Mapping Hacks

The Serial Port to USB Conundrum #50

Chapter 5, Mapping with Gadgets

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HACK

These [1] and [0] values at the end of each line are interesting. Unlike some

of the free programs, Garnix includes the track segment flag. What if you are

on a trip and the GPS runs out of batteries, powers down, and stops saving

the tracklog? Ten minutes later, you put new batteries in and you are good

to go. But now you have a gap in your tracklog. The GPS is capable of deter-

mining that this has happened, so when you power back up, the first track

point is marked with the start of segment flag, shown as

[1], so you can

decide what you want to do with the data. Sometimes it is better to have no

data, rather than bad data.

An Important Lesson

We get into ruts in the ways in which we use tools. Sometimes it takes the

non-maskable interrupt of life to jar us from our ruts. I have used Garnix for

over four years and have always been annoyed by the “feature” of loading

coordinates in DMS, instead of decimal degrees. I have written way too

many little Perl scripts to munge the data into my preferred format, and even

had to do the same in “How Far? How Fast? Geo-Enabling Your Spread-

sheet”

[Hack #11]. And, now, in the process of actually looking at the Garnix

documentation and trying all of the options, I realize that the Waypoint Plus

format appears to have everything I need, without the annoyance of the

more-difficult-to-parse ...