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display coordinates in degrees

skyeye
over 1 year ago

on the messenger, when pressing the main menu and then scroll right, one can view the current position.

This is however displayed in degrees and minutes.

Is there any way to change the display to international standard, namely degrees (decimal)

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 1 year ago in reply to Steve

    Degrees in minutes and seconds or Decimal degrees is not practical for land navigation. Especially not on foot. UTM/MGRS coordinates is the most common format used for reference on paper maps, with military, law enforcement, and search/rescue services.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Steve

    for pure nautical use, the deg, minute, second needs to be used as it is needed as entry into nautical paper charts for measuring distances in small area.

    Therefore ships gps devices and AIS transmitters display this format mandatory, where decimal degree is available as well.

    There is no use for degrees and decimal minutes.

    There are many ideas what is coordinate system or how it should look like.  But one has to take care that also someone is having some map data ready in that format as otherwise permanent calculation between systems would be needed. Special systems are mostly OK, but serve only those users of a particular user goup.

    There are many local coordinates systems, suite perfect, but they will not suit anybody else.

    To avoid any misunderstanding, decimal degree is used for over 30 years now in communication.

    In international operations, UN lead search and rescue for example, one can loose certification by not using this format.

    When you have to communicate between all nations, standards valid for half of the world are not efficient.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 1 year ago in reply to skyeye

    I assume everyone out in the "wild" has a paper map or tablet-based resource.

    Just practice looking up coordinates on your chosen map — and set your device to match format. 

    Any professional organization or government entity who uses maps daily can easily do a conversion.

    If you are coordinating with others in the same local area you will notice that decimal is not very intuitive or practical. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Former Member

    As I have said before:  it is a pity, that you still can’t change the coordinate system on the messenger. Almost all my hiking paper maps are in utm. 

    Months are gone and they still have not add it. 

  • 0 8 months ago

    I wasn't able to find a way to change it. It would be ideal to have a setting on the unit to change the units that the coordinates are displayed in to multiple formats. For instance, if I could change it to UTS, I could use just that device and a paper map (boundary waters in this case) to determine where I am. This would be useful if one didn't have a phone or other GPS unit along (or if that other device's battery were to die). How does a person put in a feature request like this? Maybe this could be part of a future SW upgrade.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to kgkicker

    on the messenger, you can not change the format so far.

    Currently it is set to decimal degrees, which is the most practical one if lat/long degrees are used.

    As the messenger is declared to be a communication device and not a navigation device by garmin, I would not expect selectable format here.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to Former Member

    I don't think there is a way to change the format on the inreach messenger. I'd like to be able select various formats of lat/long as well as UTS. the lat/long format currently displayed doesn't match the lat/long of my maps. My maps also have UTS, would would be much simpler if I could select that format on my device.

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to kgkicker

    On my last reply I thought I was replying directly to 'Former member'.