered tuner. Both demo's expired and I still wasn't sure which I liked better. So I registered tuner. Now I think I registered the wrong one. Tuner has a lot more features but navigator was easier to use. Since I've already paid for it I'm going to try to make it work. The biggest problem I have is trying to find waypoints. I'm not sure how it sorts them and scrolling through 500 is painfully slow. It wasn't that bad in navigator2.

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I have a ipaq 3765 and a cheap GPS antenna from Radio Shack that came with Delorme X-Map software. I used X-map for a while, It was slow on the screen refresh (all the POI I think). I also can use the antenna on my laptop in the car so I bought Delome Topo USA and their is a handheld export feature so you can use the Topo maps on the ipaq and the screen refresh is alot faster. All the maps and waypoints can run from a flash card so you dont take up memory space.

I also use the Otter box pocket armor case. I made a bracket that attaches to the back of the case to hold the antanna, the extra wire is wraped up in the case. One hand operation and protects my ipaq from dammage.

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The biggest problem with tuner is that it sorts the waypoints (LOC file) by the gcxxxxx number and then lists the name of the cache. The problem is when your looking at the list its only shows the gcxxxxx number as (g) and their is no way that I can find to reconfigure that. So you have 500 waypoints in a list that looks like-

(g) little bobs cache

(g) big bobs cache

(g) A walk in the park

 

To work around this I use GSAK to open my GPX file and export the LOC file with the cache number in front of the description. So in Tuner I now see somthing like this-

(g) GC12j87 little bobs cache

(g) GC190IK big bobs cache

(g) GCE1EEA walk in the park

 

Its working for me. I would love to hear how other people are using Tuner.

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What do you mean by "the data I read in geocaching sites"?

If you download LOC files, you can import them into Vito Navigator directly. If you have GPX files, you can use GPXSonar or GSAK to convert them to LOC format. However, there is no automatic solution to add parking coordinates or individual cache coordinates for multi-caches. You have to enter those coordinates manually either in Vito directly or in advance in GSAK.

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when I see the coordinates of a cache that I would like to find on a site like geocaching.com,I write the ccordinates directly on my PDA (on Vito) but it seems the location indicated by Vito is not correct when compared with my Garmin Etrex.

What do you mean by LOC and GPX ? Is this really necessary?

It is not a problem for me to put the ccordinates myself in the PDA but I would only like the GPS to bring me on the right place

my Garmin use GRS84 (I think):is it the same with the Vito?

thank you for your answer

Edited by epicuro
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when I see the coordinates of a cache that I would like to find on a site like geocaching.com,I write the ccordinates directly on my PDA (on Vito) but it seems the location indicated by Vito is not correct when compared with my Garmin Etrex.

What do you mean by LOC and GPX ? Is this really necessary?

It is not a problem for me to put the ccordinates myself in the PDA but I would only like the GPS to bring me on the right place

my Garmin use GRS84 (I think):is it the same with the Vito?

thank you for your answer

Epicuro read about pocket queries here- http://www.geocaching.com/subscribe/ Its like taking gc.com with you on your ppc.

 

Vito should be telling you the same thing as your gps. After all it is getting the same information. Do you have them configured the same?

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well,when I used my Garmin the first time,I had to choose the Datum to wgs84

On Vito,it was never asked and I didn't change anything

When I took waypoints with the Garmin and with my pocket Vito on the same place,the datas are different,so I wonder if they speek the "same language"

for exemple:on Etrex N50.14.698

E005.31.401

on Vito N50.11.3382

E 5.34.2045

On the Garmin the format is hddd.mm.mmm

on the Vito;nobody asked me ,I ignore the format

that's wy I do not understand what's working wrong

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Are those the actual coordinates you read from the devices? If yes, that's quite a difference! The distance between those two points is more than 4 miles. Even different datums cannot give such a big difference. So which one is closer to the published cache coordinates? And what kind of GPS receiver are you using with the Pocket PC?

 

Vito doesn't know about different datums, it just displays whatever it gets straight from the GPS receiver.

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The Haicom provides one more digits than the Etrex. But that is not a problem.

 

How many times did you compare the Etrex and the Haicom coordinates for different locations? Is the difference consistent, systematic?

 

All I can say is this is definitely not normal.

Is Vito the only application you are using with the Haicom?

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I put the Garmin and the pocket close together and the first time the results were

the same and the second time differed.I wonder if there is a bad contact on the Haicon.

I controlled the pocket with two different programs (Vito navigator and tomtom navigator)and all two gives the same data ,so I don't find an other reason and will go back to my Haicon provider to check the connections

 

Thank you very much for your help

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Thanks to folks for their suggestions. Played with both Vito Navigator II and GPS Tuner. I went for GPS Tuner. Haven't seen much need for Mapopolis yet (still playing with it). Probably if I didn't know the area very well it would be more helpful.

 

Oh yes, and GPXSonar. Now, if GPS Tuner and GPXSonar were integrated -- man that would be awesome! Get close to a cache in Tuner and it would be automatically picked when switching to Sonar. Update the field notes and have Sonar grab the coordinates directly from Tuner (say the High Precision). Maybe they already do and I just haven't figured it out!

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KG7JE...

 

Now, if GPS Tuner and GPXSonar were integrated -- man that would be awesome!

 

Well, you can integrate the two by using the export waypoints to .loc function of GpxSonar. Whatever waypoints are listed will be save to a .loc file that you can load in GPS Tuner. You only need to do this once.

 

A tighter integration is unfortunately not possible currently.

Edited by -=(GEO)=-
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I'd like to go the other way. It would be nice to sent an updated waypoint back to GPX Sonar. I understand from the GPS Tuner folks that they may have something in their next release sometime this summer that will write out a waypoint file that GPX Sonar can read. Now, if I could just automate picking that up and dropping it into the field notes as a new waypoint.... <<grin>> call me lazy!

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