Author Topic: GPX OR NOT GPX?  (Read 86410 times)

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #100 on: 12 May, 2019, 10:58:41 pm »
A well designed device knows you are following Leg 1 and where leg 1 and leg 2 intersect has no interest in placing you on Leg 2 because it isn't wasting battery and CPU cycles trying to match the whole route at once but has loaded up around 1km.

As probably the only person here who's written such an algorithm*, this is exactly what it does. Well, with a bit more complexity.

The first time the algorithm runs, it searches the whole route until it finds a point that is below the "on route" threshold (50m). It then continues searching for a better point. If it goes more than 1 km ahead of the best point that it's found without finding a better point, it gives up and declares the best point found is "where you are".

The second time the algorithm runs, it does the same thing but starts the search at the last identified best point on the route. If you are on route, this usually means it will only be searching the 1 km or so ahead. This makes the point strongly inclined to only ever move forward along the route (unless none of the points in that 1 km are within 50m, when it'll loop through the whole route).

If you set off in the wrong direction - for example, there's an out and back on the same road, and it guessed wrongly which you were on - you have to go 50m behind the "best point" before it figures out what's going on.

It doesn't remember the "best point" between reboots, so if you restart you'll get the first part of the track that matches, until the tracks diverge.

And note, I wrote all this not really to help with navigation, but because I wanted to provide a simple number for your distance along the route.

(On modern devices, having the whole route in memory and searching through it, even if it's 100,000 points, is a pretty negligible operation. Garmin 10,000 points limit is like something straight out of 1998)

* Shameless plug: https://bikegpx.com

wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #101 on: 13 May, 2019, 09:46:55 am »
I have Premium RWGPS so I don't have to use (sorry to pick on you) Wilkyboy's tracks which strip out actual routing info and replace with a control count down.

There's actually no right answer to this, fboab — both full of questionable turn-instructions, or instead just something more generally useful to audaxers, both are correct depending on your point of view.  FWIW, I asked RWGPS for the feature (apparently two of us asked within hours) to NOT add interminable cue points of questionable validity and usefulness to my TCX files, and they obliged. 

I use RWGPS' "Cue Points" for indications of control locations.  I think the only TCX files you've used of mine have been Hereward The Wake 300 and Richard Ellis Memorial 200: okay, on REM they're not so useful, but for the SIX infos on Hereward, at least three in the dark, then they make a LOT of sense!  I tend to reserve countdowns for infos only now — to get riders to heads-up for the question before they get there.

I am getting a bit of backspatter from Kazoo users whose device is so simple it can't actually do turn-by-turn routing itself.  As I don't use TBT myself, preferring to play Routesheet Bingo (I follow the routesheet — point to Garmin if it correctly tells me I'm off-course; point to me if it's wrong), then I'm relatively unsympathetic ... although looking into it, because I'm also an organiser; on ten chars, not an easy problem to solve.

On Garmin Edge devices, you get a screen showing a list of up-coming cue points and the distance to them — that means the control points give you distance-to-go, but these are completely lost if there are hundreds of TBT-instruction cues in there too.

AND, given that Garmins are limited to 10-characters-per-cue, which is what RWGPS exports, those TBT instructions are awful when on the device!
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wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #102 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:10:36 am »
You do need to understand every undocumented quirk of Garmins

No you don't, just the ones that are relevant to your workflow and likely to come up.

I'm with Kim on this. 

And don't let any Kazoo zealot tell you that their Beloved "just works" — no, it does not.  There are foilbles and quirks a-plenty over in la-la-land, just less mentioned.

The real edge-cases should be covered by your contingency plan for when your GPS receiver corrupts its storage / shears a battery contact / falls off and gets run over by a taxi / is stolen.  Which is probably similar to an non-GPS-user's contingency plan for when their routesheet blows away or is rendered unreadable in a freak BEER accident.

All of which is resolved by printing the routesheet onto waterproof paper using a laser printer, and taking it with you  :thumbsup:

Apart from the blowing-away part, which did happen to someone on one of my rides last year  :facepalm:
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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #103 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:21:32 am »
]

I call this the "which way to turn out of the station" problem...

A friend who turned up late to a 200, with just his Garmin for company, did manage to ride the entire event in reverse.  Being fast, it bothered him that he hadn't caught anyone within the first leg.  Eventually he encountered groups coming the other way, and the penny dropped.

FifeingEejit

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #104 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:22:53 am »
Can't decide if a Kazzoo is a Wahoo or a Karoo or a portmanteu.


wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #105 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:25:31 am »
I had misremembered my issue with RideWithGPS; as others have said, it only demands premium if one wants to download with waypoints. I stand by my "please don't use it" as waypoints make a huge difference. I'd happily pay a higher entry fee if organisers need to cover hosting expenses or anything like that, but it feels wrong to me to have a site profiting off the organiser's work that way.

Maybe my sense of justice is misaligned - if an organizer finds its a tool that adds value for them then I can live with that - but certainly it's not something I would favour as a rider.

RWGPS — and ALL other sites that use Google Maps underneath — have to pay The Borg somehow, and it's not spare change down the back of the sofa, it's serious money for a busy site.  "Profiting"? — more like covering costs. 

I use RWGPS a LOT (around 2000? routes plotted to date, some very long ones) so I pay my dues as an organiser, and I'm happy with the deal.
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wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #106 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:33:02 am »
Waypoints only make a difference to devices which recognise them.  I don't believe mine does.

In RWGPS, Waypoints are for GPX and Cue Points are for TCX.  And in Garmin, Waypoints are for legacy devices (eTrex et al), and Cue Points are for Edge devices (Garmin calls them Coursepoints).

Furthermore, Garmin Edge Devices beep and show the first 10 characters of the Description added in RWGPS for Cue Points.  Cues also appear on the map, although they're hard to see; Waypoints are completely ignored.  And eTrex and other legacy devices show Waypoints on the map but DON'T beep or do anything special with them; Cue Points are completely ignored.

So, Jibers, if you're using a Garmin Edge then you'd want TCX + Cue Points to get anything useful out of them.
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wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #107 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:40:32 am »
Can't decide if a Kazzoo is a Wahoo or a Karoo or a portmanteu.

 ;D

It's really any device that anyone gets overly excited about, on the verge of — or beyond — going religious about it.  For those people, I blow my kazoo in their general direction in disdain.  And, yes, that mostly includes newly converted Wahoo users, the most fanatical of the lot — just wait until you need to get your phone out in the rain to fix an issue ... ah, phone battery's dead, because it was hunting for signal in the middle of nowhere ...

There is no perfect solution to any of this, none of the formats are all-encompassing, especially not when we have to consider how we got here, i.e. all the legacy stuff still in use; ALL of the devices have foibles, quirks, limitations.  A LOT of the questions don't have a correct answer, they're "it depends".  Too many people think something that works for them works for everyone.  And a LOT of that has been going on in this thread, too.

Now, I know I left it around here somewhere, the tissue paper's probably gone soggy in the rain ...
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Pingu

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #108 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:47:57 am »
...And eTrex and other legacy devices show Waypoints on the map but DON'T beep or do anything special with them; Cue Points are completely ignored...

Waypoints can be set up with proximity alerts so eTrexen will beep at you.

wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #109 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:50:15 am »
...And eTrex and other legacy devices show Waypoints on the map but DON'T beep or do anything special with them; Cue Points are completely ignored...

Waypoints can be set up with proximity alerts so eTrexen will beep at you.

Good to know, thanks  :thumbsup:
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wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #110 on: 13 May, 2019, 10:57:24 am »
* Shameless plug: https://bikegpx.com

That looks pretty good as a backup to GPS-failure  :thumbsup:
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Phil W

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #111 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:01:27 am »
And eTrex and other legacy devices show Waypoints on the map but DON'T beep or do anything special with them; Cue Points are completely ignored.

No cigar for that comment.

The Etrex (and other modern units) can and do beep for waypoints if you set a proximity alarm and if you decide you want your GPS to do that.  Regardless of the beep it will put a full screen waypoint alert on your GPS screen  when you enter the boundary of your proximity alarm.   Proximity alarms can be set to trigger within a certain distance (regardless of which direction you approach from) of a waypoint; I usually opt for 100m.

My working method is to have waypoints with proximity alarms for all controls and use a single track unless the track crosses over itself in which case I split it to avoid tired brain confusion moments.  I make a note of which leg of the track to follow (this usually just means knowing whether to go left or right at a split if there is a short out and back) from the start to avoid the going round in reverse type scenario described by Ian.

Cue points are ignored because eTrex do not process Training Centre (TCX) or Course (CRS) files, the latter just being for all intents and purposes a subset of the TCX schema.

I do have a Bryton Rider 50 (that I got in 2013) sitting in the cupboard of disappointment. A feature I like on that is that it drew arrows along the length of the track you were following. 

FifeingEejit

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #112 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:03:08 am »
There is no perfect solution to any of this, none of the formats are all-encompassing, especially not when we have to consider how we got here, i.e. all the legacy stuff still in use; ALL of the devices have foibles, quirks, limitations.  A LOT of the questions don't have a correct answer, they're "it depends".  Too many people think something that works for them works for everyone.  And a LOT of that has been going on in this thread, too.

True, although I'll never fix a Wahoo problem at the roadside with my Nokia 6100...
But then I'm happy with breadcrumbs on a map and the simple linking it does.

The OP has specific needs from events due to PTSD, something we've wandered far away from!

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #113 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:09:51 am »
The OP seemed to want all Audax routes to be available as a GPX on this site. Which is why I started wondering about routes as intellectual property, and how that issue might be addressed.

Phil W

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #114 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:19:27 am »
I have just filtered (by GPX provision) all the events published in the Audax UK calendar. Of the 304 events listed, 159 of them have an organiser supplied GPX file. So there you go, 52% of Audax UK calendar events will have a GPX supplied by the organiser.

S2L

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #115 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:24:52 am »
I have just filtered (by GPX provision) all the events published in the Audax UK calendar. Of the 304 events listed, 159 of them have an organiser supplied GPX file. So there you go, 52% of Audax UK calendar events will have a GPX supplied by the organiser.

I was expecting a lot more... I've only ever done the BCM that doesn't provide one... although admittedly I steer clear of events if they don't provide a GPX and/or I can't find something remotely reliable online

It's to the organiser's loss to be honest and I really don't understand it... it takes 5 minutes to produce a GPX track and about 3 hours to produce a route sheet...

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #116 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:29:06 am »
RWGPS — and ALL other sites that use Google Maps underneath — have to pay The Borg somehow, and it's not spare change down the back of the sofa, it's serious money for a busy site.  "Profiting"? — more like covering costs. 

I use RWGPS a LOT (around 2000? routes plotted to date, some very long ones) so I pay my dues as an organiser, and I'm happy with the deal.

To the extent that RWGPS is making organisers' lives easier I'm happy to pay for it. What I object to is people telling organisers who've already made a GPX with waypoints (perhaps even paying for another tool to do so) that they should put it on RWGPS where riders will have to pay to download the (full-featured version of the) same file, rather than any number of free file hosting sites. That to me is RWGPS profiting from their market position rather than on the merit of whatever functionality they actually offer.

But shrug, I'm sure a subscription costs less than the printer ink I'd spend on routesheets. If there's a community consensus that RWGPS should be the standard then I can live with it.

FifeingEejit

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #117 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:35:57 am »
As a kazoo user the GPX file is useless to me as it'll just have to go on Rwgps to get on the thing. (as someone in the geekier category I'd rather have the option to direct upload by file but totally understand why you wouldn't implement that for the 1% of users that want it)

Do the newer garmin devices still allow file upload direct to internal storage or are they too simplifying devices?

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #118 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:43:08 am »
I have just filtered (by GPX provision) all the events published in the Audax UK calendar. Of the 304 events listed, 159 of them have an organiser supplied GPX file. So there you go, 52% of Audax UK calendar events will have a GPX supplied by the organiser.

I bet most of the 48% either email a GPX to entrants or supply a RWGPS link or similar.

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #119 on: 13 May, 2019, 11:53:32 am »
There are also legacy routes online, such as this LEL 2005.
https://www.bikemap.net/en/r/13850/

I've never used GPS, as I always had video camera batteries as a priority, and there's only so much charging I want to think about. The online mapping is useful though, as it shows the likely effect of wind direction.

wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #120 on: 13 May, 2019, 12:21:21 pm »
And eTrex and other legacy devices show Waypoints on the map but DON'T beep or do anything special with them; Cue Points are completely ignored.

No cigar for that comment.

Indeed, but now I know  ::-)  FWIW, my GPX files DO include Waypoints for controls, as well as TCX have Cue Points for controls.

As for you other comments about splitting for "out and back" sections, absolutely  :thumbsup:
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wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #121 on: 13 May, 2019, 12:26:30 pm »
I have just filtered (by GPX provision) all the events published in the Audax UK calendar. Of the 304 events listed, 159 of them have an organiser supplied GPX file. So there you go, 52% of Audax UK calendar events will have a GPX supplied by the organiser.

Yebbut, I specifically DON'T provide a GPX via AUK's site, but I DO provide GPX + TCX in numerous splits (including all-in-one) and in different point-counts on my website suitable for [nearly] every device, which IS linked from AUK's site.  Mebbe I'm the only one, so making it 160; or maybe all the missing 145 events do the same?

Unfortunately, the resultant "52%" in your final assertion is incorrect — it should be "at least 52%".
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Phil W

Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #122 on: 13 May, 2019, 12:28:59 pm »
Ah ok, 52% of organisers indicate that they will supply a GPX file based on the event facilities listed on aukweb.  This was not based on whether a GPX was loaded on aukweb just whether the event facilities indicate a GPX will be provided.   If an organiser will supply a GPX but they have not indicated this for their event then they will be excluded from that 52%. 

You'd hope organisers providing GPX would know to indicate this in the facilities for their events.

wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #123 on: 13 May, 2019, 12:29:15 pm »
Do the newer garmin devices still allow file upload direct to internal storage or are they too simplifying devices?

Yes, they do. 

When I show people how, they're rather surprised at how simple it is compared to having to jump through hoops uploading to somewhere then linking to, and finally downloading to device they would otherwise have to do. 

I have never bothered with the hand-holding way, but then I'm like that.
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wilkyboy

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Re: GPX OR NOT GPX?
« Reply #124 on: 13 May, 2019, 12:30:48 pm »
Ah ok, 52% of organisers indicate that they will supply a GPX file on the event details listred on aukweb.  This was not based on whether a GPx was loaded on aukweb just whether the events indicate a GPX will be provided.   If an organiser will supply a GPx but they have not indicated this for their event then they will be excluded from that 52%

Penny drops — yes this, and that also answers a concern I had with Manotea's filter-request.  Absolutely, my apologies, you're correct  :-[  :thumbsup:
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