Discussion: Forerunner 405 - Route Gadget

Is it possible to download 405 route to Route Gadget? A few months ago, I remember someone told me that Garmin was going to develop software that will compatible with RG. Please help me.....

I don't think you can do it directly (I'm sure Jagge will correct me otherwise...) at the moment. Probably easiest to do it using a gpx file, which means you need software like SportTracks - http://www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks/ - to download the Garmin to, then export as a gpx. The upload to Routegadget is pretty easy once you have that.

All you need is some program to export the file into .GPX.

I personally use Quick Route since I use it to evaluate my race as well.

I use SportsTracks to download my course from my 405, and then upload my course as a .gpx to my desktop and then retrieve it off my desktop from Routegadget. The only pain is adjusting the .gpx file to the course map, which can take some time because the initial file only has 3 random way points to initially position your map, and the scale is not really close. You can add points in the second step and match it to the control points.

Maybe it's a British "thing" but when I download a .gpx file from the 405 via SportTracks and import it into RouteGadget it's HOPELESS - the track is never anywhere near the map - so, what's the point? Of the two or three I persevered with I had to manually adjust so many points ( after eventually being able to drag the track onto the map ) that it seemed as though it was far easier to manually input the route into RG. It would obviously be a totally different story if the initail track was anything like a match for the RG map - but, as I said, in my ( British ) experience - it's not!!

In RG you cant get your track automagically appear in place with 0 efforts. The map in RG is not attached to real world GPS coordinates (georeferenced ?). Therefore to get your track on map in right place and in proper scale you should provide a few maching points. If GPS log or orienteering map is inaccurate then you will have to tweak it even more. If thats too hard then sure thing you can draw all your route manually but then it wouldn't be GPS recorded track anymore. You probably will loose all precious details of your run that could be captured by device also.

Affine Transformation (first step) is powerfull, but some people find it difficult to handle. Google Affine Transformation to see what it actually is about.

But if you can't handle it, just skip it. Do like this:
- at first dont change anything, just press ok. You'll get 3 new blue points: start, end and one point at the halfway of the route.
- if middle point is too close to the start or finnish, add first new point far from start and finish and then remove the original halfway point (you may have to zoom close to be able to hit the point). At this point the whole route can be far from the map.

- zoom out, then drag start to start, finish to finish and the third point where it is supposed to be. Don't add any new poins yet.
- zoom and pan around and drag those tree points again until you can't get it any better. Route should be now as well placed as it can be without hand editing it in parts.
- if you like to adjust one short error somewhere, add 3 points: one before the error, one aftet it and then third point in between. edit only the third one. Like this the rest of the route wil not be changed too much.

Note, never use more than 3 points untill it is "right". Additional points are just for editing gps and map errors here and there. Quite often you don't need more than 3 points. If you add extra points before you have placed it right, you and up hand editing the whole route.

I'll give it a go and report back! - b.t.w. "Affine Transformation " - googled - and TOTALLY lost me - bit like Orienteering really!! ;)

Note, never use more than 3 points untill it is "right". Additional points are just for editing gps and map errors here and there. Quite often you don't need more than 3 points. If you add extra points before you have placed it right, you and up hand editing the whole route.

Thank for your direction on this. I have to admit that I have used very loose placements of my initial points for previous events, so I have to spend lots of time making fine adjustments. I will use your suggested procedure for my next input and see if I am able to achieve success with less adjustments.

Hey all of you are BIG help to explain me how to setup my GPS into RG. I already did 2 of my routes in few minutes ago. Now, I seems understand fully to use with 3 points. Soon, I am going to teach my wife to use it. God bless to have AP! ;-) Thanks!

BIG improvement! - Deleted mid-point and placed new 3rd spot at a location easily identified. Dragged start, new mid-point and finish onto map. Zoomed in to locate 3 points more accurately then added obvious deviations ( usually control marker locations ) as a "tweak". Think my initial attempts were thwarted by trying to add too many points before dragging into place - anyway - MUCH happier with the process now - C H E E R S !!

Do Jagge's recommendations also apply to route/map merging in QuickRoute?

Thanks for the explanation Jagge.

I have trouble with affine transformation. Typically, the only transformations I want to apply are translation, rotation, and uniform scaling. To first-order approximation, no shearing is needed.

With three points on the map, whenever one point is moved, the algorithm inevitably applies a shearing transformation which I do not want. I would find things much easier if the default setup included just two points instead of three.

I often accomplish this by skipping the first step and moving directly to the second step. Now I delete the central point, so I can manipulate the map with just two handles. I like this, because shearing no longer occurs.

Unfortunately, because the second step does not allow you to delete the start and end points, this doesn't work very well if the start and finish are located close to each other.

I wonder if these problems are caused by maps that are not geo-referenced. (In other words related to a real-world coordinate system.) When I import a GPS track into my OCAD maps, it knows exactly where to go, no fitting is required. But then, I have had to do lots of work fixing old maps so that various distortions are removed...

It is just bad & missing instructions. If one knows how to do it, it doesn't take long to get it right, even if map image is taken with digital camera on kitchen table and has lots on distortions. You can even have several maps on same jpg image (event with map change) in different scale and put same route on both of them. Like this one:
http://www.routegadget.net/gpsoblog/cgi-bin/reitti...
Map image like this can't be georeferenced. But it really doesnt take more than a minute or two to put a track on it if you dontä use too many points (here 3 per map + point to separate those two loops = total 7 points).

Questions about SportTracks software. I have already download it and use it fine but my wife wants to use it. I couldn't figure out how to add her into SportTracks. Is there a way to add more than one runners?

other tasks > open logbook > create new logbook

Got it! and Thanks!
Jagge... I am not sure it is you that you and your family were here in Maryland USA during summer of 2007. You and your wife joined our o' club QOC?

No.

I haven't used it, but Martin Flynn's Or software
http://orienteering.ie/wiki/doku.php?id=or:index
can produce output like this
http://orienteering.ie/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=g...

provided you start your GPS at the start and use SI and put the controls in the right place :)
I guess it cuts up your route into pieces based on your split times. The start and end point for each piece is a control.
Simple but smart. No great need for manual adjustment.

If you have a colour printer at the event, you can print out map, route and splits within a couple of mnutes of finishing.

And one-click uploading to RG.

Right. And as far as i understand, the rest of the Ór is at least as smart as that part. Really worth checking out.

I am sorry for asking. Usually I can figure something like this out, but I'm tired and nothing seems to google up. Sorry again.

For the rogaine we just held, the map was drafted in UTM, the accuracy is excellent, when I open the staff and competitors' GPX in OCAD the routes go within a fraction of a meter of each checkpoint. My IOF-XML file for the event also is UTM. What can I do, as the organizer, to make it easier for the competitors to upload their tracks to RG and not have to play with the adjustment excessively?

I got the latest RG. I created the event and adjusted the checkpoint locations. I see that there is "Georeference event's map with GPX file:" which gives me two options, (Georef missing) Map and (Georef missing) Event. When I select Map, not much happens after a long load; I get another window that doesn't seem to present any options for adjustment (unless I click GPS, which asks for yet another GPX file; I didn't try that). If I select Event, same thing. Does anyone have suggestions? (Of course I can just leave things as they are, which kinda defeats the element of having all source data nicely georeferenced in the first place.)

Select map or event and gpx file from your hard drive. Then press "go" button. Zoom yout, you should see track with three blue dots. Drag those points around, when route is placed right press "ok" ( funny placed on top of map ..) Then it should save georeferencing for that event and other events using the same map file.


Or at least that's about how it should work.

Anyway, it doesn't handle several hours long rogaine tracks well or at all, so you may be out of luck anyway. RG was intended for orieteering use only.

Their rogaine was only 8 hours, so it should still work. I think the key bit is zooming out to find the GPS track you're using to georeference it - I find RG usually throws the route up above and left of the map.

It works very well in my experience (and my users love not having to do gross alignment themselves) but it can be confusing when it presents you with a map and the GPS route is nowhere in sight. :)

It worked, eventually. I tried two tracks; the first one didn't produce the track or the blue dots. Perhaps it was too large.

Still, perhaps there should be an easier/automatic way, especially if I know the UTM coordinates of my controls. Perhaps if the IOF-XML course file has UTM coordinates, the georeferencing should be automatic. The issue is that no course-setting program that I know generates a course file with the georeferencing, but they should—the markup is part of the IOF XML standard. I just generated this file by hand/Excel.

OCAD 10 has the function Course > export courses (GPX format). That works very nicely (if the ocad map is georeferenced) . You can load that into Google Earth and fly over your course, load into your GPS or do whatever you want with GPS Utility, and other such programs.