NASCARKev

Has anyone with the Dell GPS for the X30 noticed that the latitude/longitude is off? For instance, I had noted with my old, no longer functioning GPS unit and with my Nextel phone that my home is at latitude 38:31725, but the Dell software says I'm at 38:528XX. The longitude is off a similar amount. I don't know how far off this is in miles, but it's no small amount.

Route mapping, etc., has been flawless. The software always knows where I am, when I'm turning, etc. Also, I downloaded the trial of Maptech's software and it gives me the correct lat/long, so the GPS unit itself is fine. It seems to be the software that comes with the Dell that is at fault.

I want to use this for geocaching and as it is this won't work.

JakeRich

It is a factor of representation. I would suspect that the Nextel is reporting in Degreees.minutes(decimal) and the Dell is degrees.decimal. If I convert .528 to minutes I get 31.68, which is very close to your value. If I convert 31.725 minutes to decimal I get .52875, again close to what the Dell is reporting.

NASCARKev

Ok, Jake, that makes sense. I'm fairly new to GPS, so I didn't know there were two ways to express latitude/longitude.

Yesterday I was trying to find a geocache at this address from www.geocaching.com:

N 38° 38.801 W 090° 20.848

I knew the general area where this was, but the Dell was producing totally different numbers. So you're saying I'll need to convert this to decimal to match how the Dell displays lat/long, right? Pardon all the newb questions, but how do I do that?

DoDoubleGeo

You might not have to convert the coordinates if your GPS/Software can change how it displays them. Have a look at some of the settings for something like "Position format", "Coordinate Format", etc. and change it to the format your geochache site is using.

If not, you can easily convert by hand.

dd = d + m/60

where,
dd = Decimal Degrees
d = Degrees
m = Minutes

Better yet, set up a spreadsheet to do this automatically. All you need are three columns. Column 1 will be for the whole degree number given to you. Column 2 will be for the decimal minutes given to you. Column 3 will use the formula above by referencing the appropriate cells.

If you don't like any of these options go to DirectionsMag and use their online converter.

JakeRich

One small edit for clarity:

dd = d + (m/60)

NASCARKev

Thanks, folks, for the suggestions. I looked through the Dell software and didn't find anything to change how latitude/longitude is displayed. That would be ideal.

I did find a free program, VisualGPSce, which does display lat/long the way I want it:

http://www.visualgps.net/VisualGPSce/default.htm

I appreciate you letting me know about this, though, because I was about to send this thing back because of its "inaccuracy". Turns out it's dead-on!