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cloudzilla Occasional Visitor
Joined: Dec 12, 2003 Posts: 6
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 9:38 pm Post subject: Recording all my travel and viewing it later... |
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Hi Guys, I've browsed through the topics but haven't found an answer to this yet...
I use TomTom and see that it's GPS component can record the data it receives and then "play it back" through TomTom later. But what I'd like to do is record all of my GPS data and then pass it to my PC. Then I can look back over a period of time - like a year - and see all of that years journeys graphically (for example in something like AutoRoute on my pc).
Anyone else had the urge to do this as well? Or am I just slightly obsessed? (-:
Thanks, Pete |
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MikeB Frequent Visitor
Joined: 20/08/2002 11:51:57 Posts: 3859 Location: Essex, UK
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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OK Pete you must be a bit manic.
What you can do is to record and save the GPS tracks using TomTom this saves them into the /my documents/GPS Log directory. You can then copy them from there onto your PC and play them back at will.
Interestingly if you actually examine the data using WordPad or a similar editor you will find that the data saved is a slightly modified version of NMEA protocol so you could run it through anything that looks at NMEA given the right cables etc. _________________ Mike Barrett |
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DavidW Pocket GPS Moderator
Joined: 17/05/2003 02:26:21 Posts: 3747 Location: Bedfordshire, UK
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 11:47 pm Post subject: |
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If you're using TomTom GPS in SiRF mode, the data stored is SiRF format. In NMEA mode, you just get the raw NMEA input, prefixed by a few special TomTom lines at the head of the file that you can chop off using a text editor.
The main problem is that the files get incredibly large. I would doubt many people have enough storage space on their system to capture more than about 10 minutes using this function - in either NMEA or SiRF mode.
If you're really keen on this, maybe you'd be better off with one of the GPSes with a datalogger built in - particularly if you can set the datalog interval to something rather less than every second! One was reviewed by Pocket GPS World recently - I wonder if that would do the job.
David |
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MikeB Frequent Visitor
Joined: 20/08/2002 11:51:57 Posts: 3859 Location: Essex, UK
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Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2004 12:07 am Post subject: |
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David, you would be suprised how much you can record on a storecard.
I just checked a couple of my recordings and I get about 7.5 hours of NMEA data in a 7Mb file.
Now that may seem like I am a bit sad, but I have genuine reasonse for recording. When testing battery life in the BT GPS receivers I invariably forget when I started and when they stopped. Logging the data means a quick analysis will give me precise battery usage. _________________ Mike Barrett |
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cloudzilla Occasional Visitor
Joined: Dec 12, 2003 Posts: 6
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 12:23 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the tips Guys,
Mike, your comment was to copy them off to my PC and play them back at will. But do you mean in TomTom? I'd just like to see the total routes that I've taken - like as an overlay on a map. I was thinking that maybe something like Autoroute would accept the contents of a GPS log file and overlay them onto a map for you.
Cheers anyway, Pete |
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Skippy Pocket GPS Verifier
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 1:09 am Post subject: Re: Recording all my travel and viewing it later... |
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cloudzilla wrote: | Anyone else had the urge to do this as well? Or am I just slightly obsessed? (-: |
Yes you do sound a bit odd. :P
I do this all the time, my Garmin GPS-V records a tracklog and this can be uploaded to the PC and viewed in the Mapsource map viewer. I often download and save the logs when I have been out for a thrash on my motorbike. You can see where you went including speeds. 8O
It's also interesting to review the log the GPS creates during approach and landing in a plane.
Garmin have a way of efficiently recording the track logs, ie if you travel the same direction at the same speed for 30 seconds then it records a single data point for the time period. If you are changing direction all the time then it logs more data points.
Do other GPS systems not keep track logs like this? |
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Dave Frequent Visitor
Joined: Sep 10, 2003 Posts: 6460 Location: UK
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 10:23 am Post subject: |
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One other thing to mention is if you are just going to store the GPS Log files from TomTom and copy them off to a PC, then later copy them back to a PC and replay a journey, you need to be running in NMEA mode. If you run in SiRF mode you will not be able to playback the log file. This is a long outstanding bug for TomTom and AFAIK it still isn't fixed in GPS2.09. |
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