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GPS Toolkit (GPSTk) 1.0 Released
rmach writes "Based on many years of work performed at ARL:UT, we have release GPSTk under the GNU LGPL. GPSTk is a cross platform library and set of applications that provides both fundamental and advanced GPS processing algorithms to the GPS and open source community. A wide array of functions are provided by the GPSTk library, including: RINEX I/O, ephemeris calculation, P-code generation, atmospheric refraction models, and positioning algorithms. GPSTk applications provided more concrete benefits to the user, including: cycle slip detection and removal, calculation of the Total Electron Content (TEC) of the ionosphere, position residual computation, and RINEX file manipulation. The library is about 41,000 SLOC with a COCOMO estimated cost to develop of about $1.3 million. You can also read more about it in the current issue (September '04) of Linux Journal."
SLOC means source lines of code. COCOMO (construction code model) is the name of a method used to estimate costs of development, mostly in person-months needed to finish a project.
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If you use a GPS for geocaching, there is already a set of GPS tools for the Linux user here.
Meh.
I spent two weeks trying to find a way to do this on my Linux box before giving up. I ended up paying out of my rear end to buy expensive Garmin maps and closed source software. Even then, I couldn't mix and match tracks, let alone cut and paste sections of them together to make trail maps.
Depending on exactly what you want to do, there are some in-progress Linux tools that are usable. gpsbabel is a tool that can convert track, route and waypoint files to and from a bunch of different file formats, including the Garmin MapSource files. Some of the file formats are text, so you can do pretty much anything you like by converting to one of those, munging the stuff with your favorite utilities and scripting language, and converting back to MapSource (or whatever).
For visualization and tracking, check out gpsdrive. You can download maps for it from various on-line sites. Rick Richardson's geo-* tools are a bunch of useful bash and (I think, haven't looked lately) perl scripts that do lots of useful things, like making it easy to download maps and stuff. Most of Rick's stuff is focused on geocaching (for which it's really great, BTW, especially in conjunction with gpx2html.
The other feature I've always wanted is to do profile slices of my rides to see climbing and descending rates, especially during races.
I don't know of anything to do this (maybe someone else does?) but if you're a programmer hacking it together yourself wouldn't be too hard, given gpsbabel to convert the data into a mungeable format so you can get the times, positions and altitudes (and I think Rick's code has some stuff for calculating distances).
All in all this toolkit sounds hugely promising, as the last time I looked at SF.net/Freshmeat the capabilities were nearly nil. All I want is a simple import module, track overlay over free downloadable maps, and a track editor...
I don't think this toolkit is what you're looking for. Oh, I forgot to mention, look at gpstrans for transferring data between your Vista and Linux. Works fine, and you don't have to use gpsbabel to get the data in a usable format.
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While I salute and thank the developers here for what looks like may be a useful and valuable package, I just downloaded the library and can see that we're off to a rather bad start.
Unfortunately, the whole build process requres "jam" (a tool from perforce.com). Arrrgghh!
That they are using Perforce is a very bad sign. The whole Perforce system is designed by people who didn't understand basic mathematics (as in Set theory), and consequently it's annoying as heck to use.
Give me BitKeeper or Sun's Teamware (if you have a golden key, and can by-pass the license restrictions) anyday. Or even CVS in a pinch.
But requiring Jam in a distribution? Have these folks never, ever heard of "configure" and autoconf?
Hopefully the rest of the code exhibits some technical cluefulness. But right now, I can see that we're off to a bad start.
To the developers: sorry to give you folks a hard time here, but someone really has to on this.
GPS = global positioning system (but you knew that)
ephemeris calculation = modeling a satellite's orbit based on a handful of numbers, demonstrated by http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/eph_help.html
RINEX = Receiver Independent Exchange Format, http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/Rinex2.html
SLOC = source lines of code .. a simplistic and rather poor metric used to gauge the effort required to develop software. http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/
COCOMO = an obsolete software development cost model http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/bu2/COCOMO.html
GPS Visualizer. This site is free and uses SVG to display maps. You can overlay GPX/LOC or track data (among others) over top of maps.
The government encrypts the Pseudo Random Code with an encryption key that makes it hard to track.
Y-code is simply encrypted P Code.
Basically, this software package allows you to increase your accuracy, export and import GPS information, and model the ionosphere (a major source of error using the Coarse Acquisition (civilian) signals.