Slashdot Mirror
Using Handhelds, GPS and Eastern European Maps?
RedDork asks: "I just graduated with a BS in Comp Sci and am planning a trip to Europe this summer with a Computer Engineer friend. We are renting a car and driving around much of eastern and western Europe including Croatia and the Czech Republic. We were originally intending to use a GPS and a handheld (iPaq 3870) to navigate, but are now having trouble finding maps for the previously mentioned countries. Additionally, we don't know what software or GPS units are behave the best with the iPaq platform. We were wondering if any of our fellow Slashdotters have done this kind of thing, and what recommendations they have for software/hardware/map combinations."
Most of them have lat and long along the edges. You wont get an exact track of your progress down to 20 feet, but you should be able to narrow it down to the nearest block.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
If you do get arrested, ask the police if they can recommend a lawyer for you. That will be the guy that the police are used to working with. The lawyer will set everything up, you'll pay his fees, the police's "fees", and you'll be ejected from the country.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
this is europe, not the outback! you didn't say where you come from, but i guess it's the us... in that case you'll have to find a whole new definition of "small"...
you can have a sufficient (in fact better than any ipaq screen) map of the whole continent at every gas station. And if you get lost, just ask somebody.
sometimes modern is too modern!
take a look at http://gpsdrive.kraftvoll.at/ for a fairly good program. You can download maps from mapblast and expedia (I don't know if they have all the east-european countries, but take a look. If you can't download the maps, you can scan in some paper maps, enter a few co-ordinates and scale and use that instead.
Sure, we might LOVE our interactive devices, but they might get taken away. sells good basic road maps of almost all countries. Try as they also have detailed maps of various world places.
Take your GPS coordinates and simple match them to a map. practice in the US first, it might be a good idea. Also, realise that hardware fails, and there isn't an iPaq vendor Slovakia. GPS is also interupted by mountains, extremely bad weather, ect. Travel with caution. Good Luck.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I've been looking for the best GPS solution for iPAQ and this is the best one;
I am using NAVMAN GPS jacket for iPAQ.
It comes with mapping software and European maps of diffrent countries and resolutions. (Vector maps of course). The "Eastern Europe High resolution" I am using is really high resolution map that have even a lot of streets in cities. Very detailed. Weights only 4 MB. By the way NAVMAN is sleek, small jacket, has CF slot built in!
Bundled SmartPath software itself is just what it needs to be. Much better than others.
Probably the best GPS solution for iPAQ out there.
Check out at navman.com. I bought it from expansys.co.uk.
I have an eMap and whil eit is different then the III+, I could still reccomend Garmin GPS units. The GPS III+ also has expandable (yet proprietary) memory modules allowing you to upload detailed maps to it. They also have a European CD as well (alsp works with the GPS12MAP and NavTalk).
Gorkman