User:Clive

whoami

I'm Clive, and I will be adding tracks and mapping Leicester and surrounding areas, mainly by bicycle.

Currently awaiting the arrival of a new GPS, time is usefully spent inspiring others, particularly within the Leicester Linux User Group.

There are currently no decent maps of cycle routes within Leicester itself, and am looking forward to creating some myself. (The problem is not that maps do not exist, the problem is that they are not updated when roads are shut, and are not in digital form).

I've started with the N6, and routes that traverse the city centre.

GPS Notes

Fortuna GPSmart

I have a Fortuna GPSmart, a handheld GPS. I am not 100% happy with it. Although it works well with alkaline batteries, there have been too many occasions when using NiMh that it has powered down unexpectedly. Probably not the fault of the GPS, but still a pain.

The main sticking point though is that so far I have not yet managed to find a Linux solution to retrieve the tracks from the GPS.

Tomtom Go 300

My wife has a Tomtom. This is an excellent device. I've been recording tracks using Event Logger.

Unfortunately quite quickly I came to the conclusion that the tracks produced may not be usable. Everytime I left a main road, there would be a gap before logging started again. My concern is that the location returned by the Tomtom SDK may be bound by the internal mapping data. I want to create new maps, not reproduce maps within the Tomtom! That may not be the case, but is more of a risk than I want to take.

There is hope for the Tomtom in the form of OpenTom. Not a perfect solution for me though, as my wife bought it for herself, and is normally using it.

Holux

As mentioned above, I'm currently awaiting a new GPS - a Holux based on the Sirf Star III chipset. Hopefully that will be a perfect solution for my needs, and was inexpensive compared to a Tomtom. I'm hoping to make an adapter so the cable can also be used with the GPSmart.