Assembling

This page collects some notes and links related to my discoveries and will consequently be updated on this basis - those will surely sounds like naive (if not plain wrong) to anyone a bit used to gps terms and technology, however they follow the logics of the electronic presence developped mainly in r-echos and might be of some help to other beginners.

Disclaimer:
my configuration is based on a powerbook titanium (the old old one - 667) running os 10.3.9
the GPS unit is a gecko 201 by Garmin, i use the keyspan usb to serial adapter to plug the pc cable on the mac. I bought the cable with the gecko in a quite big store in the City: Blacks - i bought a tent there as well, time will tell if it’s a good shop, so far my only comment is that the vendors are still not ready to meet customers who obviously knows how to use informations on the internet.
Some notes:
Here, i store bookmarks related to gps: http://del.icio.us/jrgd/gps the last ones appears on the side bar off this page (scroll down a bit). As usual with del.icio.us, you can refine your exploration by adding tags separated by a “+”.

The software biodiversity on macs is usually quite impressive - unfortunatelly not for the gps connexion matters and not in an opensource point of view; however there are some very good stuff that i’m still discovering/learning how to properly use:

first things first: Google Earth  (downloads) would it be too obvious to say it’s a very usefull piece of software? well much have been said already, the fact of using a gps unit in combination with it just multiplied the pleasure of the discoveries.

then:

MacGPSBabel is a GUI for the debian’s gpsbabel package - and work somehow ok for downloading and uploading. So far on my system it seems like the converted files are simply empty (just the date appears in the edited file) when converting KML files (Google earth) into GPX XML files; the Mac version of GpsBabel is known to be outdated related to the newest versions of the software. I’m currently still diving into the fink documentation to try to make it run from the commandline and meanwhile i’m using a web based interface for gpsbabel which is doing the job nicely.
GPSConnect
offers very simple function to upload/download waypoints (no tracks, no routes) quite usefull to edit point name by hand, modify icons and so on … http://www.chimoosoft.com/gpsconnect.html

to send waypoints from Google Earth to the Gecko 201, i usually do as follow:

1. export waypoints (they need to be selected) - use the File’s menu or right click the point in the left hand list. In the dialog box which appears, make sure to select KML (KMZ is a compressed proprietary format, and consequently the end resulting file is not processable by anything apart google’s products)
2. Load the web interface of GpsBabel http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/
3. input file format is Keyhole Markup Language (KML); output file format is GPX XML - both support [W]aypoints [T]racks and [Routes]
4. Upload your file
5. Click convert…
6. Right click on the link provided, to save it on your hard drive
7. optionnal: have a look on the generated command - it’s always useful to get a nice introduction to the commandline. Especially once you know you will have sooner or later to have to go into it.
8. Use either GpsBabel or GpsConnect (only for waypoints) to upload the file to the device (which has been plugged and turned on before). GpsConnect use a specific menu for the upload command (gps action > upload waypoint / command u)