PathAway GPS 3 Palm and memory map

mdignum

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

lbendlin · Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:39 am Post subject:

rave reviews? where?
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DennyL · Regular Visitor Joined: Jan 24, 2004 Posts: 114

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.

proctog · Regular Visitor Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 100

DennyL · Regular Visitor Joined: Jan 24, 2004 Posts: 114

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.

proctog · Regular Visitor Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 100

DennyL · Regular Visitor Joined: Jan 24, 2004 Posts: 114

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.

bobulos · Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 1:12 pm Post subject: Calibrate OS GB maps for Pathaway

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

proctog · Regular Visitor Joined: Oct 28, 2004 Posts: 100

bobulos

So should I use OSGB values when calibrating ?

The only way I can get maps working correctly is using nudge controls at the moment.

NoddyH · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 22, 2005 Posts: 4

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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