The Idea



The Idea
Home The Idea The Software The Hardware Cables & Power Thank you

 

Many route planners exist

The two that I use have the advantage that I can carry them around easily.

I find flipping open a organizer, like a Psion 5, easier than booting my notebook. Organizers also fit easier in your pocket.

Everyone noticing the geographic detail available in Route Planner cannot correlate this to the small size of the Psion 5. This changes in sheer unbelief when you zoom into the street level detail of the places you are familiar with.

To be frank, I still felt it was difficult to navigate using Route Planner, since after a few wrong turns I had no idea where I was on the map.

This all changed by attaching a GPS receiver. Satellites in orbit around the earth, tell me now where I am and put a (moving) position on the map. This all with a 200 meters accuracy.

But there was more I could do... I could show the coordinates in latitude / longitude of any position in the maps. I found myself creating waypoints in the GPS, putting in the figures with the Garmin Jogpad. This was a bit tedious and I found a better way to do it.

I could create a waypoint in Route Planner or Street Planner 99
I wrote Garoute to read these waypoint(s) from the overlay files and upload them to the Garmin GPS.
I wrote a Macro5 macro, so that the whole waypoint creation and upload was a matter of two keystrokes.

This is all it takes to get a real-time pointer in my car pointing where to drive to:

Point to a position on the map using Street Planner or Route Planner
Hit the hotkey to activate the macro.
Do a "goto" on the GPS

This I could even do in the car -on the move- NOT WHILE DRIVING THOUGH- that is dangerous   :)