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60CSx Tracks

Started by RodNH, May 04, 2010, 07:27:18 PM

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RodNH

When I upload tracks from Mapsource to the 60CSx, they become saved tracks in the internal memory. However they do not necessarily show up on the installed topo map. I find I have to go into the saved track page, select any track that doesn't show, press entr and check off the box "show on map". When I have numerous small tracks that I want to see, this becomes cumbersome. Is there any way to do this on some kind of global basis for all saved tracks, as the default, either on the unit or in Mapsource prior to uploading?

alpine

You can join associated tracks together in MapSource. Then you would have less button pushing to do.

Jimbob

#2
Your 60CSx will only load 20 tracks at a time. If you have more than that in mapsource when you update it will stop inputting tracks when it hits 20. What is more than likly happening is as you check off one to be displayed you  uncheck another without knowing it. Can get no more than the 20 tracks to display at a time, in fact it seems to me it will only load that original 20.

RodNH

Thanks alpine and Jimbob. I cannot join many of the tracks I'm concerned with because of gaps in the tracks. Joining them would eliminate the gaps. What I'm doing is mapping a lot of stone walls and there are barways and other discontinuities that I want to preserve in the mapping. Guess I'll just have to limit it to 20 tracks and push any needed buttons to make sure they all show up. I was hoping that if each track only had a few points in it instead of the max 500, and the total was less than 10,000, then the 20 track number would not be the control. Guess it's 20 tracks max even though there may only be 100 track points total. Oh well.

Jimbob

There is another way to tackle the problem if you are doing alot of this in a given day.  Enable your track log and it will record a days movement. If you turn it off and on at the breaks in the wall it will not record those sections but will pick up at the next point it is turned on at. you can use this on off process all day long and have none track log. the other process would be to make a map of all your routes/tracks.

RodNH

I should explain a little more regarding the wall tracks. For normal hiking sessions on trails off my property, I normally log a track to the SD card. When I make a lengthy stop or go on a small side trip that I don't want to be a part of the record track, I'll turn track logging off and on as desired. That still winds up with multiple tracks for that day though, as I recall, even though it's a single gpx file for the day. I've never tried logging a track just to the internal memory and then turning logging on and off as desired. In any event, track logging is not what I can reasonably do for my stone wall work. There are about 4 miles of stone walls on my property in what is now mostly heavily wooded areas. The work has been on-going over a period of a couple of weeks, a little bit each day that the weather is decent. I'm unable to do actual track logging because I'm unable to walk close to the wall in many areas - mostly due to downed trees or heavy brush/tree limbs. A lot of the time a circuitous route is needed even if the wall is fairly straight. To get around this I create waypoints at periodic intervals where I can get right up to the wall, at wall ends and at obviously significant changes in direction. I will then download the waypoints to Mapsource, view in Google Earth and create tracks (called paths in GE) right in GE by zooming in and connecting up waypoints as needed. I find it easier and I think more accurate to do this in GE than in Mapsource. The main issue I have with this method (or any other method for that matter) is with barways in the walls. Those wall openings are usually only 10 feet or so in width and waypoints at either end of the opening are right down in the muck inside the accuracy circle of the GPSr. So you get some obviously screwy localized results in places like that. But I tweak it as necessary to get a reasonable mapping right in GE by repositioning of such waypoints as needed.

I have no problem with mapping all the wall sections on the computer. I view a days waypoints in GE, create the tracks there, tweak as needed and then open the previous GE saved file. That adds the previous tracks to the new ones, something that doesn't work with Mapsource. I then save the GE file and the process is repeated when I obtain the next set of points. That gives me a good mapping on the computer of all the wall sections. The total number of tracks that I now have are about 65. Some of those could be combined with some careful inspection but most cannot. I'm sure I could never get down to 20 or even near it. Anyway, the issue is not making a decent final map that shows all wall sections on the computer as I already have that.

I was curious if I could upload all the tracks to the GPSr and use that as a good frame of reference when I go walking about. I already have the property boundaries loaded as saved tracks and that works slick together with the installed topo map on the unit. I can always use selective waypoints as references to serve a similar purpose, or pick only a few key wall tracks to load or, as you indicate, make up a custom map to load on the unit that shows everything I want. Sounds like that would provide the best result for my purposes. Not sure I'm up to the task of custom map making just yet though. Something else new to begin learning about :0).

Seldom

Two things that might help if you haven't tried them already:
1) Set your tracklog to record by distance and set a distance increment of say 15'.  This will damp out a lot of stationary noise.
2) Average your waypoints.

Jimbob

If you should decide to tackle your own map it's not extremly difficult. Free software needed GPSmapedit, MapSetToolKit, CGPSMapper, all of which have links on this site. A good tutorial also is avaiable here which contains lots of steps that you can omit since you will be using only tracks, routes and waypoints. (you just load that data in mapedit ) You will end up with a simple line map that can be displayed on top of other maps, say a topo.
Good Luck

RodNH

Jimbob,

Thanks for encouraging me to proceed and create a custom map as a solution to my problem. I have used the software you mentioned and finally, after some newbie frustration and a couple of needed do-overs, I have successfully completed making a transparent map of my stone wall tracks (all 61 of them), installed it in Mapsource and installed it on my 60CSx. The new map overlays very nicely on the topo map that I got from this site. It works great and provides the result I wanted to achieve. 

Rod

Jimbob

 :)  Glad you gave it a try and it's working. Satisfaction is always wonderful.