I recently purchased I-guidance along with a bt-338 (great combination. BUT to my disapointment I found (and you guys reinforced the issue) that this software, although great for street navigation, is useless for geocaching or any kinf of off-road (land or sea) navigating.
I have checked out maptech's outdoor navigator which seems to be my software of choice this far. I have also looked at VITO's navigator II and GPS dash.
Has anyone has experiences with these programs? I am looking for mainly geocaching capabilities but might use it for power-boating navigation...
Thanks for your imput... :approve:
how cool, where? no. or so. jersey?(don't be frightened, i looked @ your profile,...i'm def not stalker material !)
that new game sounds cool, shutterspot, with hunting the location of the pics! Some really good ops in/around Philly, for me, at least.
:approve:
ps sorry i have no clue how to answer your query however....
I've found that none of the mapping/gps programs zoom in to a close enough level to be very good for geocaching. I think if they had 1-2x more zoom they would be perfect. I've tried Mapopolis, Memory-Map navigator, oziexplorer, and another i cant remember. If you are looking merely for program with bearing/altitude/speed and long/lat then there is a freeware one called ... err either GPSInfo2003, cemonitor or GPSTweak. MyGPS isnt connected so I cant check right now which it is.
A good program for managing GPX/LOC files is GPXSonar. If you are a premium member ($30 a year i think), you can do "pocket queries" and have them send a single GPX file with all of the caches in your area every monday or whatever you pick. GPXSonar loads this up and gives you all the details just like geocaching.com
Hey Mr. Focker and Biohzrd, what's your Geocaching handle? Mine is BMSquared. I am in North Jersey.
I use Pocket Streets to get me close enough to hoof it. Then I rely on the topos on my GPS (Magellan Sport Trak Map). The actual mapping programs to the Axim seem to be only geared to the roads.
EDIT : Disregard this line. I didn't read far enough before babbling a reply [strike]Don't forget to rab a copy of GPX Sonar for reading pocket queries in the field.[/strike]
I've been using Outdoor Navigator for some hiking and geocaching. I've found that it gets me close enough - at least within the limits of GPS signals and the coordinates I've gotten from www.geocaching.com. Note, however, that I've only looked for (and found) maybe 10 caches.
For the price and convenience (downloadable maps for the US - you don't have to find and calibrate them yourself), I think it's a good choice. There are some limitations to the software that I'd like to see removed, however. For example, it slows down a lot when you try to manage a lot of waypoints (marks in Outdoor Navigator). I believe it's limited to 50 total and can display fewer than that at one time).
I think that Outdoor Navigator expects everything to be in the NAD27 datum. My GPS receiver and www.geocaching.com both work in the WGS84 datum. In practice, this means the map can show you being 200m away from your actual position. But, if you enter the WGS84 coordinates, navigation should work fine - your GPS location and the cache location should be in the correct positions relative to each other. You just need to hope that there are no geographic features (a cliff or river) within 200m of the cache (you don't want to end up on the wrong side because your position on the map is incorrect).
I'm also investigating using other utilities on the PDA. For example, something like GPSDash2. And, using GPS Gate to allow both programs to access GPS data at the same time (I haven't tested this yet).
As far as GPXSonar goes, is it still compatible with the GPX files from www.geocaching.com? I get errors when I try to load a recent GPX file. Did the specifications for the file change?
"I think that Outdoor Navigator expects everything to be in the NAD27 datum. My GPS receiver and www.geocaching.com both work in the WGS84 datum"-- Are these collected by different companies or something? where does the difference come from?
As far as GPXSonar goes, is it still compatible with the GPX files from www.geocaching.com? I get errors when I try to load a recent GPX file. Did the specifications for the file change?
I have no problems with GPXSonar V1.4. Using one from a file generated at the end of last week. Another alternative is GPXView. Not as functional, but shows GPX info. and web pages.
Another mapping program to look at is BackCountry Navigator, which is in beta now, but a fully functional version can be downloaded. It lets you import GPX files and place them directly on the map as waypoints. I haven't found any way to get Outdoor Navigator to do this.
Sorry for the quick reply as you'll need to search for these programs. I'd like to get more involved in this thread a little later when I have some more time available.
does outdoor navigator work well with marine navigation as well? Anyone experience that?
You can download NOAA charts just like the USGS topo maps. I've donwloaded the charts for the area in southern New Jersey where my parents used to live (Ocean City) and they look pretty good. I assume that the GPS tracking would work fine (I haven't been there since I got the maps to try it out and I'm not likely to be there any time soon).
Since the battery on my Axim runs out so quickly I opted for a handheld Garmin GPS.
I can't speak from experience since I just ordered it (actually I'm at home waiting for it since it's on the FedEx delivery truck right now) but from what I've read on geocaching.com you can get by with an inexpensive handheld GPS since they all do equally well at only getting you fairly close; after that it's up to you to put your peepers to work and start searching for the cache.
"I think that Outdoor Navigator expects everything to be in the NAD27 datum. My GPS receiver and www.geocaching.com both work in the WGS84 datum"-- Are these collected by different companies or something? where does the difference come from?
The different datums are based on different zero points and directional references. So, you are measuring longitude and latitude the same way but starting from a different point. There are many different datums worldwide. If you look at a standalone GPS receiver (Garmin, Magellan, etc.) they usually let you select the datum you want to use and they will do the conversion. You do this to match coordinates you've been given or the maps you have.
Most older USGS maps (I don't know about NOAA charts) uses the NAD27 datum (North American Datum 1927) as a reference. Most newer maps use WGS84 - a worldwide standard - as reference. And, most GPS receivers default to this. Unlike standalone GPS receivers, I don't know if you can change the datum used by bluetooth, CF, and some serial GPSs.
In practice, for something like geocaching it may not matter very much. As long as the coordinates you use are based on the same datum, it just means that the locations may not be plotted exactly on the maps. My understanding is that within the 48 contiguous states, the error should be less than 200m.
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