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mapping it up

July 30th, 2007 by nebhead

All my thanks go to Pat for showing me how to get the data off of my Garmin ForeTrex 201 and insert it into Google Earth. It produced beautiful products like this and this of both the Deschutes day hike in Oregon and the Cathedral Lake backpacking trip in Yosemite. I’m going to use this on all my future trips.

For those of you who want to try this at home, this may be useful. I installed GPSBabel on my Linux box today and was able to quickly grab data off of my Garmin ForeTrex 201 using the following:

gpsbabel -t -w -i garmin -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F out.gpx

(For windows users that have USB cables try :usb instead of /dev/ttyUSB0. If you have a serial cable, try COMx where x=the COM port you’ve connected your GPS device to.)

Then I installed Google Earth (used Automatix for Ubuntu), but unfortunately it’s an older version than what is available for Windows so the GPX functionality hasn’t yet been introduced. Fortunately, however, there is an alternative. Google Earth also accepts a KML (KeyHole Markup Language) format which is easily created with GPS Babel. Just type the following.

gpsbabel -i gpx -f in.gpx -o kml -F out.kml

Once you do this, drag the KML file into Google Earth and blam-o, you’ve got a map. I was perplexed at first because my data wasn’t showing up, but remembered later that Pat mentioned a time-slider bar. Sure enough, at the top of the screen is the time slider and all I needed to do was slide that baby over to the right. All the data, was right there. Enjoy.

8/2/2007 – UPDATE: I’ve added some altitude charts to the gallery here and here. Also, my brother Dave has put together a YouTube video of our Deschutes trip using pictures and video from both of our cameras.


This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 11:05 pm and is filed under camping, tech, travel, updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “mapping it up”

  1. Gravatar Suzyness Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 7:25 am

    Can’t wait for next summer! Without the CPA exam looming over me, I’ll have a lot more time to hike & camp – we’ll fill your gps device with trips :)

  2. Gravatar sharaun Says:
    August 2nd, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    Great video! Good to see Dave still rockin’ the ‘stache. I can’t believe how much gear you fit in those boats.

  3. Gravatar andras Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 2:12 am

    Hi,

    I have a foretrex 201 too, but can’t figure out how to download the data. I tried linux (ubuntu feisty) and winxp too with and without serial/usb adapter, but always says “can’t init” when I try your command. Could you please write it down exactly how you managed to download the data?

    Thanks in advance:Andras

  4. Gravatar ben Says:
    September 19th, 2007 at 8:30 am

    Hey Andras – I use this command on my Ubuntu box and it works great every time. Make sure the ForeTrex is ON and connected to your computer via the serial cable. I’m using a Serial to USB adapter with the Garmin data cable. I don’t have a serial port on my computer so I am forced to use the adapter. If you have a similar setup you should check your //dev directory to see if your USB adapter is working. If you’re using a serial port, you can try to replace the /dev/ttyUSB0 with COMx where x is your COM port number.

    gpsbabel -t -w -i garmin -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F out.gpx

    Good luck!