Satmap On-Line Route Planner Goes Live

philpugh · Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:43 pm Post subject:

Have been using the beta test to try it out. It gets its first real try-out this Saturday as I have planned a route over Robinson, Dale Head and Fleetwith Pike for 'the lads' to try out. Well several actually depending on the weather!

Only curious thing was I used the 1:50k mapping to get a good overall view in the window and when I zoomed into 1:25k the waypoints moved off the marked tracks - sometimes by a good few 10's of metres. It is probably down to the revision dates of the different sets of maps. It will be interesting to see how accurate it is on the device in use as I only have the 1:50k mapping.

I tend to agree with the comments about the lack of planning view - but this will be down to licensing, restricting the screen capture of maps in usable chunks. Overall I think I will stay with MemoryMap to do the planning - I have 1:25k of the areas I frequent and with a large monitor most one-day routes can be easily visualised as a whole.

They (Satmap) are going to have to improve the facilities in order to charge what is quite a large amount for access. I can't help feeling there must have been a different (and better) way to implement this using the device's mapping. I guess they are worried about reverse engineering of the maps.
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Phil

LostMike · Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 7:03 pm Post subject:

Mikealder said

davidor · Regular Visitor Joined: Nov 14, 2008 Posts: 117

I find it staggering that Satmap can expect people to pay the sort of figure they are talking about for this service. The route planning is very inferior to other options available for free due to the very limited map view, especially at 1:25K. It really needs to be full screen, otherwise it is no better than planning directly on the satmap. And the route -sharing idea? I'm sure it won't be long before someone sets up a free forum providing this service.

Once again I think that Satmap are shooting themselves in their feet by not listening to their committed users and the people that are actually out there using the Satmap day after day, week after week.

LostMike · Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:11 pm Post subject:

Davidor said

colinp_uk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 21, 2009 Posts: 2

Hi,

Just bought an Active 10 this week and have been using the online Route Planner to for a walk tomorrow.

Might be my first post but a quick word of advice:

Don't use the & character in your Route Name and Description. It confuses the Route Planner when you save the route causing it to hang!

satmapian · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 14, 2009 Posts: 59

Welcome Colin, and thanks for the tip. Smile

I've just imported my first route from the route planner using Satsync. The route contains all the height information, and shows a route profile Very Happy

Very nice surprise as when using my Anquet software to create routes I then have to edit each route waypoint to get the profile.

So despite the smaller window, the presence of the 1:25K (I only have 1:50K Anquet) maps and the height data makes it a winner for me. (Mind you I got it free).

My main gripe is with long backpacking or cycle routes which contain a lot of waypoints (more than 50). Then the Planner grinds to a crawl that would put a sloth to shame Rolling Eyes

johno99 · Regular Visitor Joined: Oct 02, 2008 Posts: 80

'My main gripe is with long backpacking or cycle routes which contain a lot of waypoints (more than 50). Then the Planner grinds to a crawl that would put a sloth to shame'

Satmapian

If you look at my other post under beta invitation you will note that at 177 waypoints automatically entered by Active 10, that Vista actually 'stops' the route planner. I am awaiting a reply from Satmap

John

satmapian · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 14, 2009 Posts: 59

Yes John I'll be interested in the reply.

I'm using XP, but my longest route is 112 waypoints, and it got so slow I have used Anquet for longer routes than this. At this point probably the best way to go is a rough plan in the planner and fine tune in the Satmap. Sadly this means the detail available from the 1:25K scale in Route Planner is less useful for long trips like these.

goon525 · Regular Visitor Joined: Aug 25, 2005 Posts: 75

The route planner (still shown as beta unless I'm being taken to the wrong page) seems to require a log-in including serial number every time you use it. Any way round it (RoboForm, which I generally use to enter passwords, doesn't seem to want to know about this one)??

johno99 · Regular Visitor Joined: Oct 02, 2008 Posts: 80

Hi

I was wrong about the size of the route, it was 19 miles cycling over 4.5 hours, no big deal but on checking on the route planner it was 528 waypoints! and 63.9Kb, all entered automatically by the active 10.

I got a reply from Satmap, excellent service as usual, they have said that they are trying to to get the route size capacity increased. I wouldnt have thought that Saturdays lesiurly ride for half a day should cause such a problem. They also said It is very important that you import and export the route through satsync as this will reduce the file size. I only use satsync so thats not the problem.

They working on it, the whole point of beta I suppose.

John

Bosun · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 10:20 pm Post subject:

Zedddd · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 06, 2009 Posts: 3

I've triedf plotting in a route and saving it (not sure if that's worked as no other window comes up when I click on the save option). Then when I try to download the route I get a windo come up with "There is (sic) no waypoints in the route" and a clikc to close this window link under it.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug?

I'm on Windows XP.

philpugh · Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:32 am Post subject:

mako111 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 07, 2006 Posts: 1

I have found the route planner to be faster and more stable with Firefox (3.1 Beta 3) than IE.

But this is hardly suprising as the planner is javascript based and IE's performance is lagging in this area.

When editing routes with 100+ waypoints firefox often pops up a message that the script has been running for a long time and let's you choose whether to let it continue running or terminate it. If you let it continue then it finishes eventually.

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