GPS coordinates display on PC

Hi Bucky

I had a look at the description of Mapsource and I had the impreesion that it does not provide such a simple task I need. UNfortunately I dont have the access to that software.

Cheers Andy

I got it, it wont do what u want

I had a look at that site - no success.

Andy

Hi Gujimbo

downloaded the suggested program - It does not seem the display in big characters.

cheers
Andy

Hi David

thanks for your offer. There seems to be no immediate solution to my (minor) problem. Several years ago I have programmed a Palm V with QFORTH for the display of the GPS location and other parameters displayed with big Characters. I have also experience with decoding nmea sentences in C under Linux. However I have so far not done serious program development under Windows especially when font sizes and graphics are involved.

I will do some more research on programming software for windows and will come back to your offer later.

I have profited so much from the forum that I will become a member in any case.

Cheers
Andy

sorry that I was not clearer about what I wanted.

I am not interested in the nmea sentences, but in the display of the decoded coordinates in big characters.

During the last years we have used a GARMIN II and maps on paper for navigation. The display of this GPS is hard to read even from the passenger seat. I therefore have written a program to decode the nmea and display the GPS Coordinates with big characters on a Palm Pilot.

Meanwhile I have built a Car PC and use Oziexplorer and Natmaps for navigation.
The GPS coordinates are displayed by Oziexplorer in small characters thatt can not be easily read on the 8" touchscreen. For getting a general overview on the big roads we still plan to use the 1:1000000 Natmaps on paper. It would be nice to run sometimes also a program that displays the current position, distance travelled and speed in big characters on the PC display.

andy

Hi Michael

designing the Car Pc was not a problem, as I have had previous experience with hard and software for instrumentation. However, it took much more time for the realisation than anticipated. My PC consists of a VIA mini-itx board (ML6000EA), a 40 GB laptop hard disk and an intelligent automotive power supply M1-ATX (www.mini-box.com) which would also fit your needs. It operates from 6-24 V so that engine cranking will not affect the running PC. The power supply is always connected to the car battery and is switched on/off with the ignition switch. The battery is automatically protected from complete discharge. The whole thing has been put into a home made metal box to achieve minimum dimensions so that the PC will fit into the car radio bay (HiLux) of double height.

A bright 8.4" VGA touch screen MM500 (www.cartft.com) is mounted on the dash board. It serves as VGA display (800x600 pixels) and provides the mouse functions. A keyboard, dvd burner and mobile can be connected externally when needed. The software (oziexplorer with natmaps, zine for audio and the typical mozilla software) runs under XP (getting slowly used to it).

It took me some time to achieve the minimum box dimensions and to improve shock resistance for the hard disk by mounting it on a metal plate / sponge rubber / metal place interface which I glued together. Sofar the only problem I detected during tests was when the GARMIN II GPS was running on COM2 and I booted XP. It seems that XP saw the mnea messages from the GPS and believed that a mouse was connected to COM2: menus opened at random and other funny things happened, and Oziexplorer could not access COM2. May be XP could be taught not detect serial devices automatically. Otherwise the gps has to be turned on after XP booted. The real test of the whole setup will happen when we hit corrugations and dust in June. Hope that they will not kill the hard disk during our one year trip in OZ....

Good luck and fun with your project.

Andy

While we are on subject here are some other OzIexplorer add ons

Site Link

www.sml.co.za/software.php

Cheers
Greg

thanks Greg

this an impressive list of oziexplorer addons. I will have closer look.

Andy