Converting Coordinates To Distance

[+FireFighterJ]

Does anyone know of a website that would allow one to input two sets of coordinates and then compute the distance between those two sets of coordinates? I can use Geocaching.com website's to give me the distance between one set of coordinates and the coordinates of a cache but I want to be able to compute the distance between ANY two sets of coordinates Thanks, in advance

[+Stunod]

Heres one. There are many others.

[kingsmen26]

I input the coords into my garmin GPS12 and then use the the distance function to show the distance between the two points. Maybe your GPS has the same capability.

[+FireFighterJ]

Danke, Gracias und Merci!

[+Bob Blaylock]

  Got Excel?

 

    http://www.impulse.net/~thebob/GreatCircle.xls

[+Olar]

GeoCalc is an excellent app written by FizzyMagic. Works great and easy to use.

 

Olar

[+The Navigatorz]

This one works for me:

 

Bearing/Distance Calculator

 

This calculator computes the bearing and distance between two points defined by geographic coordinates, or computes the end point coordinates given the start point and a bearing and distance.

[Vacman]

These are all great resources, but what I am wondering is what method is GC.com using to come up with the WP and distances between those WP for travel bugs... (IE GCHE4M, GCA6F3) - I suspect that the are not using this, but the actual lat/lon numbers, but I am wondering...

 

Any ideas?

[+Markwell]

Waypoints are locations - a set of coordinates containing lat/lon. GCHE4M and GCA6F3 are waypoint names - unique identifiers for the particular caches in the database, and have nothing to do with the actual location.

 

When Geocaching.com says "Use this Waypoint: GCHE4M" it's giving you a suggested name for the set of coordinates on a GPS.

 

Read more about it here.

 

Here's another calculator for the distance between two sets of coordinates.

[+writer]

If the coordinates are more or less in the same part of the world, you could convert to UTM coordinates which would let you find the difference in the northings and eastings. That gives you two sides of a right triangle. Square both numbers, add them, and take the square root. That gives you the hypotenuse, or the straight line distance between the two points.

[Vacman]

Waypoints are locations - a set of coordinates containing lat/lon.  GCHE4M and GCA6F3 are waypoint names - unique identifiers for the particular caches in the database, and have nothing to do with the actual location.

 

When Geocaching.com says "Use this Waypoint: GCHE4M" it's giving you a suggested name for the set of coordinates on a GPS.

 

Read more about it here.

 

Here's another calculator for the distance between two sets of coordinates.

Markwell - that link was what I needed. For the last day or so, I have been trying to figure out the formulas that are being used for the Great Circle equations. I am trying to add distance measuring capability to my site for my signature item. The only other thing I need to do now, is to figure out how to retrieve the lat/lon number for a given WP (IE GCHE4M) for the GC system. Once I have that figured out I now can go forward.

 

I have tried to emulate the CG.com TB logging system which I have written in PHP. So far, so good. But I would like to expand it this last step.

 

Last 10 Vacman Geocoins Movements

[+NightPilot]

The most comprehensive site on the web for these type of calculations is Ed Williams' Aviation Formulary. It has lots of stuff, and is set up for use in programming. You can use the formulas in a spreadsheet or in any programming language. I've used lots of his stuff, especially the distance and sunrise/sunset formulas. This is one of the internet's great resources.

[Vacman]

Well - I no w have the calcs... my biggest problem is that I have no real stable way of retrieving the lat/lon coords from the GC system. I did try a fetch routine that copies the page (using the WP IE GCHE4M) from the gc site. my code will then parse the page and retrieve the coords from it. The problem, is that there is an inconsistant page layout! I never realized it, but sometimes the pages display slightly different. The coords are sometimes 3 or more characters off on the layout. What I really need is a routine that would retireve only the coords from the site.....

 

oh well, will keep coding along. I will figure something out.

[Vacman]

Ok!! I got it. If you want a tool for converting geocaching WP into distance.... here it is.

 

Waypoint - to - Distance Calculator

 

I will tell you that it is approximate. The larger the distance, the greater the error. I am still exploring it. But it is a cool little ditty,

[+Sputnik 57]

Surprised that Markwell didn't send you here. He linked to one of the calculators he has listed, but there are other good resources on his FAQ. I always go to Markwell's page whenever I have a question like this.

[+Hemlock]

Here is another one.

 

This one has the advantage that it is geocaching-aware. You can enter a GC-number in one of the boxes, and it will scan that cache page and give you the distance from your coords to ALL the coords on the cache page.

 

This is excellent for determining if that object you found has already been logged on a locationless.

[+tirediron]

I hope FF doesn't mind my tagging on here... does anyone have/know of a Palm app that performs this function?

[Vacman]

Here is another one.

 

This one has the advantage that it is geocaching-aware. You can enter a GC-number in one of the boxes, and it will scan that cache page and give you the distance from your coords to ALL the coords on the cache page.

 

This is excellent for determining if that object you found has already been logged on a locationless.

Nice! I e-mailed Fizzy to see if he could look at my code. Thanks for pointing me there.