[gps-talkusers] Re: Creating Useful Routes
- From: "Jana Schroeder" <jlschroeder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 19:44:34 -0500
Hi Dave,
Thanks. These comments are helpful, and I, too, hope others will chime in.
Just to clarify, I wasn't expecting the GPS to help identify where sidewalks
are available. I was bringing this up in two regards. First, how do people
handle creating a route in which they need to make several turns in close
proximity as in the case of needing to cross both streets when one comes to
an intersection and then perhaps needing to make a turn once on the correct
corner in order to be heading down the block one wants to travel down next.
Second, I was asking about whether one can create an alternate route to one
that would be provided if one asked the GPS to automatically create a route
and then if that manually created route can be appended to other routes so
that one can follow the manually created route and at the end travel
(depending on the route one has open) to a variety of different locations
that are possible after getting to that point. Don't know if that makes
things any clearer or not.
Thanks,
Jana
-----Original Message-----
From: gps-talkusers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:gps-talkusers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Dave
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 7:50 PM
To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [gps-talkusers] Re: Creating Useful Routes
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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