[gps-talkusers] Creating Useful Routes
- From: Michael May <mikemay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 19:15:01 -0700
Jana,
When you are recording waypoints in a route, it doesn't matter if you
take a side trip to mark something else as a point of interest. Just
return to your route and record the next relevant waypoint when it is time.
If the automatic route doesn't suit you, you can edit it and insert
manual waypoints as well. How to do that exactly is explained in the manual.
We also explain in the manual about the distance to intersections.
The intersection is the point in the middle of the two intersecting
streets. That means that you could be standing at one corner and be
50 feet from the center of the intersection. Add 30 feet GPS
inaccuracy and you are now up to 80 feet away. Add to that the fact
that the street itself may be off by 20 feet and you are at 100 feet in total.
The accuracy of street data varies from town to town but is usually
within 10 to 20 feet. It is off by 50 feet around my neighborhood.
This doesn't tend to bother me because it is pretty clear when I
reach a curb, which street I am standing near even if the GPS says it
is 100 feet away. If I stand for 30 seconds or so, that number may
drop. These are nuances you get used to over time so you aren't
worried about precision as much as you are about knowing that you are
indeed at Brown street and not green street.
The manual route creation we added in version 3.3 were specifically
geared toward marking sidewalks and routes across campus. It will
take some practice for you to record waypoints in the ideal locations
and to mark them with useful descriptions. Once you record it
correctly, following is pretty precise. We try to cover this in the
manual. This is not something that is covered in the audio tutorial,
which is more general on most topics.
If we have missed some of your questions, perhaps you could ask one
or tow at a time so it is easier to keep the thread clear.
Mike
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
Michael G. May
CEO Sendero Group
Developers and distributors of BrailleNote GPS
Distributing BrailleNote, VoiceNote, Miniguide, The Tissot Silen-T
tactile watch, Talks cell phone software and the ID Mate, bar code reader
MikeMay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.SenderoGroup.com
(1-888-757-6810, Fax (530) 757-6830, Mobile (530) 304-0007
Sendero Group, LLC
1118 Maple Lane, Davis, CA 95616-1723, USA
Latitude, 38 33 9.239 North
Longitude, 121 45 40.145 West
Other related posts:
