On Tuesday 13 February 2007, Michael A Peters wrote: >Howdy all - > >I have a Garmin "etrex Legend" hand held GPS unit. > >I bought it for my field herping hobby (looking for wild reptiles and >amphibians). >It came with a serial cable for connecting to a PC but software is only >for Windows. I don't want to buy the software and try with w/ wine/CXO >because it it doesn't work then I wasted money, and I have not had >software that interfaces with hardware (such as a serial port) ever work >well in CXO. > >Since spring is almost here, I'd like an easier way to use it in Linux >rather than just manually reading the collected waypoints and entering >them into my field reports. > >What I would like to do is to be able to read waypoints right off the >unit through a cable (either serial or, if one is available, a USB >cable) into Linux. It also would be nice to hand make some maps that I >can use to easily return to a particular spot, or to give to researchers >to get to a particular spot if I find a range extension for a species >that needs to be verified or a remnant population for a species in >decline thought to be gone from an area. Both of those things happen >fairly regularly where I am at (though not yet by me), as there is much >wilderness area that isn't well documented for herp species. > >It also would be nice to be able to look at a topographical map, and >enter waypoints into some linux program that I can then enter into the >GPS to guide me with respect to how to get to a location that looks >interesting. > >Has anyone done this kind of thing in Fedora, and possibly know where >pre-packaged RPMs exist? That sounds like you'd need to find "Roadnav" which can read my elderly Garmin 12's output and draw a track on the map in realtime. It does have one achilles heel though, its freely available maps aren't quite as detailed as a topo would be, and the positional accuracy isn't that great. My house, and the road its on is shown about 450 feet NE of where I know it is. The Garmin data is fine, plus or minus 50 feet or less, (it's and old Garmin, made well before they turned the GPS noise off). Its possible that newer Garmins can store the track for later recall and output, but the only data output available from mine is realtime. However, Roadnav and the GPS looks to be quite repeatable, so you should be able to track yourself back to within sight of your vehicle even on a pea soup foggy day. Be aware that if going into non-local territory, you will need to download the maps for the region you are headed for while you have a decent net connection prior to starting out. I took the easy way out & sucked them all for the lower 48. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
