GPS Waypoints for car journey

matiboy · 18 May 2002, 20:52

anyone know where i can obtain some GPS waypoints for car journey through france, would be usefull to know distances to go , etc and I might as well put the handeld to some use

Multimap show some sort of map coordinates in their website, but I'm not sure what type of references they are ? and whether they can correspond with GPS system

anybody know how I can find out lat / long details for towns which I could use ?

any ideas from you Gps experts ?

matiboy · 20 May 2002, 18:34

does anybody know what type of coordinates are used in www.multimap.com and are they compatible with gps input ?

Garygee · 20 May 2002, 20:26

Hi

If you have Microsoft Autoroute 2000 you can set a mode where the curser shows lat & long.

Using this you can get waypoint info for France, all be it by manually writing then down and entering then into the GPS.

Regards Gary

jools · 20 May 2002, 23:05

I've got a GPS MAP III - which already has the road basemaps in for the whole of Europe

I could put the cursor on a town and send you the lat and long - or use Autoroute .......

Very handy when on Holiday

matiboy · 21 May 2002, 18:04

I am only travelling from cherbourg to Jard sur mer near la rochelle on west coast ,which is only aprox 260 miles, thought it might help the kids pass some time with having a gps to play with

I would only need to know about lat/long of about 4 towns on route, if you dont mind I could forward these to you by email / pm

I have an ordnance survey disc for uk which shows lat / long with cursor which is great for putting coastal marine waypoints but will not extend to france

let me know cheers

Keith Hart · 21 May 2002, 18:24

Hi, make sure your gps is set to the correct datum.

Keith Hart

Mike B · 22 May 2002, 09:40

Not sure how acurate the data is but if you use an astrology page such as www.astro.com - then pick "direct atlas query" search for the town you want it will give you a lat & long.

It has most worldwide locations and goes to quite small towns. I would never rely 100% on it though and not sure what datum is used.

Mike

jools · 22 May 2002, 10:45

OK... send me some places and I'll see what I can do!

matiboy · 22 May 2002, 18:34

went onto astro page & seems to work !

maybe you could confirm accuracy with your map ?

cherbourg 49n39 1w39

rennes 48n05 1w41

nantes 47n13 1w33

can you also explain keith's comments regarding datum ?

Scubakid · 23 May 2002, 12:18

Here is the info from Autoroute it is in degrees not degrees and mins.

Cherbourg 49.6377n 1.62175w

Rennes 48.10932n 1.6736w

Nantes 47.21289n 1.54973w

John

Rene · 23 May 2002, 12:47

Matiboy, I going to PM you about this

Mike B · 23 May 2002, 16:00

To answer your query re "Datum".

A map datum is a reference model of the earth's shape.
Every map uses a map datum. If you are comparing GPS coordinates to a paper map or other source the map datum in the GPS must match the datum of the source.

I don't think the astro site will say what datum it uses so you cannot be sure that the datum they have used matches the one entered on your GPS. I am also not sure whether autoroute states what datum it uses may be someone else can confirm.

In my experience the most used datum is WGS84 but that may not be true.

NB what GPS are you using ? If it is a Garmin and you have a pc link I can send you a route of the whole journey to upload. I use a psion 5mx and Route planner Europe link to an etrex.

Mike

matiboy · 23 May 2002, 19:01

its an older handheld so have no clever computer links

however info on astro site was accurate for some of uk towns I tried

must admit this datum thing is confusing, why we cant all in the world agree on one thing ?

Olle · 24 May 2002, 07:46

Hi All!

"must admit this datum thing is confusing, why we cant all in the world agree on one thing ?"

I can not restrain a smile and a comment (no offence!) to read the above comment from an Englishman.

What about inches, feet, miles in a world of metrics!
What about you english talking about boatspeed in mph.
Mph and kmh is a measure of speed on land in most of the world. Knots is a speed measure on water.

As a Swede it is a bit complicated to read english articles. One article uses miles per hour. The next article uses knots. Same goes for distance. Miles or nautical miles? You have got to be on your toes to get it right in the end.

I dare to say that all newly produced softwaremaps have the WGS84 Datum.

I agree with Matiboy. Why can't we stick to Nautical measurements!!!

Regard to you all. Hope I havn't offended anyone.

Olle

Charles · 24 May 2002, 10:33

ABBA rocks!!