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Caches Along A Route


Jeremy

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I created a route in Streets and Trips, marked over it with the 'freeform' tool, saved the file, and converted it to a gpx with st2gpx. This file works for arc/poly filters, but when I try to upload it I get 4 routes with 0 points in them...

st2gpx predates GPX 1.1. Either use GPSBabel (which, in the newest versions, will read est and axe) to do the conversion directly or use GPSBabel to convert st2gpx's GPX 1.0 output to GPX 1.1

 

Do note that GPSBabel defaults to writing GPX 1.0 - ironically, that's mostly becuase Groundspeak's private namespace is GPX 1.0. Fortunately, getting 1.1 is easy:

 

gpsbabel -i msroute -f "Triple P Day 1.est" -o gpx,gpxver=1.1 -F blah.gpx

 

Thanks!

 

msroute hadn't worked for me earlier, probably user error. I'll check it out when I get to the other computer.

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I converted the arc filter to gpx and tried to upload it as a route and got "There was an error in the loading of your GPX/KML File. Please check the format and try again."

 

You didn't say how you attempted that conversion, but there are two likely candidates for problem sources.

 

A) The file contains waypoints and not routepoints/trackpoints. GPSBabel's 'arc' format is a lossy conversion and unscrambling that egg to go from points back to routes is a pain. (Hint: replace "wpt" with "trkpt" and wrap the entire block of points with "<trk>....</trk>".)

 

2) The output wasn't GPX 1.1 Look at the first few lines of the resulting file to see the GPX version. If this is what you're running afoul of, see the post a few minutes before yours.

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I created a route in Streets and Trips, marked over it with the 'freeform' tool, saved the file, and converted it to a gpx with st2gpx. This file works for arc/poly filters, but when I try to upload it I get 4 routes with 0 points in them...

st2gpx predates GPX 1.1. Either use GPSBabel (which, in the newest versions, will read est and axe) to do the conversion directly or use GPSBabel to convert st2gpx's GPX 1.0 output to GPX 1.1

 

Do note that GPSBabel defaults to writing GPX 1.0 - ironically, that's mostly becuase Groundspeak's private namespace is GPX 1.0. Fortunately, getting 1.1 is easy:

 

gpsbabel -i msroute -f "Triple P Day 1.est" -o gpx,gpxver=1.1 -F blah.gpx

 

I wish that GUI would "save" the settings that were selected :)

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I converted the arc filter to gpx and tried to upload it as a route and got "There was an error in the loading of your GPX/KML File. Please check the format and try again."

 

You didn't say how you attempted that conversion, but there are two likely candidates for problem sources.

 

A) The file contains waypoints and not routepoints/trackpoints. GPSBabel's 'arc' format is a lossy conversion and unscrambling that egg to go from points back to routes is a pain. (Hint: replace "wpt" with "trkpt" and wrap the entire block of points with "<trk>....</trk>".)

 

2) The output wasn't GPX 1.1 Look at the first few lines of the resulting file to see the GPX version. If this is what you're running afoul of, see the post a few minutes before yours.

 

You're right - it's 1.0 - I'm using 1.2.5 on a mac, so that's most likely my problem - not a command-line kinda dude. My intent was only to compare in the first place...so I'll consider this not a problem. I LOVE this new feature and in most instances won't need a complex route and google earth will work just fine. Thanks for your help.

Edited by groovetopia
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I wish that GUI would "save" the settings that were selected :)

 

We should avoid taking this into a tangent, and it isn't really what you asked for, but with the latest versions you can set defaults for the command line or GUI invocations.

 

To always create GPX 1.1, just make a a gpsbabel.ini[1] that contains

[ gpx ]

gpxver = 1.1

 

Of course, you should then then be prepared for the d00d00 to hit the fan the next time you try to merge two PQ's together and we dogmeatify them when we take the Groundspeak 1.0 xsd/dtd tags and jam them into a GPX 1.1 xmlns.

 

You can actually do that with any option on any of our input/output formats and filters.

 

[1] I just realized this feature is not in our spiffy new doc. I'll mobilize the Babel-heads on that...

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Great feature! I just compared the results from my Google earth pan and pick method for a route were going next weekend and compared to the new method, I have twice as many caches to choose from now and in half the time, Thanks!!

 

One Question (maybe more of a Google earth question) Is there a way to edit the routes to create an alternate direction from the suggested route? Mapping directions don't always go the right way.

 

Echoing 5winters question. Would like to be able to alter GE's list of turn points - delete or move them.

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I'm planning a vacation that will start this weekend. The timing couldn't have been better. Everything worked for me just as planned. I had to fine tune the poket querry to get the best return, but I'm very pleased with it.

 

Thanks for the new caching tool. :)

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Yes I'm using the route tool haha.

The route works fine... I tried saving a garmin database file and a gpx file. The I closed the program and opened them up again. The garmin file still had the route but the gpx was just a straight line between the waypoints.

I tried converting the garmin file using gpsbabel but it won't output a valid GPX file. Is GPX XML the proper output type?

 

ben

 

alright i got it to work, i wasn't outputting a gpx 1.1 file... thanks.

 

ben

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Wow! I am speechless. Like many others, this tremendously simplifies my cache-hunting on trips.

However, we do plan to allow people to eventually click on a map to generate a route on the fly. I believe most will go the Google Earth route, however.
Even better! How about Google Maps support on-line, though? I can't install Google Earth on Linux, and on Windows my copy of GE is borked. With Gmaps, you could also do it from any computer with access to geocaching.com, and it could integrate into the existing maps.
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One Question (maybe more of a Google earth question) Is there a way to edit the routes to create an alternate direction from the suggested route? Mapping directions don't always go the right way.

Echoing 5winters question. Would like to be able to alter GE's list of turn points - delete or move them.

 

I'm not sure if the new beta of Google Earth has added this feature or not. A work around I've used is to generate different segments of the route saving them to separate KML files. I then merge the KML files using WordPad being careful to keep them in sequence.

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How about Google Maps support on-line, though? I can't install Google Earth on Linux, and on Windows my copy of GE is borked. With Gmaps, you could also do it from any computer with access to geocaching.com, and it could integrate into the existing maps.

 

I'm not sure if Alan Curry's method can be modified to output valid KML or GPX files. Robert??

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Alan's method and the one I just cited above are essentially the same. I can't recall who wrote what first between Alan, Ron, and myself, but since we all talk and share such things on the web, in code, and in books, I can't imagine we'd tussle about it.

 

The technique can output anything that GPSBabel supports. If you want KML instead of GPX, say '-o kml' instead of '-o gpx'. If you want GPX 1.1 instead of the default 1.0, say "-o gpx,gpxver=1.1" instead of "-o gpx".

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Awesome. I've been waiting for something like this - never was happy with multiple queries along a planned route. Great job, Raine, Jeremy et al.

 

One thing that would be nice on the PQ summary page - a checkbox and associated "Delete" button, to delete more than one query at a time from the list of PQs. My list is getting long, but it's annoying to have to view each query to delete it.

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Excellent!! Just before this was announced "publicly" I had routed a trip from Louisville, KY to Daytona Beach. 10 pq's and probably an hour+ filtering them down to a manageable route.

 

Yesterday, routed our return trip from Tallahassee to Nashville. Within 15 minutes I had the route completed, uploaded, received, and in my gps.

 

Great job Raine.

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This looks great! Will save me lots of scrolling through GC maps.

 

Question - Can the PQ search limit be made smaller than 1 mile either side of route so that "off route" caches don't get selected? I was thinking 0.25 mile for the true rest stop caches along a route. Family has very little patience while traveling.

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Robert, I did gpsbabel -i msroute -f "Triple P Day 1.est" -o gpx,gpxver=1.1 -F blah.gpx and got "No valid input type specified". I have the newest version from sourceforge. I get the same result doing gpsbabel -i msroute -f foo.est -o gpx,gpxver=1.1 -F route.gpx with the latest version from the Ubuntu apt repositories.

 

Using st2gpx then babel to convert works.

 

Edit: Actually no it doesn't, I end up getting a bunch of chopped up miniroutes.

Edited by BlueNinja
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Guys - I'm noticing that some folks are making 2+ day trip routes in pocket queries. Don't do this. Keep them down to day trips. Seattle to California may technically be a day trip but you know what I'm getting at.

I was wondering about route length... I guess some folks have already tried creating a Miami to Seattle trip. Perhaps cap the maximum route length allowed, say five hundred miles or so?

 

That point aside...

 

My one frustration with the Google Earth auto-routing is that (as far as I can tell) you cannot specify a routing method: for example, I would prefer a backroads trip, but Google Earth insists on using a nearby interstate. Shucks, I want to go off-interstate; that's where the caches ARE. So I had to create TWO routes, one to a town along the back road, and another from that town to the destination, to force the desired real route. I know that's a GE limitation, not a problem with the GC implementation of caches-along-a-route, but it DOES bring to mind an issue I noted.

 

Because of the need to split the route up in my case, it would be nice to be able to string together a few GE routes on the GC end. At first I thought I could: the GC route import route tool at first looks like it's going to give you that option since you have to import a file, then click the resulting checkbox, then click the Save Selected Routes button. So I figured I could import the second half of the route, then check both, and use both selected routes together. Nope, soon as Imported the second route, the first one disappeared. Is there some trick around this that I'm missing?

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Routes when first uploaded will not be public. You can then set the flag to be public and assign keywords to them and give them a pretty description.

 

-Raine

 

I selected "public" on one of the routes I created but cannot find where public route are located. How do you access or find public routes?

 

edit to say nevermind I figured it out. Very cool.

Edited by TheBeanTeam
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Robert, I did gpsbabel -i msroute -f "Triple P Day 1.est" -o gpx,gpxver=1.1 -F blah.gpx and got "No valid input type specified". I have the newest version from sourceforge.

 

Apparently you don't have the newest version or it would support msroute. msroute was added 2005-09-05. What version do you actually have?

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Guys - I'm noticing that some folks are making 2+ day trip routes in pocket queries. Don't do this. Keep them down to day trips. Seattle to California may technically be a day trip but you know what I'm getting at.

I was wondering about route length... I guess some folks have already tried creating a Miami to Seattle trip. Perhaps cap the maximum route length allowed, say five hundred miles or so?

 

That point aside...

 

My one frustration with the Google Earth auto-routing is that (as far as I can tell) you cannot specify a routing method: for example, I would prefer a backroads trip, but Google Earth insists on using a nearby interstate. Shucks, I want to go off-interstate; that's where the caches ARE. So I had to create TWO routes, one to a town along the back road, and another from that town to the destination, to force the desired real route. I know that's a GE limitation, not a problem with the GC implementation of caches-along-a-route, but it DOES bring to mind an issue I noted.

 

Because of the need to split the route up in my case, it would be nice to be able to string together a few GE routes on the GC end. At first I thought I could: the GC route import route tool at first looks like it's going to give you that option since you have to import a file, then click the resulting checkbox, then click the Save Selected Routes button. So I figured I could import the second half of the route, then check both, and use both selected routes together. Nope, soon as Imported the second route, the first one disappeared. Is there some trick around this that I'm missing?

My understanding is that you can use a .gpx file of a route created in Mapsource to upload, instead of using Google Earth.

 

In Mapsource, you can tell it to follow the backroads. Then you could use that route, saved as a .gpx file, to upload.

 

Do I understand this correctly? Can other mapping programs create the .gpx file, for people who don't have Garmin's Mapsource maps?

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My one frustration with the Google Earth auto-routing is that (as far as I can tell) you cannot specify a routing method: for example, I would prefer a backroads trip, but Google Earth insists on using a nearby interstate. Shucks, I want to go off-interstate; that's where the caches ARE. So I had to create TWO routes, one to a town along the back road, and another from that town to the destination, to force the desired real route.

That's exactly the trick discussed in the Google Mapping Hacks book. (Yeah, I was involved in the book, but I don't get anything whether you buy it or not. :-)

 

Because of the need to split the route up in my case, it would be nice to be able to string together a few GE routes on the GC end.
Use GPSBabel to merge them back together before converting to GPX.

 

gpsbabel -i google -f route1 -f route2 -f route3 -o gpx,gpxver=1.1 -F blah.gpx

 

will result in blah.gpx having a composite of the routes (for better and worse - you can hurt yourself with this feature in some cases) with individual route segments for each of the components in the source routes.

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Robert, I did gpsbabel -i msroute -f "Triple P Day 1.est" -o gpx,gpxver=1.1 -F blah.gpx and got "No valid input type specified". I have the newest version from sourceforge.

 

Apparently you don't have the newest version or it would support msroute. msroute was added 2005-09-05. What version do you actually have?

 

I have version 1.2.7. Downloaded Sunday from sourceforge.

 

Edit: I see this version was released in August. I'll download the beta.

 

Edit Edit: Aaaaand it works. Thanks!

 

Yet another edit: Apparently I only get my start and end points in the file... even though I went over the route with the Freeform tool.

Edited by BlueNinja
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Guys - I'm noticing that some folks are making 2+ day trip routes in pocket queries. Don't do this. Keep them down to day trips. Seattle to California may technically be a day trip but you know what I'm getting at.

Because of the need to split the route up in my case, it would be nice to be able to string together a few GE routes on the GC end...

You can string together multiple KML files with a text editor. What you want is between the <coordinates> tags. Copy the coordinates out of route B (Not the tags) and paste them after the coordinates in route A. If you have a route segment C, paste the coordinates from that after the "B" coordinates you pasted above. Don't worry about the XML at the top of the file. Save it, and it imports into the route tool just fine.

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Guys - I'm noticing that some folks are making 2+ day trip routes in pocket queries. Don't do this. Keep them down to day trips. Seattle to California may technically be a day trip but you know what I'm getting at.

 

Guilty, I didn't know that we were not supposed to make long queries.

 

Can you tell me what the difference is between the following routes. (I'll cut back to day trips I am just wondering)

 

Trip from Kansas City to Peyson Arizona

 

1 route continues

 

Trip from Kansas City to Denver Colorado

Trip from Denver Colorado to Peyson Arizona

 

2 trips

 

Also can you show me where you ask that PQ's aren't longer than 1 day? I would like to be able to reference it when someone ask. Maybe a note on the route page is in order.

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Can you tell me what the difference is between the following routes. (I'll cut back to day trips I am just wondering)

 

Without any inside knowledge on how this works on the site or any knowledge that this is the problem Raine is trying to avoid, I'll tell you why one will run much faster in GPSBabel than the other.

 

The inner loop basically says:

for each point (probably clamped via bounding box so a more compact route results in fewer poitns)

compute distance to closest line segment

 

Longer routes means both more points in the pool and more line segments to loop over. It's computationally expensive as you likely have both fewer points in the polyline and fewer source points to look at.

 

I'm guessing, for example, that the N-S corridor in CA already gives the code plenty of points to look at without doing the entire WA->CA loops.

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I just finished doing a PQ for a route but it did not seem to work at all. I created my route in Mapsource and saved it as a gpx file, so I think. Uploaded the route to GC did my search and it returned to me a number of caches. I looked at the cache listing and it did not match the listing that I had done via a bookmark that I created. I uploaded the cache listing to delorme and took a look at the caches and it created a straight line route. When I went back into the Mapsource program and pulled up the route, sure it enough it loaded as a straight line route rather than one following the roads. Any thoughts as to how to change this or make this work?? With all the travelling and such that I do this is going to be an awsome feature. thanks ahead of time. I am using Mapsource 6.10.2 with NA ver 6.

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Guys - I'm noticing that some folks are making 2+ day trip routes in pocket queries. Don't do this. Keep them down to day trips. Seattle to California may technically be a day trip but you know what I'm getting at.

 

That's what I did. I created a PQ along a route from Raleigh, NC to Dallas, TX. It never did come back and not only that it has disappeared from my MyQueries list. I hope it didn't cause any trouble on the server. The other PQ I created was from Raleigh to Jacksonville, FL for an upcoming trip and it can back beautifully. Thanks for all of your work on this most welcome addition to the site

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Guys - I'm noticing that some folks are making 2+ day trip routes in pocket queries. Don't do this. Keep them down to day trips. Seattle to California may technically be a day trip but you know what I'm getting at.

 

That's what I did. I created a PQ along a route from Raleigh, NC to Dallas, TX. It never did come back and not only that it has disappeared from my MyQueries list. I hope it didn't cause any trouble on the server. The other PQ I created was from Raleigh to Jacksonville, FL for an upcoming trip and it can back beautifully. Thanks for all of your work on this most welcome addition to the site

 

I just ran a quick Google maps direction list and if that's the route you used the distance is about 1,192 mi from my experiance this is WAY too long 500mi is about the max you can go on this before the query times out. Try breaking it down into 2 or 3 legs and see what happens.

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Feature suggestion:

 

While the ability to turn a route into a PQ can be useful, I think the majority of folks who are planning a trip will probably be creating a route, generating the query once, then deleting the query right away as they would never need it again.

 

My suggestion is to add a button to the route information page to "one-off" a GPX file to the user, similar to the button on your PQ page that will instantly sent you a GPX file of all your finds.

 

The distance from the route could be set at a default of one mile, and you would get all available caches, including found or your own caches. You would do further filtering in your GPX application of choice.

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I created a route using Mapsource 6.7 and saved as a GPX file. <GPX tag shows version="1.1".

 

The upload worked and the PQ was able to be saved OK. When I did the Preview of the query, I got the following fault:

 

Arithmetic overflow error converting numeric to data type numeric.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

 

Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Arithmetic overflow error converting numeric to data type numeric.

 

Source Error:

 

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

 

Stack Trace:

 

[sqlException: Arithmetic overflow error converting numeric to data type numeric.]

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream) +742

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior) +45

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.System.Data.IDbCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior behavior) +5

System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.FillFromCommand(Object data, Int32 startRecord, Int32 maxRecords, String srcTable, IDbCommand command, CommandBehavior behavior) +304

System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.Fill(DataSet dataSet, Int32 startRecord, Int32 maxRecords, String srcTable, IDbCommand command, CommandBehavior behavior) +77

System.Data.Common.DbDataAdapter.Fill(DataSet dataSet) +38

Groundspeak.Web.SqlData.SqlConnectionManager.FillDataSetSP(String StoredProc, ParameterList Params, Int32 Timeout, Database database) +553

Groundspeak.Web.SqlUserRoutes.GetRouteCachesByRouteGUID(Guid RouteGUID, Double SearchDistance) +217

Groundspeak.Web.UserRoutes.UserRoute.GetRouteCachesByRouteGUID(Guid RouteGuid, Double SearchDistance) +42

Groundspeak.Web.PocketQueries.GeocacheQuery.BuildSqlQuery() +9977

Groundspeak.Web.PocketQueries.GeocacheQuery.ReturnResultList() +34

Geocaching.UI.geocaching_nearest.Location_PQLoaded(Object sender, EventArgs e) +387

Geocaching.LocationPanel.GetQueryParms() +4556

Geocaching.LocationPanel.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +108

System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67

System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35

System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +98

System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +98

System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +750

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WAHOO!!

 

As ones who are taking weekend caching trips, this is GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!

 

My only question--when we make our lists public, and use a good term so that it can be searched for--how do others see it? And/or how do we see others' routes?

 

I know it says you can search--but where? How??

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try putting in "Indiana" as the from or to search or in the keywords search you should see several routes I've made as tests. From my understanding with the from and to search it geocodes the address or state or city/state and searches for routes begining or ending within a specified range of the coords the geocode returned. so if you search for places people havn't made routes to or from yet you won't get any results. Let me know if that helped :lol:

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