Managing GPS data with Projects in Topo USA

March 9, 2009

Recently there have been several questions about how to manage all of the GPS data that people collect while they are out exploring. The screenshot below shows how valuable it can be to store your GPS tracks, waypoints, and routes in an organized way for reference during future planning activities. This particular project contains all of the track and waypoint data for a canoe trip in Baxter State Park that a group of us at DeLorme have enjoyed over the years. You can see by the notes that Grand Lake Matagamon is very shallow in parts, making the track logs valuable records of successful paths… and some not so successful paths. The waypoints mark camp sites and other favorite attractions we’ve found over the years. I highly recommend  Second Lake camp site if you ever plan a trip of your own.

Baxter Canoe Trip

We use the term “project” in Topo USA to describe the file that stores the current map center and zoom level along with links to route, waypoint, track, and other draw files that have been added to the project. Project files are valuable—they let you organize related files like the yearly canoe tracks and waypoints shown in the Baxter example and return to them later for review and planning.

To create a new project, use the options available in Topo USA’s Map Files tab. Select File>New to ensure that no previous GPS data is present in the new project file.

Map Files options

Once you create a new project,  you can add existing data to the file by clicking the Map File tab’s Add option and selecting either Draw or Route.

Add Draw Files

You can also use the Draw and Route tabs to create new waypoints, tracks, and routes that you can later transfer to a PN-Series device.

Draw Options

By connecting your PN-series device to your computer, you can transfer  GPS data from the device to Topo USA with the Exchange dialog for use on your desktop. Consider using the “New>Waypoint or Track” options within the Exchange Dialog to better manage your data.

Exchange Dialog

Once you add the GPS data  to the project, you can manage the information in the Draw and Route tabs. Each track and waypoint layer appears in the File view—the More button exposes details for the data.

more-button

More Layer View

When finished editing, return to the Map Files tab to use the File menu and save your project. In this example I’ve saved the project as “Baxter Canoe Trip.”

Map Files Saved

You can use your project any time to review past outings, plan new trips, and send resulting waypoint, track and route information to your GPS device. Our Baxter Canoe Trip has repeatedly shown  the value a good planning process can bring to an expedition. Here are some photos from past years…

Getting ready... Paddling out...
Sunset on the lake... Sitting around the campfire...
Morning fog lifting... Camp is that way...
The explorers... Canoes on the shore...

They bring back fond memories of adventures with good friends… I can’t wait for spring!

Chip Noble
DeLorme

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Making Trail Maps with Topo USA and the Earthmate PN-40

October 11, 2008

Last Thursday I was able to share the joys of geocaching with a group of educators and students at the Governor’s Conference on Youth and the Natural World, part of Maine’s Take It Outside initiative.

I prepared for the event by creating a trail map of the University of Maine at Augusta’s trail system. This map was distributed to all of the attendees and the trail data was added to the Earthmate PN-40 devices that were used during the training.

I worked with Steve Engle from the Center for Community GIS in Farmington, ME during the geocaching sessions and also implemented some of his helpful trail mapping tips during the preparation. I’d like to share some of those tips along with other notes on how I used Topo USA and the Earthmate PN-40 to create the Take It Outside trail map.

Before arriving at the UMA trail system I downloaded the high resolution aerial imagery for the area to my device using NetLink’s Map Library. This imagery was very valuable because it showed all of the buildings in the area as well as some of the trails that I was planning to map!

    

As I began my trail data collection I configured my device to give me the most detail possible. I made sure that WAAS was enabled in Device Setup>System to improve the location accuracy of the device. I also confirmed that the Track Settings on the Track page were set to record points by distance with an interval of 10 feet and that a new track would begin recording when the current track was full. Finally I set the Map page to display the GPS Accuracy and Battery Life info fields so that I could monitor these values while gathering the data.

After I adjusted the settings on my PN-40 I began walking the trails at a casual pace, making sure to hold the device flat, giving the PN-40 the best view of the sky possible. When I approached trail intersections I used one of Steve’s suggestions and created waypoints to help remember areas that I would loop back on or need to return to later.

When I finished walking all of the trails I turned my PN-40 off and headed home to create the trail map in Topo USA.

My first action was to connect the PN-40 and use the Exchange Dialog to transfer the track and waypoint information from the GPS to the Topo USA map.

Here is a screenshot of Topo USA showing the raw track data and the intersection waypoints.

After the GPS data finished transferring I created a Trail layer so that I could clean up the track data and prepare it for use on the printed map and with the geocaching demo PN-40s. I expanded the Draw tab using the More button, right clicked the track segment, and chose Copy To>TrailLayer, where TrailLayer was the new layer I had just created. This changed the track to a trail line style making it look like the other trails in the Topo USA data. For those interested in routable user trails, this is also the approach you would use.

I proceeded to use the draw tools to clean up some of the trails. Areas where I overlapped my track or walked off the trail system unintentionally were corrected using Manage Draw right click commands like Break Line, Join Line, and Delete. In one particular area I walked a loop twice and then drew in a trail by hand to approximate the two tracks. I also used the Waypoint tool to create a Trailhead waypoint and an Augusta Civic Center waypoint. The Draw tab has many powerful tools to help edit and create data that can be used in printing and on the PN-40; Topo USA owners should use the Help to get more information.

After completing the trail edits I used the Handheld Export tab to create a Draw Layer map package with the new trail information. I then used the Exchange Dialog to send the trail map package and the new waypoints to the PN-40.

People attending the geocaching training found the additional trail information very useful when choosing which path to follow to get to a geocache. I’ve seen many cachers tackle challenging bushwhacks that could have been avoided by viewing trails on the GPS that are just out of site in the woods.

When creating the paper map we chose to use additional symbols and line styles to mirror the large sign at the UMA trailhead. I created a custom symbol set in Draw and chose colored line styles to complete the printed trail map data. I added the event sponsor logos and other print objects using the Layout Tools in the Print tab. I did use Photoshop to create a map legend by hand and then added it to the map using the Image tool. I also touched up one of the trail colors after saving the file from Topo USA; the sign had a multi-colored line… a feature request for Topo USA!

This is how the final map turned out… not bad for an afternoon of hiking and a few hours of map editing and print layout!

Post a comment if you’re interested in more details on how to make trail maps with your handheld GPS and Topo USA.

Chip Noble
Team DeLorme

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Hybrid Maps on the Earthmate PN-20

May 28, 2008

This weekend will find Team DeLorme taking part in our fourth annual Sunday River Training Ride… a two-day, 150-mile round trip ride from DeLorme in Yarmouth, ME to the Jordan Grand Hotel at Sunday River Ski Resort in Bethel, ME. Each year I ride with my Earthmate PN-20 to help with directions, record my track, and provide trip statistics to keep us on schedule. This year I will be adding color aerial imagery of Sunday River and turning on a new feature, Hybrid Maps, so that I can see the contours on top of the imagery and have a better feel for the terrain.

For those of you who have downloaded the 1.4 firmware update, (hopefully that’s all of you!) the Hybrid Maps option is available in Map Setup. Enabling the option turns off the land cover in the Topo USA data and layers the rest of the Topo USA data on top of the aerial imagery. Translation… it allows you to see the roads, contours, and labels on top of the imagery… very cool for visualizing terrain changes while seeing the details in the imagery. Keep in mind that this feature is only available above the .25 mile scale. Here are a couple of screen shots I took while playing back my track log from last year.

The final leg of the ride is a five mile stretch with over 1000 feet of vertical gain. It was torture after the first 70 miles but very rewarding once we reached the swimming pool! My heart rate hit 189 bpm right around the point in the previous screen shots… check out the change in elevation described in the contour lines– it was pretty steep!

Here’s a zoomed out screen shot showing the golf course where I should have been relaxing… The course is hidden by the trees and last year I couldn’t see it in the Topo USA data or I might have stopped before the 189 heart rate!

When we got back I displayed the track in Topo USA. It allowed me to create some great 3-D views while analyzing the athletic data I gathered with my Suunto heart rate monitor. There’s already a post about using GeoTagger to tie athletic data to a track; check it out if you’d like to learn more about how I profiled my heart rate and speed.

I hope this example of using the Earthmate PN-20 with aerial imagery and the Hybrid Maps option will give you some ideas about how you might use this feature on your own!

-Chip

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Tagging Photos with Location Using Topo USA

May 1, 2008

I got a chance to sneak away from the office for a long weekend last Friday. My college friend put together a fly fishing trip for steelhead on the Salmon River in Pulaski, New York. I took the Earthmate PN-20 and a SeaLife ECOshot camera along with me.

Since the GPS and the camera are both ruggedized I wasn’t worried about rain or dropping them or the potential swim. I carried the GPS in my left fly vest pocket and the camera in my right pocket. I turned the GPS on at the start of each day and then left it in my pocket to record my track. I used the SeaLife camera to take pictures of our fishing adventures… lots of casting, only a couple of fish, but still well worth it since the Salmon River is such a beautiful stretch of water. The fish were there — I had three great strikes with fish coming right out of the water… It’s that kind of excitement that keeps me coming back each year.

Once I got home, tagging the photos was as easy as copying the pictures from the ECOshot to my computer, viewing the PN-20 track in Topo USA, and running the GeoTagger tool. GeoTagger is a tool that compares the time/date stamp on the digital picture with the time/date stamps on the GPS readings in the track log. The tool creates your choice of a waypoint, a hyperlink, or an image note on the map so that you can see exactly where each photo was taken. It’s really amazing because the camera becomes your tool for creating waypoints. I didn’t have to take the GPS out each time we caught fish… the camera marked the time the fish was caught and GeoTagger matched the photo to the GPS track.

Helpful Tip: Synchronize the time/date on your GPS and on your camera before you start taking pictures!

We built the GeoTagger utility with the ability to create an offset in case the time/date of your camera did not exactly match the time/date of your GPS. What I’ve found is that it’s much easier to just take a few minutes before your trip to synchronize the time/date on both devices. View the Time/Date info field on the GPS and on the camera… set the camera a minute ahead of the GPS but wait to save the change until the GPS time has caught up with your pending camera time change.

Having the two devices synchronized removes the need to specify a time offset in GeoTagger and makes tagging very easy. Here’s a screen capture showing Topo USA with aerial imagery on the left, Topo USA data on the right, and two nice photos from our steelhead fly fishing trip on the Salmon River. I’ve uploaded the rest of the photos to our Team DeLorme Flickr site if you’re interested.

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