Ephemerica

I’ve been searching around for ways to make the GPS thing work on the road. I came across another possible option to get data off the device, a program called MotionBased (run by Garmin) that pulls data from the unit, allows you to graph all sorts of stuff (elevation, speed, etc.), and allows you to export to Google Earth. The one problem is that this also is web-based. Another problem that needs to be overcome is that there is not a lot of memory in the device. You can record up to 10K points before the device starts overwriting data. The most resolution you can get is one point/sec, which gives you about 2:45 3.5 hrs (according to manual) of recording. There is a “smart recording” mode that picks points dynamically based on your route…it seems to record one point per 5-8 sec on average—but this still might not be enough to get us from one internet access point to the next.

I was starting to become distraught about the GPS unit, thinking it wasn’t going to be practical to make it work, and wondering if I should take it back. Then I did a google search to try to see if there was anything anybody knew about using this device on a Mac. I came across a program called LoadMyTracks that I think is going to solve our problem. This is a little utility that downloads tracks (that’s GPS-speak for a recording of continuous travel) in Google Earth format. So we can download tracks from the unit offline, not worry about losing any due to lack of memory, and then upload them to Google Earth at our leisure. Actually, we could just post them directly to the blog…that’s something we could do on any computer (assuming that our internet access may be limited to computers that aren’t ours). Now the only obstacle to overcome is electricity, which I’m assuming will be more prevalent than the internet. On that note, two other nice things about the GPS unit are that a) it takes the same USB cable as our camera, and b) it can be charged from the USB port. Now that I’m starting to wonder how in the heck we’re going to be able to carry everything, every little thing we DON’T have to bring counts.

Posted by Matthew on December 6th, 2006 | Filed under: Pre-trip Planning