Issue exporting waypoints to British National Grid

Former Member over 13 years ago

I recently installed BaseCamp on the computers across my company as MapSource fails to recognise waypoints from the new set of Garmin units that our survey team have recently purchased (GPSmap 62s).

However, unlike MapSource, Basecamp fails to convert the downloaded waypoint coordinates in British National Grid, despite the Options being set to this coordinate system in the Options. Both .csv and .txt exported from BseCamp a list of lat/long coordinates, whereas MapSource would export a list of NGRs.

A fundamental part of our business is reporting on the surveyed locations recorded on these devices, which can number in the hundreds per visit.

Having invested heavily in these new devices, I am extremely unhappy that there appears to be no way to export a list of the waypoints recorded on the device, in the coordinate system in which they were viewed on the unit itself and the management software.

0 SUSSAMB over 13 years ago

Not sure why you can't do this, maybe I'm not understanding your issue properly. All my waypoints show up as British National Grid. Have you set the units correctly in Basecamp? Go to Utilities>Options>Measurement and select BNG ;)

I assume you've set your 62s to BNG?

0 Former Member over 13 years ago

I have set both BaseCamp (via the Options as you mentioned) and the GPS unit to use the coordinate system British National Grid.

However, while viewing the coordinates individually in BaseCamp returns the BNG easting and northing (screenshot attached), exporting coordinates as a .csv or .txt converts them to lat/long with no option to avoid this (sample file attached).

Exporting downloaded waypoints from MapSource retained the eastings and northings, but is not compatible with the 62s, as previously mentioned.

0 SUSSAMB over 13 years ago

That clarifies it. This thread https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?t=20202 seems to indicate it's a known problem, not that that helps you though :(

0 Former Member over 13 years ago

I can confirm that BaseCamp behaves differently than MapSource in that regard. I'll see what we can do.

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

Please can you update me with any progress on this issue as it is still causing major procedural problems.

0 BTLAAKE over 12 years ago

Hi Tom,

I see you haven’t received a reply yet. To be honest, I wouldn’t expect this to change in the near future, but I suspect it will eventually change. I’m sure Garmin appreciates that various professions find a use for their devices and free software, but in the end they are consumer GPS devices and GPS is based the WGS84 datum and the Latitude/Longitude format.

I’m afraid I don’t understand why this is a major procedural problem. MapSource does output the required information, correct? Perhaps if you elaborate on your current procedure I can provide some suggestions.

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

Hi, the major procedural problem is that MapSource, while free, doesn't support the GPSmap 62s device that Garmin sell - the software does not recognise the device if you try to download waypoints.

So Garmin have gone quiet, seemingly as they won't admit to/fix a fundamental problem with one of their products.

0 SUSSAMB over 12 years ago

Just a thought ... are you not able to download the waypoints from your 62s using Basecamp and then import them to Mapsource? You'd then be able to output them in BNG.

Wouldn't that solve your problem for now?

0 DRTBYK over 12 years ago

In the outdoor sports world UTM is the Coordinate System of choice if you want precision with paper maps. I constantly have to convert Lat/Lon after BaseCamp exports and it's not something I like to do.

This would seem to be more of a funding issue and if enough customers say they need it. . . well, I think it should have happened when BaseCamp incorporated the data-translation plugins.

The GPX standard is based on the WGS84-Lat/Lon (hddd.dddddddddd) so it doesn't make sense to mess with the GPX Export or the other product specific Exports. But it doesn't seem as though it wouldn't be that difficult to create an Export plugin for CSV & TXT exports that would maintain the customer preferred Datum/Coordinate System.

Cheers,

0 Former Member over 12 years ago

So Garmin have gone quiet, seemingly as they won't admit to/fix a fundamental problem with one of their products.

I've replied to this before. I will freely admit that it's a problem (not sure I'd call it fundamental). We will see if we can find a fix.

I don't think this will be done in time for the 4.0 release though.

A more technical explanation of why BaseCamp doesn't currently export the datum/grid in case anyone is interested. Feel free to ignore.

BaseCamp only exports natively to GPX (and GDB, but that doesn't matter for this discussion). Then we use XSLT to transform GPX to whatever other format the user selected.

You can find these XSLT files at C:\Users\{Username}\AppData\Roaming\Garmin\Plugins.

A tutorial to plugins can be found at https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?t=13452. They are actually pretty powerful and allow you to export your data in almost any form, and import any XML format.

GPX writes data in Lat/Lon/WGS84 and by the time we do the transform we have lost the datum/grid information and just write out whatever is in the GPX file (read: Lat/Lon/WGS84).

It's nothing that we can't fix (and we will, eventually), but that's the explanation why BaseCamp doesn't export in the currently selected Grid/Datum.

It would probably be possible to duplicate the GPX11toCSVText plugin and create a new export plugin that changes Lat/Lon/WGS84 to BNG, but I am not sure how complicated that would be.