MD - Suggestions please: Nice roads in north-eastern MD

[Bicyclist]

Got it. I guess the real question is if you're going to set up a database of routes, like Jacco is doing, would a track file function the same as a route file?

If you wanted to share a favorite route, would it make more sense to just go out and ride the route and share the track file or plan the route with a bunch of waypoints and share the route file? Or would you ride the route and set waypoints as you went? When you plan a route and set waypoints, how close do they actually wind up being? How easy is it to miss a turn?

I ask all these questions because my receiver is five or six years old and I use it for location verification rather than navigation.

Thanks.

George

[JimVonBaden]

Got it. I guess the real question is if you're going to set up a database of routes, like Jacco is doing, would a track file function the same as a route file?

No, I tried it, and am still working on a way to convert a track file to a route file. You wouldn't think it would be that hard, but it has been, for me, so far.

Jim

[jacco]

Got it. I guess the real question is if you're going to set up a database of routes, like Jacco is doing, would a track file function the same as a route file?

If you wanted to share a favorite route, would it make more sense to just go out and ride the route and share the track file or plan the route with a bunch of waypoints and share the route file? Or would you ride the route and set waypoints as you went? When you plan a route and set waypoints, how close do they actually wind up being? How easy is it to miss a turn?

I ask all these questions because my receiver is five or six years old and I use it for location verification rather than navigation.

Thanks.

George

Hi,

My goal would be that you can upload both. I have to make sure of this, but I suppose that the gps stores a marker in the track database for each intersection you cross, or at least for each turn that you make. This for on-road, I don't know how it does this for off road. I'd guess that it stores a marker every X seconds and/or whenever you move X meters, something like that. So if you were to download these track data you should be able to retrace the exact same route to within a few feet I'd say. For on-road for sure it'll work, I can tell my Garmin 2610 to calculate a route based on the waypoints/routepoints I upload. If you have enough markers there's only one possible route it can come up with. If there is no street it knows about it'll give a straight line between the points, but if there are enough of those points that should be OK too.

Again, I have to look at what's in these track data. I'll let you know what I find (probably next week) and if what I just wrote above is BS or a plausible scenario. Is there anyone here with knowledge about this?

[jacco]

Good point. I'll download some track data from my Garmin 2610 and see what needs to be done to make it work with the gps database. Who knows, it might work as is.

Well, I just downloaded the track data from my Garmin. And in my healthy optimism (see above) I was wrong, uploading this gpb file to my gps database-thingy doesn't work. It doesn't extract any route points. The good news is that it's all in there though, hundreds of coordinates per file. I'll have to play with this to extract them, but I'm in Windoze at the moment and cannot reboot to Linux right now. To be continued...

[jacco]

I'll have to play with this to extract them

Done. It can handle track data now. And files that contain multiple routes and/or tracks.

[Bicyclist]

Very cool! It works. I clicked on "show" for your morning ride. When it popped up, I left the conversion on "GPX" and clicked "convert". It came back with the conversion message, I clicked "here" and it downloaded the zipped file. I unzipped it and opened it in MacGPSPro.

Are you going to collect route files or track files? And why not save them as gpx files as the default rather than having to use GPSBabel to convert?

George

[jacco]

Very cool! It works. I clicked on "show" for your morning ride. When it popped up, I left the conversion on "GPX" and clicked "convert". It came back with the conversion message, I clicked "here" and it downloaded the zipped file. I unzipped it and opened it in MacGPSPro.

Are you going to collect route files or track files? And why not save them as gpx files as the default rather than having to use GPSBabel to convert?

George

Thanks for the PM George. Probably the text that I display needs some work. Everything is stored in GPX on the site. So if you 'convert' to gpx you actually get a copy of the stored file. But it uses the same script (and displays the same text) as if you would convert it to some other format. You can up/download routes and tracks, which are basically the same thing IMHO. I fixed some bugs a few weeks ago, but have not done anything since...