[Dave Flanagan]

Does have any knowledge of creating maps using GPS? Is GPS accurate enought to position boulders?

[SA Chris]

I know James Sutton used it for mapping boulders on Skye in the skyebloc guide he produced, but the boulders are pretty spread out. Not used it in anger, so don't know how effective the method is.

[220bpm]

Dunno about creating maps, but I use my GPS with Memory Map to log my POI's.

Have used the GPS to log individual boulders when out and about sure, the accuracy is usually about +/- 3m which is good enough for me.

[matthew]

I'd say yes. You couldn't log different lines on the same block (depending on the size of block and spread of lines obviously).

[slackline]

I'm no expert but I'd suggest its pretty damn accurate (although dependant on what software your using).

My reasoning behind this is that I used the Nokia Sports Tracker when out for a walk in the Peak t'other day and it recorded some >18000 data points in the four hours that the battery lasted.  These gave exceptionally fine resolution in the lattitude and longtitude, up to about 10 decimal places or so if I remember correctly.

Plus 'cause I'm a bit of a geek I could export the data in Google Earth's kml format and embed a Google map with the walk overlaid into a webpage  (although annoyingly the embedded map doesn't always appear, but that could be an aspect of my current employers web-usage policy, or the fact that the pages are being served by my humble NSLU2).

[Dave Flanagan]

So it sounds possible. Anyone have an links to how to go about it?

[slackline]

So it sounds possible. Anyone have an links to how to go about it?

Do you have the hardware or are you after advice on that?  Software solutions will likely depend on the hardware that you use, and then how you're going to use it afterwards (will it simply be adding points onto a Google map, or will you aim to produce POI files a la Jim)?

As I say, I've used the Nokia Sports Tracker on my N95 and was happy with what it did.  I reckon if you've got an N95 (or other nokia phone that has GPS and runs the software) that will be sufficient.  Beyond that I can't offer any insight I'm afraid.

Jim may know though as he's done the Bouldering POI's and might be able to offer some insight.

[Dave Flanagan]

So it sounds possible. Anyone have an links to how to go about it?

Do you have the hardware or are you after advice on that?  Software solutions will likely depend on the hardware that you use, and then how you're going to use it afterwards (will it simply be adding points onto a Google map, or will you aim to produce POI files a la Jim)?

As I say, I've used the Nokia Sports Tracker on my N95 and was happy with what it did.  I reckon if you've got an N95 (or other nokia phone that has GPS and runs the software) that will be sufficient.  Beyond that I can't offer any insight I'm afraid.

Jim may know though as he's done the Bouldering POI's and might be able to offer some insight.

Don't have a GPS. What I'm interested in is using a gps to tag boulders and other features and to then use this as the basis for drawing topos. At the moment i use a map or satelite photo as the base for my topos but at the level of detail I'm working on there is an element of guess work to the placing of boulders and other features. It seems the POI files detail how to get to bouldering areas?

[tomtom]

Use GPS for mapping quite alot.
Theres two types of accuracy, the absolute accuracy, and the relative.
For the absolute accuracy (where it is in space x - y co-ords etc..) then probably about +-5m or better. (if you leave the GPS on for 5min the accuracy will generally get better. Relative accuracy is normally better, e.g. if you take 5 points close to each other, the distance between them will be much more accurate than +-5m. I would have thought for boulder location its perfectly fine. We use if for coarse scale surveying and its great for that.

Exporting the data to maps is more complex. It depends on what GPS you have and what mapping software you use. the easiest and cheapest (its free) way is to export the data from your GPS to Google earth. For that you need to convert your GPS data into a KML file. If you have a mainstream GPS unit (garmin magellan etc..) then there will be software for free that can do this for you. Just plug in the GPS to your PC - download the data, convert into a KML file then load her up into Google earth. Easy as that.
What I would do is google some combination of ***(your brand of GPS) and KML file conversion/export. It may well be that your GPS came with a lead and software to do this already - quite a few do at the mo.
Hope that helps, and if yo uget stuck further post up the make of your GPS etc...
T