[OSM-newbies] GPS receiver recommendation

Mark Williams mark.666 at blueyonder.co.uk
Thu Mar 22 21:34:06 GMT 2007


On Thursday 22 Mar 2007 14:39, Robert Hart wrote:
> > Can anyone give me some recommendations as to what type I should be
> > looking at? Thanks very much in advance.
>
> I had a basic Garmin eTrex for a long time, which was relatively cheap,
> waterproof, reasonable on battery life. The only downside was that it
> has a limited memory for track points (can't really do more than one
> day's mapping) and takes forever to read the data over a serial port.
>
> I've upgraded to a Garmin eTrex Legend CX, which has the advantage of
> USB interface, and microSD card for storing points. Also it can display
> a basemap (which you can create from OSM data), which is very handy for
> filling in the gaps and otherwise checking previous data.
>
> Both work fine under Linux, using GPSBabel. The CX series can also be
> put into USB-mass storage mode to read data from the card.

I had a Vista, which worked, and now have a Vista Cx which doesn't; gpsbabel 
times out (I'm working on the why...).
It took me a fair while to work out that it uses /dev/ttyUSB, as the 
instructions I had said otherwise, but now I can get Unit ID, & waypoints to 
& fro, + mass storage mode. Downloading tracks just doesn't work for me; it 
doesn't even give a consistent error, alternating between 2 messages on 
subsequent tries. gpstrans has a similar problem, but hangs after receiving 
waypoints as well.
I keep meaning to try Mapsource with WINE.


Mark





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