[gps-talkusers] Re: Creating Useful Routes

  • From: Michael May <mikemay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 17:20:56 -0700

Jana,

You cannot copy and paste routes to each other. You can only copy and paste points within a route.

If a route has points in close proximity, you should turn on the Force Sequential mode so the subsequent waypoints do not trigger prematurealy.

Mike

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


----- Original Message ----- From: <mailto:jlschroeder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>Jana Schroeder To: <mailto:gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>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



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: