POI'S
Tue, 12/12/2006 - 1:46pm
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17 years
|
I'm just starting to learn my nuvi 660. I went to Googleearth and found the lat & long of a friend on the coast of FL. WhenI typed in the 6 numbers, the last 1 was cut off, did do something wrong? My friend lives about a mile from the ocean, but after putting in the info, I checked the gps map and it put him in the ocean about 2 miles out, why?
degrees format
That kind of a shift usually means there's a mix-up in the format of the coordinates.
POI files usually use decimal degree format:
lon, lat
-93.45678, 45.67890
Another common format is degrees minutes seconds, which looks something like this:
lon, lat
-93° 27' 24.4080", 45° 40' 44.0399"
Both of these examples show the same location but use different coordinate formats.
Software packages and GPS units usually have a setting that lets you change the format they're using for coordinates. You can also convert them with a tool like this:
conversion tool at fcc.gov
Just make sure you're entering them in the format expected by your GPS.
JM
degrees format
My mistake, I thought Lat & Lon were the same as digital. Why the differenece? I reentered my FL info and it got me very close, but still off the mark. What is the best way to get lon & lat?
getting coordinates
The best way to get coordinates is to measure them yourself with a good quaility GPS
If you're converting an address to coordinates, its very common for the result to be off the mark. This is because the address location is usually interpolated based on a range of addresses for a road segment.
Pointing at a location on a map is another option. You need to be zoomed in close when you mark the location. Be aware that map images may not always be precisely positioned by the mapping system.
If none of these are good enough, you're back to my original suggestion of measuring the location yourself
JM