Nuvi Route Log

I find a track log handy for lots of things.

Yes, you can download it to Mapsource, and (unless your karma is bad) you can download it to Google Earth 5 (which does a much nicer job of displaying the information).

I don't know of a tool that will give you mileage (although it might be there, particularly in Google Earth), but the information has been captured so there certainly could be an application that could work out the mileage.

I'm not sure how the nuvi decides how much information to keep. I can see that it had deleted some older trip logs automatically. But today I did some driving and have two more logs in the GPS than I had yesterday, 38 as opposed to 36, so it's not as simple as just keeping the last 36 logs and deleting one when it starts a new one. If anyone knows how the software decides to delete trip logs to keep them from growing without bounds and filling the GPS memory, please post what rule the nuvi uses to manage logs.

I've used the track log from my nuvi to plot new subdivisions in my area when adding streets to Open Street Maps. (http://www.openstreetmap.org/)

If you load your track logs in Mapsource it shows you the following information for each track log: date, starting time, elapsed time, length, average speed. And if you click on an individual track log it shows information about each point in the track log: date, time, leg length, leg time, leg speed, leg course, and position.

So what are some practical uses for the track logs? A business person could use track logs to fill out mileage expense reports. No more forgetting to write down the mileage.

Or a parent could use them to keep an eye on their kid's driving habits. Opening a track log and seeing a speed of 92 mph would not be a good thing!

Or a wife could use them to see if her husband was really at work on Saturday or if he was at the golf course!

And to answer Frovingslosh's question, the Nuvi store can store up to 10,000 points in the track logs. Once it reaches the limit it overwrites the oldest points/track logs.

The frequency of the points seems to depend on the road conditions and speed. If you are driving on a straight road at a steady speed the Nuvi may store one point every couple of miles. On a curvy road it may store one point every 100 feet.

Thanks, but something else seems to be going on in my nuvi 250. I stopped clearing the tracks manually a while ago and was watching them grow. I noticed a few days ago that some old ones had been automatically deleted. But when I just downloaded the current logs to Google earth, it reported a number in the 3000-400 range, well short of 10,000 (and no, none of the tracks that had been deleted were very long, which might have accounted for difference). So I'm seeing something else at work. Perhaps tracks are deleted as they "age out" also? Anyway, I'll try to keep a closer watch on how many track logs and points in them I have and see if I can help determine exactly what is happening here.