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mdignum Occasional Visitor
Joined: Jan 05, 2005 Posts: 7 Location: Liverpool UK
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Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:28 am Post subject: PathAway GPS 3 Palm and memory map |
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Has anybody tried this software it appears to get ra ve reviews. I would like to use it with memory map software any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Mark |
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lbendlin Pocket GPS Staff
Joined: 02/11/2002 22:41:59 Posts: 11878 Location: Massachusetts, USA
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:39 am Post subject: |
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rave reviews? where? _________________ Lutz
Report Map Errors here:
TomTom/TeleAtlas NAVTEQ |
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DennyL Regular Visitor
Joined: Jan 24, 2004 Posts: 114
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:43 am Post subject: |
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I really wanted to use this software, but I was never able to sort out the calibration of maps.
My goal was to calibrate a map at home by interpolating the latitude and longitude markings on the map that I had scanned, using rulers and calibration points, so that I could then go to the area covered by the map and find that my calibration was approximately right. It would be okay if I had to tweak my calibration when I got to the area.
I never succeeded. I would go to the area on my bike, start Pathaway, and my scanned map would disappear off the screen. I was several kilometers out. I could get it to work by calibrating maps when I was in the area covered by the map. I finally gave up on it. I searched the net a lot and never found any encouragement from people who were using it successfully.
I heard that there is a Touratech desktop that is better than the Pathaway desktop at calibrating Pathaway maps, but that costs more money, and I never tried.
I would still be interested in others' experiences with Pathaway. |
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proctog Regular Visitor
Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 100
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Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 10:38 am Post subject: |
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DennyL wrote: |
I would still be interested in others' experiences with Pathaway. |
I use it a lot and, although I agree that the calibration of maps is fiddly and the user interface of PathAway's PC calibration utility could use a lot of work, I generally find it OK.
I've only used it to calibrate UK OS maps - what sort of maps are you using?
Glenn. |
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DennyL Regular Visitor
Joined: Jan 24, 2004 Posts: 114
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Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 2:24 pm Post subject: |
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I was working with scans of OS Landranger (50000:1) maps, scanned at 100% scale so that the diagonal represented approx 17km.
I would define two points near, but not at, the corners of the map. These would be road junctions, or something easy to find on the map Then I would write down the co-ordinates of these points by interpolating the longitude and latitude scales along the edges of the OS mape, using rulers, straight-edges, or T-squares or what-have-you, really trying to be as accurate as possible. Then I calibrated the maps on the desktop using these points, then synced the calibrated map to the Palm. Then I went to the area covered by the map and started Pathaway, and the map would jump clean off the screen and be, say, 5 to 10km away! I could calibrate maps by going to points on the map and calibrating on the Palm.
After a while I gave up as it seemed I was wasting too much time on it, and never really got grips with the difference between the calibation I was doing 'on-site', and the calibation I was doing in my sitting room.
My goal was to calibrate maps of an area in, say, France, and then go there for a cycle tour, and find when I got there that the maps were reasonably well calibrated. If I had to cycle all over the area to calibrate the maps then they wouldn't be calibrated until the end of the holiday!
I can see that there are a few areas where one could go wrong, maybe to do with the units of latitude and longitude, or the correct syntax for entering them.
I was even wondering whether two calibration points are enough, because GPS works in three-dimensional space, and I would have thought that it would require three points to solve the equations. Anyway.....
As the spring is coming I may have another go. If you have succeeded in doing what I was trying to do, Proctog, then I would be grateful for any comments or advice. |
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proctog Regular Visitor
Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 100
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Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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DennyL wrote: | I was working with scans of OS Landranger (50000:1) maps, scanned at 100% scale so that the diagonal represented approx 17km.
I would define two points near, but not at, the corners of the map. These would be road junctions, or something easy to find on the map Then I would write down the co-ordinates of these points by interpolating the longitude and latitude scales along the edges of the OS mape, using rulers, straight-edges, or T-squares or what-have-you, really trying to be as accurate as possible. Then I calibrated the maps on the desktop using these points, then synced the calibrated map to the Palm. Then I went to the area covered by the map and started Pathaway, and the map would jump clean off the screen and be, say, 5 to 10km away! I could calibrate maps by going to points on the map and calibrating on the Palm. |
Thanks for the description; I think I can see the source of your problem. It's not easy to convert from an OS map to latitude and longitude co-ordinates since the OS maps are a projection.
Fortunately PathAway does deal with this; see the section on Calibrating OSGB maps in the PathAway FAQ.
My method for doing this goes something like: pick 2 points near opposite diagonal corners of the map; I generally use the intersections of the horizontal and vertical blue lines on the OS map since they're nice round numbers.
Then put these numbers into the PathAway MapManager utility after matking each of the points. Make sure you use the projection etc in the FAQ as well. Also, make sure you get the easting and northing the right way around - PathAway's interface is a bit confusing here. Plus you need to press the "Apply" button (beside the co-ordinate system sprcification) quite often.
It's more fiddly than it should be, and irritatingly the projection etc settings don't "stick" between sessions, but it does work; I've just come back from a holiday in the Lake District using maps calibrated in this way and they were spot on.
Good luck!
Glenn. |
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DennyL Regular Visitor
Joined: Jan 24, 2004 Posts: 114
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Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you very much for all that, Glenn. You've certainly encouraged me to get back to trying Pathaway. I might wait until the weather improves a bit, as I did all that I did in an evaluation period, and need to re-install it, etc. |
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bobulos Occasional Visitor
Joined: 11/08/2003 11:30:36 Posts: 16 Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 1:12 pm Post subject: Calibrate OS GB maps for Pathaway |
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Hi,
I have tried many different ways to calibrate maps for Pathaway and have not had much luck. Using Projected Maps I can not get it to work at all. I am using 1:25000 scans of landranger maps.
The closest I have got is using Top-Left Bottom-Right calibration though the position on the map is still a few hundred yards out.
I have tried uisng both OSGB and Lat/Lon values but with little difference.
Can anyone help and tell me what the best way is the calibrate OSGB maps? I have been using an OGSB excel macro I found on the net to convert from OGSB to Lat Lon.
Cheers |
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proctog Regular Visitor
Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 100
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 1:19 pm Post subject: Re: Calibrate OS GB maps for Pathaway |
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bobulos wrote: | Hi,
Can anyone help and tell me what the best way is the calibrate OSGB maps? I have been using an OGSB excel macro I found on the net to convert from OGSB to Lat Lon.
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Don't bother with coverting the co-ords yourself. Check the details in my previous post, and read the section on calibrating OSGB maps at http://www.pathaway.com/faq.htm#maps
It's fiddly and error-prone but it does work.
Glenn. |
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bobulos Occasional Visitor
Joined: 11/08/2003 11:30:36 Posts: 16 Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:33 pm Post subject: Calibrate OS GB maps for Pathaway |
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So should I use OSGB values when calibrating ?
The only way I can get maps working correctly is using nudge controls at the moment. |
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NoddyH Occasional Visitor
Joined: Nov 22, 2005 Posts: 4
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Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:45 pm Post subject: OSGB vs WGS84 |
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Pathaway works best using WGS84. I convert OSGB into WGS84 coords using a coord convertor available at http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord. This is relatively easy, and gives very accurate results, I generally calibrate 3-4 points per map. Check you are using lat/long in the correct format, I've set mine to use DD.dddd as this is what the website returns. |
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