With an assortment of commercial GPS - devices are available on the website of "accepted" that "nests" in the walls of the Moscow Aviation Institute. By its tenth anniversary, "Princeton" has released a gift set of two multimedia CD-ROM, on GPS in general and of themselves, loved ones, in particular. If desired, with their contents can be found.
Of all the rich set of devices, I will focus on four that are of sufficient representative sample in terms of psionovladeltsa. One can imagine psionovladeltsa, zarulivayuschego on light aircraft or ramming the gateway to the heavy barge, but this rich functionality is beyond the scope of the review. Let us dwell on psionovladeltsah (or GPS-owners) walking and driving. For these categories of citizens are of interest:
- A device that is installed on a car dashboard, which has its own graphic display (color or monochrome), the possibility of casting a variable card details as needed, meals on-board vehicle network, the output to an external device, such as, Psion;
- A device worn in the hands, which has its own monochrome display, the ability to fill variable card details, powered by batteries and output to an external device;
- A device worn in the hands, which has its own monochrome screen, no built-in maps and how they die, powered by the battery output to an external device;
- A device thrown into a car under the windscreen, which has no display, power from on-board vehicle network, the yield on the Psion.
GARMIN StreetPlanner and Color Map GARMIN GPS III Plus
Common in these devices is the ability to use external flash memory cards for loading additional mapping. Like all garminovskoe, flash cards have a unique shape and topography of the terminal, ie, with garminovskimi products can only be used garminovskie accessories. There are flash cards with 8 or 16 MB. The size of the territory, which can be placed on a flash depends on the level of detail map. Maps from GARMIN to describe a device that there are three levels of detail: WorldMap (WM), Roads & Recreations (RR) and Metroguide (MG). To load the card into the device should be put on the desktop program shell (of course, from GARMIN), then choose from a menu map of the required detail (if available). The installation process is invited to designate a map, while showing the amount of memory required. At 8 MB granularity WM climbs almost all Western and Central Europe without protruding all around the peninsulas and the European part of Russia, including the route to Vyborg and Brest. Map accuracy is not guaranteed. As written by GARMIN, they guarantee the accuracy of U.S. maps, and everything else opredeleyaetsya accuracy of cartographic material. Personal impressions are as follows: Germany and Scandinavia get quite decently, up to the newly built roads.France pretty low quality: a real road from Lyon to Strasbourg, sometimes held in 15 kilometers from the picture. But this is an outstanding example. Moscow consists of the Moscow Ring Road, Garden Ring, and numbered routes within the city. New Riga highway, for example, are absent. Accuracy of drawing Moscow - up to 2 km. And some parts of the same ideal. Perhaps the new Ring Road is not paved, as would GARMIN (joke). In the initial delivery of the device are European and American. The European map of Europe pre-installed, and the U.S. - one, two, three ... That's right, preinstalled map of the United States. A place in Moscow - smooth yellow box. So without the flash card and external software is necessary. Of the interesting features are the following: on-board computer, allows you to measure distance, shows the current speed (much more accurate speedometer checked with automatic radar), measures the average rate of discharge prior to discharge, and only while driving, while on the move and the time at bus stops, reached maximum speed. While the map shows the position of the machine on the ground and draws the traversed path (somewhere around 300 miles ago). You can play with themselves in a snake devouring counter roadside police and getting from this long. The main thing - do not cross your own trail (another joke). This feature is extremely useful in a strange city, when dropped in the wrong direction. According to its own tracks, like a boy-in-law, you can always get back on track. Levels of zoom very much, something like 100 m, 200 m, 300 m, 500 m 1 km 2 km 3 km, 5 km, 8 km, 10 km, 15 km, 20 km, 30 km, 50 km , 100 km, 200 km in half an inch. System of measures chosen by the user. Hours are absolute, ie are taken from the satellite and the user only puts zonal bias. Automatically determined by the time of sunrise and sunset, and the unit switches to day and night color schemes (yellow or black background). At stops machine "remembers" where she was going (a significant advantage in comparison with software for Psion). Device prefers to eat from the onboard network, after the ignition is turned off automatically shuts off after 30 seconds if the time does not interfere. 4 AA batteries used as backup power at the pump, for example, but allows only 2-3 hours. After turning on the initialization process takes up to 3 minutes, which is why at the pump is better to use batteries instead of off. There is an amusing screen position of satellites in the visible part of the sky. In this case, marked by active satellites and poorly visible satellites. The device is self-diagnose positioning accuracy and promises to 7.4 m at 9 active satellites, 15-20 m at 8.7 satellites and from 30 to 100 m, with fewer satellites. The number of visible satellites depends strongly on the visibility of the sky: in the open field there are no problems, and in Petersburg court, the well instrument is likely to send for Raskolnikov. The illustrations below are screen shots of various maps detailing. The following illustration shows the screen shots of various maps detailing. The first image shows the German town of Bruchsal card MG and a scale of 1 km per inch. The following image the same piece of country of beer and sausages is indicated for the WM card on the same scale. Comments, as they say, are unnecessary. After that, you know that Russia, Ukraine and other former USSR and Eastern Europe there are only a WM, and MG does not turn soon. Nevertheless, it is possible to scale of 70 km per inch to survey the road from Moscow to Nizhni Novgorod, and the scale of 3 km per inch (a more detailed scale is still not open additional details) to survey the north-western outskirts of Moscow. If you ride in a car with the included device, then all roads will be very nearly there (just a little mean up to 2 miles) outside Moscow and Leningrad miraculously Volokolamsk highway continue and even merge for Hydroproject and south of the highway there Volokolam Novorizhskoe highway GARMIN about which one knows. The device allows you to mark the viewpoints, to carry them on the desktop to another compatible device, and when re-approached the base point - the food at a predetermined distance. Practical application of this begs the features of self-a: to mark all posts DPS (or camera) to the Moscow Ring Road, Rublyovka, Leningradki etc. Schumacher and notify of approaching the pit stop. I have so obihozheny Ring Road and my favorite line Moscow - Torfyanovka / Lingonberry.
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What are the disadvantages have become apparent after years of use? First and foremost, the inability to edit the map. Having such a wonderful desktop shell of the instrument to draw the traversed path, different journey and rendered the roads and the lack of existing roads causing a burning desire to get into the card, take an eraser, pencil, throw distance traveled on the desktop (this way, perhaps), and edit, edit , edit. Alas, it still remains an elusive dream. eTrex considerably more modest capabilities. He had no map, there is an open field where you can arrange viewpoints, assign points icon (house, hotel, car, camping, fork-spoon, and a dozen more) and names (6 characters). Points bear the absolute coordinates, they can turn navigation mode, then the compass needle pointing there is thick and will be determined by the distance before and after the collection of statistics about the rate of convergence to, then the time remaining to reach the designated point. The device, as I mentioned, is extremely small and not tiresome. Its usefulness to hunters, anglers, mushroom pickers and other voluntary gifts Berendey no doubt. For civilized tourists civilized places usefulness is less obvious, but designate (and then delete) the place where the heat of the parking lot searching threw the car in a hysterics, or a delicious dinner and heartily accepted, and therefore forgot where it was convenient and pleasant. Nevertheless, in the absence of e-cards are very useful to have a paper map. I can cite the case of life, when he went skiing with the eTrex, but without a map, around the rounded Finnish lake was nearly frozen in the snow, because device confidently showed that it marked the house only 2 km, direction - to the lake, but to reach the house is impossible, because ice on the lake was a heinous black, and the house, as it turned out, was on a narrow peninsula on which it was possible to get from one side only, ie needed a full circle of 25 km, and is not an easy cross-country skiing, 3 km from the lake, as it should on the basis of the instrument. I have a wonderful paper atlas of the Czech Republic (200 m / cm) and Prague (50 m / cm), completely tied to the GPS. With such a dope no electronic card is not needed.
All GARMIN devices have a standard NMEA output, which allows them to connect to the Psion. Limitation - GARMIN passion for amazing slots, and different (for StreetPilot and eTrex different connectors). Any findings on the radio market not solve this problem, we need the original product. Thus, we gradually came to the only commercial product that is ready for connection to Psion immediately after opening the package. This is a GPS to Psion from Palmtop, or, as they are now called, TomTom. This device requires no additional exercises that include it into the cigarette lighter and Psion - and forward. To forward? By the use of Street Planner Millenium and Route Planner Millenium.Web (Palmtop Software) offers a demo program, which, however, differs significantly from the actual experience after field trials. Demo video, first of all, shows intelligence program of optimizing a route between the cities (Route Planner) or on city streets (Street Planner). Personal experience shows that human intelligence is better cope with the task of routing, but moving to Paris at speeds of 60-80 km is the strongest desire - to understand to what Square-stars you arrived, as if to reach, then at some of the beams (under 30, 60, 90, 120, etc. degrees) to fold. Not having the time of the practical Exercise cards MG on GARMIN, but having a map of Paris for Street Planner, task was successfully accomplished. But this should be noted that there is little advantage of the display before the eyes of the driver before the big-screen netbook on the knees of the navigator (wife, in that experiment). Because the navigational command "leave on the rotunda, drive through 5 rays and turn right at the sixth 'can cause different reactions: from" I remember on the map that this area of only 5 rays "to" In the sixth line of hanging kripich, he sided with the oncoming traffic "but the most adverse reaction -" Give me the notebook, I'll see. " Who himself rode in a car in Paris, I understand. In terms of routing the most glaring example - check in to hotel in Lyon. Due to the fact that a lane in Lyon Street Planner stored in the wrong direction one-way traffic, the program invited me to go round half of the city. In real life, I slid off the road in a prohibited according to Street Planner, but right in fact, the direction and after 200 meters and 30 seconds take out the luggage bags, remembering Kozma Prutkova and the refrain of "do not believe your eyes", which is typical of Russian tourist. Now let's see how it all looks like the splendor of the netbook.
This view of Paris from the bird's "flight.
Now go into detail.
Note the black triangles indicating the direction of motion for one-way streets. It was a map of Paris from StreetPlanner. Not all maps of cities in color, mostly they are - black and white, like all maps RoutePlanner. Total announced nearly 30,000 cities from Western Europe (not all, just big). Cities of Portugal, for example, no. But they are in RoutePlanner.
Circle with the logo appears on the site Palmtop point stored in the user layer. Such a ridiculous icon appears by default, you can create your own icons there, but do they have to be in Sketch - long and not very comfortable.
Here I would like to draw attention to common to all cards Palmtop tools: a square with a filling corresponding to the level of detail of roads, names of settlements (or streets for StreetPlanner) and scale.
Friendly greetings residents Balashikha, or settlement with the non-Russian (Dutch, probably) called Bata-Sicha. Here you can compare the details of the Russian side of the cards from Palmtop and GARMIN. I - for the Palmtop. I was particularly inspired by the presence of RoutePlanner Kopanovo village, located on the right bank of the Oka between district centers of the Ryazan region Shilovo and Kasimov. About 100 yards. Church of the village was burned three years ago. A map is.
Joint work of the external GPS and psionic
To connect an external GPS to Psion there are three ways:
1) use the connecting cable, eTrex - psionic (available at Expansys);
2) take advantage of connecting cables eTrex - 9-pin, Psion - and 9-pin null-modem "Mom-Mom" (available at Go32, PalmTec and several e-shop);
3) the same strings, plus a metal and a null modem gender-changer from the radio parts stores. After that, the GPS must be set to turn NMEA output, on psionic Link to desktop in a position off (!), While in the program settings to choose GPS NMEA device, and forward. That's what we see in the search for satellites:
Figure depicts the visible part of the sky, the position of satellites and signal strength from each of them. In the above example shows that the device communicates with five satellites (black rectangles) and two sees but does not communicate. The other five are out of sight - prevent a narrow street with tall buildings.
And here's how it looks on the map. In the same way as the native GPS to Psion. Despite the fact that I stood face to the southeast, spinning around the axis sovey and hopped on the spot (just kidding), the cursor looks stupid to the north, until, until the movement begins.
Kursorchik krupnovat, and the circle is drawn for furniture. " In GARMIN diameter of the circle corresponds to the location accuracy, and comes out only on maps larger than 500 m in half-inch.
Of the novelties of this season should abstain note eTrex Vista:
It combines the size and weight of the eTrex Summit and the opportunity to fill the external software. In the American version of his pre-loaded maps of North and South America, barometric altimeter and electronic compass, which works even in a static position. He also has 24 MB of free memory that can be used to load external maps with standard MapSource CD-ROM from GARMIN. Unlike the above devices with downloading software, the Vista is not replaceable cartridges, and internal memory. Now look at the screenshots of the domestic product - PalmGIS from Kiberso. At the time of writing version of the program for the Psion does not support GPS, but at the end of this article, I am glad the long-awaited the news.
North-West of Moscow with the proposed PalmGIS route of travel from home to work.Point of beginning and end of the route specified email addresses (floor need not be).
Neighborhood of the endpoint path with maximum detail. Visible to adjacent buildings and their facilities. Street names are displayed only when they are coming pen.
Conclusion
On the example of the three considered commercial software is easy to distinguish between major groups of programs, working with maps. GARMIN maps are raster. All mapping information is stored as points on a map, even a trace of movement of the machine is a series of points recorded at regular intervals. In traffic jams should provide a solid black line, and on the track point prorezhayutsya and apart from each other at a distance of distinguishable (at a sufficient scale maps). Devices from GARMIN offer treatment premark the way forward, setting waypoints and connecting them by segments. In this case the vectors connecting the segments do not "know" about the existence of a road linking the same point. To provide a graphical map and match the proposed road is necessary to arrange interim tag on all the major bends of the road. In practice, I did not find this feature useful, especially given the fact that the actual road may pass drawn. RoutePlanner and StreetPlanner are vector programs. All the roads are straight lines joining the so-called nodes of the road network. Taking into account the possible direction of movement of the segments may be bidirectional or unidirectional. Such logic makes possible the software simulation and optimization of the route. In order not to frustrate users, the program does not render traveled trail, and taking into account the fact that the GPS mouse is quite large and its size does not depend on vybrannog scale of the map, the cursor is near the road. The cursor is a compass needle in a circle with a diameter slightly less than 1 cm in most contrary cursor property and, from my point of view, the drawback of programs from the Palmtop, lies in the fact that stredka directed toward the movement of the machine only while in motion. It is necessary to stop at an intersection, an arrow remembers that she compass and stick to the north. There are situations when the Psion to look once in motion, and standing on the sidelines, it is impossible to navigate using the Psion and GPS (:-((, not tronuvshis away. From this point of view of the instrument from GARMIN smarter and determine its position in space on the site. In addition, the differences are even less significant. For example, the cursor GARMIN, which are selected by the user can be either an arrow or a typewriter is always in the middle of the screen and the map continuously moves. Palmtop have the cursor moves across the screen, causing a shift Dist card only when the fields at the edge of the screen. Another difference - at the top of Palmtop cards - always the north, and the cursor is directed by the movement. In besides GARMIN such option by the user can be selected: the cursor always moves up and the card-spinning background, that is convenient for drivers with topographical cretinism :-)) I'm such a regime seemed terribly uncomfortable, maybe I have developed other forms of cretinism. Program of the Palmtop allow you to create custom layers - overlays. Unfortunately, these extra layers can carry information only about the points. Palmtop site you can find a large number of layers of user-created programs. For example, the hidden cameras in the Netherlands and Belgium (up to what we're all the same), filling in Amsterdam, taverns and fast food in many European cities, that is all that than the rich maps Metroguide in GARMIN. But for free. But not all and not everywhere. substantial benefits would be the ability to create vector overlays: whereas the scarcity of cards Russian expanses would be offset by hard work and enthusiasm of many Russian users of Psion + GPS + Palmtop Soft., which are scattered would be on the vast expanses Indicate on their user layers of highways, roads, country roads, driveways and other bumps. Dreams, dreams ...Palmtop categorically rejected any suggestions for additions and corrections to software, as well as the long and tedious talking about what a trade secret is an ingenious format of their cards, which allows many bits of valuable intersections packed into compact files that are very quickly drawn to the screens of Psion. Especially notebooks. It is hoped that each Malchish-Kibalchish of Palmtop there is a bad guy Robin Good. In terms of categories and classes, the approach looks Kiberso Riding evolution: on the raster background map containing details of the topography (rivers and water bodies, forests and parks, industrial zones and railroads, separate buildings with the numbering, etc.) superimposed vector road network with the ability to optimize the route. Compared with programs Palmtop significantly inconvenient mode looks legends, ie analogue of navigation instructions about when, where and in what direction to collapse, and the large raster background leads to a substantial volume occupied PalmGIS and long-time redrawing a change of scale or a shift map. Kiberso obvious practical limitation is that their product (for EPOC 32) exists only for Moscow. Ability to create custom maps for their own needs for a combination of Psion + GPS will be discussed in the second part of our national team article. During a recent trip to St. Pete, I was prepared for the implementation of Designer DIY: buy a good map, and Peter took the coordinates of several noticeable points to anchor the corners cards. I would like to finish on an optimistic note. At night, June 17 appeared on kiberso.glasnet.ru and hPCru post a new version of the program PalmGISGPS for EPOC 32. The site also posted a picture necked eTrex (regular, not eTrex Summit, as in the picture above). Because of dislike for necked, I will not give it. Search the site to confirm the sweet speculate that the card has a color, and Psion have the support of GPS, nothing. But hope is alive, she gurgles in your head and demands an immediate call to the office Kiberso. Have to be postponed until Monday morning. Sources, Materials:
MyPsion.ru
The authors, translation:
Oleg Lobanov
