Track Points on an Etrex - best number?

[mupp]

Just noticed that there is an additional Option that seems to have appeared on the Map page Options list on my Vista.
I now seem to have the choice of how many Track Points that I wish to set, the default is 3000.
It's not covered in my Manual, nor in the latest Vista Manual on the Garmin site, I guess it appeared with one of the Software Updates, I'm now up to V.3.50 and the maximum Track Points is now 10000.
What do you reckon would be the best number of Track Points to set? I'm guessing that the more I set, the more accurate an individual route's tracklog will be?

[Tim Buxton]

>> What do you reckon would be the best number of Track Points to set? I'm guessing that the more I set, the more accurate an individual route's tracklog will be? <<

Or it could just increase the length of the breadcrumb trail before it gets overwritten/truncated. On my 3+ the trackpoints can be set by time, distance or change of direction, I think, and I assume that my V is the same. I think steeing the number depends on the particular journey and path to be taken. For instance, when riding up the Alps with all those double bends, using 10 seconds per point might well produce a straight line up the side of the mountain!
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Tim

[mupp]

Cheers. I'm not sure how Garmin assigns Track Points to a Track, and what it does when it gets to it's limit of points within a current Track. I might experiment by setting the number to something ridiculously low, like 10, and then wandering off to see how it writes the Track.
Does it always use the same method to assign Track Points (bread crumbs) according to the complexity of the Track - e.g. a twisting route with frequent changes of elevation/speed/direction will use up the Track Points very quickly? If it only has a limited number of Points to play with, does it then start re-using Track Points as the Track progresses, so the early part of the Track will be lost? Or does it just stretch the points over the Track, losing some turns but keeping the start and finish points?

[Tim Buxton]

Mupp,

>> Cheers. I'm not sure how Garmin assigns Track Points to a Track, and what it does when it gets to it's limit of points within a current Track. <<

It assigns them either by what you choose or automatically, and will either truncate or wrap when the memory is full, again depending on how you have set the unit up.

Pages 47 and 48 of the User Manual (the one on the website, anyway) cover the setting up of tracklogs.

Hope this helps.
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Tim

[mupp]

Thanks Tim. I've set mine to Wrap now. Just for fun I set maximum number of Trackpoints to 3, and then walked a small square around the garden - the recorded Track knocked off the first Trackpoint giving me a triangle :-)

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