Online GPS track log viewer
 

A while ago I posted a message about a flight planning site I'd built. I got a great response here, so following a suggestion from a user, I've added a new feature - a GPS track log viewer.

Plain text files exported from Garmin GPS units can be uploaded to the site and the track will be overlaid on a map. Graphs of altitude and groundspeed are also shown. By linking a track log with a route plan, you can see them side by side.

If you have Google Earth, you can add a network link to your goFLYING profile, so track logs and route plans will be shown on a 3D map.

Most of this functionality is available elsewhere, so I've also added the ability to share track logs and plans with friends. By marking one or more of your files "shared", you can let other people see them on the site or in Google Earth. Only you can edit or delete them.

Site homepage

Examples:

2D map and graphs
Demo KML file (Add this as a network link in Google Earth)
User homepage

It's very early days for this feature - I've tested it with all the available track logs but I don't know for sure that it will work for everyone - so I'd be very grateful for any ideas for improvements. I hope some people will find it useful!

Dave

'chuffin 'eck. That looks quite neat some of the stuff on there, the ability to view a map... and click on it and ... ooooh I'm going to have to play about with that. Well done - looks pretty good. :ok:

Dave

Excellent site. And, by a quirk of coincidence you have saved me many hours of development as I sit here with my Google Earth and Google Maps API, writing my ASP.NET application to do *exactly* what you have there - even including the sunrise calculator ;-)

So, I'll down tools now and simply go to your excellent site for future reference.

How about a W&B calculator? That could also be useful.

Great minds... ;)

I enjoyed doing the Google Earth/Maps stuff because their APIs are a pleasure to use. You should definitely give it a try anyway. It's all the code behind the scenes (currently 600 files!) that takes the time.

If there was anything you were going to do with yours that you think I should add to mine, let me know. The W&B calculator is a good idea, I'll have a think about that.

Thanks for your kind comments!

Dave

This could be very useful to the guys at AAIB.

I'm intrigued - what would they use it for?

Dave, it's excellent - really impressed!

I have registered.

Andy

Dave

I'll mail you directly at goflying.org in the coming days to give some feedback and suggestions and stuff that I'm currently working on.

BTW - I'm currently having a play on my BlackBerry - Looks good!

How should I go about viewing the track-log from my GPS III Pilot? I have tried saving then uploading text files which come from somethign I d/loaded called "GPS TrackMaker" but these didn't work... is there some other piece of software I should use to extract the track info from the GPS III?

And it seems like there is no altitude info included with the track info I have extracted from the GPS - is that a limitation of the GPS III Pilot?

Thanks,


Andy :ok:

Hi Andy,

The files you've uploaded aren't the same as the ones the site understands at the moment but they're easy to work with so I'll PM you when I've added support.

I don't know whether the lack of altitude information is a limitation of your GPS - does anyone else here have one?

Hi Dave
I too have tried to upload a track from a GPSIII , I downloaded the track from the GPS into G7ToWin (www.gpsinformation.org/ronh/g7towin.htm)
and then saved it as a text file but I got the same error message as Andy.

Hope you can sort it as it looks like a very cool way of looking at were I've been !

Regards

Peter

Each 3rd party GPS Utility is likely to store extracted data in it's own proprietory format.

Dave, what Utility should we be using to extract data in the format that your site currently expects?

Thanks for a great resource, by the way!

RC

I'm suprised at the variety of different files that have been uploaded. I can write interpreters for them, but it will take a few days. I'll post updates here as I work on it and email people directly.

The G7ToWin format seems okay and won't take too long, but those that came from Pilot IIIs don't have altitude info. Am I right in thinking the Pilot III doesn't store it or were there just not enough satellites in view?

The current interpreter is based on logs recorded on a GPSMAP96 and exported as plain text files.

There were plenty of satellites in view during my flight yesterday - so I think it's a case of the GPS III Pilot not recording height information in the track log :(

Andy

Does anyone know if alt data is STORED on the Garmin 196. It is displayed in the pilot III but not stored.

A very good site.

However, worth mentioning that there are various ways to display a GPS log. Navbox will accept data, as will Flitestar, Memory Map, Oziexplorer.

The most common data is just a text file containing what is called NMEA sentences.

For those that use G7ToWin to save track files from their GPS, I have now added support. It won't interpret the CSV version (hopefully that will follow in a day or so) but works with all the plain text files I had to test.

I'll be watching for files that can't be interpreted and adding support for them.

Cool - just to confirm, is that the one that can be downloaded here: http://www.gpsinformation.org/ronh/g7towin.zip ?

Thanks,

Andy

That's the one. Let me know if you have any problems, it's possible the format might be slightly different between versions but I can fix it easily.

Thanks Dave, managed to get my GPS track uploaded using G7ToWin.

That really is amazing - excellent work. Thank you very much!

RC