[gps-talkusers] Re: Creating Useful Routes

  • From: "Dave" <dwgordon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 17:49:52 -0700

Hi Jana,

Your note is a long one.  I will offer some of my opinions and we can hope for 
help from more experienced users too.  Basically you asked some routing 
questions, and some about the accuracy of the GPS.

A point of interest does not need to be part of a rout so if you want the 
dormitory that you may never visit to be a POI so if you arrive at it, you will 
know you are not where you want to be, you could designate it as such without 
it not being part of any rout.  If you do that you would always be able to find 
it and create a rout to it if you wanted to in the future.  In the case of 
diagonal sidewalks though, you might try switching your heading to clock mode 
so you can see the angle you are traveling at and you may never find that 
residence hall you don't wish to visit.

I am not totally sold on the absolute accuracy of any GPS at this point so I 
may be corrected on this but I don't think you could create a rout accurate 
enough to tell you when to cross a street because of available sidewalk.  I 
believe that GPS will help you find the corner you are looking for and after 
that, it's up to you to make the best decisions that meet your needs.  

I believe that the GPS is more than a gadget.  For example, you should never 
get lost again, but if you should find yourself off rout, you should be able to 
find your way back independently, which is a heck of a good thing.  I don't 
think the GPS is accurate in distances to the next street, but it will always 
tell you what the next street is going to be before you reach it.  That is why 
I don't believe that WAAS technology is very helpful to us.  I don't think it's 
as much GPS accuracy as it is the maps.  For example, I could walk up and down 
the street in front of my house all day long and it will never give the correct 
street number, it just isn't there.  However, once I created a POI called home, 
it fines home with no problem, but if I check the GPS to see what address I am 
near, it will still not be correct unless I name the street number as my home, 
as part of the POI information, then it will give me that information unless I 
ask specifically what address I am near, then GPS will default to the maps, and 
it will not be correct, but I will be home, which is where I want to be.  

I believe, for example, that if one marks their car as a POI so they can find 
it in a large [parking lot when they are finished shopping that it's possible 
that they could walk around within 30 feet of their car, looking for it for a 
while.  However, if one forgot where they parked GPS would get them headed in 
the right direction and within 30 feet or less of the car, so if one has one of 
those remote horn buttons you would certainly be close enough to find the car 
by sound.  

Hope this helps some, and I too look forward to comments from others.

Dave 

To read about the next Peace Seekers meeting click on the link below.

http://www.ThePeaceSeekers.org/program/


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jana Schroeder 
  To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 2:05 PM
  Subject: [gps-talkusers] Creating Useful Routes


  Hello,

  I am new to GPS and am just beginning the process of learning how to create 
and edit routes.  i work at a small college on a residential campus with many 
meandering sidewalks and thrange intersections.  It seems that whenever a new 
building has been constructed, they have added sidewalks but never taken any 
existing sidewalks out.  plus, I have seriously been told that decisions about 
where to place new sidewalks have been made by observing the most common paths 
taken by people who cut through the grass.  In any case, there are a number of 
tricky spots, and if one gets onto a different sidewalk than the one intended, 
a person can end up in a completely different location on campus than expected. 
 So you can imagine that I am excited about the prospect of creating many 
routes and points of interest to help me more reliably navigate around campus.  

  I already have several questions that I imagine some of you more experienced 
folks can help with.

  First, I am wondering what strategies people have used to create routes and 
points of interest.  By that  I am wondering if people generally go around an 
area and create a bunch of points of interest and then go back and record 
routes taking them from place to place that they need to go or do they do it 
the other way around or do they just record the points of interest as they go.  
Here's an example to illustrate what I mean.  I was creating a route today from 
the building I work in to my home which is a few blocks from campus.  There is 
one place where two sidewalks split apart.  If you accidentally stay on the 
right fork instead of taking the left, you will end up at a residence hall.  I 
don't normally visit this residence hall so probably don't need a route to it, 
but it would be helpful to have it designated as a point of interest so if I 
accidentally approach it I will be alerted as to where I am.  I thought for a 
minute about walking over to the dorm today to record the POI but then realized 
that this little detour would then be part of the route I was recording and 
wondered if that meant that if I didn't take the same detour every time I was 
in the route I'd be told I was off course.  So it would be helpful to know how 
others have approached this.

  I also wonder how people have designated turns where you need to cross a 
street in one direction and then cross the other street in order to get to the 
corner you want to proceed on.  I have read that you don't want t oput two 
waypoints too close together.  So what do I do if I come to an intersection and 
want to turn left, cross the street and then turn right and cross again and 
then turn left to proceed down the block.  There are some intersections where i 
only cross in a certain way because it's not a perfect intersection and/or 
there are not sidewalks on all corners or some other feature that makes it a 
better idea to cross in a certain way tha nin another.  How do people handle 
this when creating a route?  Also, if the right/left/straight designation is 
off, is this what will trigger the GPS to say that you are off your route or is 
that based on how you walk when you are recording the route regardless of what 
you specified when asked straight, left or right?

  Finally, I have noticed that even when the GPS says it is getting good 
satellite reception i am being told that the next intersection is 198 feet 
ahead when, by my estimation, it is more like 50 feet ahead.  It's my 
understanding that by changing if the announcement is made sooner or later this 
is based on the GPS's guess about how far you are from an intersection or POI, 
but if the accuracy of the distance from the intersection or POI seems to be 
considerably off, is there anything to be done about that?  Do some cities have 
information that is just 'off" or what?

  In terms of creating a route, do I need to specify a destination and, if so, 
should I do that before starting out or once I get there or do I only do that 
if I want to have the program create an automatic route for me?

  is there any way besides traveling the route over and over to make a certain 
sequence part of multiple routes?  In my situation, I walk to work via a 
different route than that generated if I do an automatic route from my house to 
the campus because there are not sidewalks on many parts of streets around here 
so i have to take that into consideration.  Thus, I want to have routes from my 
house to a number of different points on campus.  Can I take the part of the 
route that is common to all and somehow drop it into other routes?  If it 
involves route editing, I'd appreciate some specific instructions on how people 
have done this--if it is typically done sitting down in one place or if you do 
it as you'r ewalking on the route or if that depends, then what factors are 
involved in deciding what method to use?

  I apologize for so many different questions in one message.  I hope that 
folks can help with each of these areas as I want this to be more than an 
interesting gadget which is what it will be if I can't figure out how to create 
quality routes.

  Thanks,
  Jana Schroeder 

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