'On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 07:12 -0800, Michael A Peters wrote: > Howdy all - > > I have a Garmin "etrex Legend" hand held GPS unit. > > I bought it for my field herping hobby (looking for wild reptiles and > amphibians). > It came with a serial cable for connecting to a PC but software is only > for Windows. I don't want to buy the software and try with w/ wine/CXO > because it it doesn't work then I wasted money, and I have not had > software that interfaces with hardware (such as a serial port) ever work > well in CXO. > > Since spring is almost here, I'd like an easier way to use it in Linux > rather than just manually reading the collected waypoints and entering > them into my field reports. > > What I would like to do is to be able to read waypoints right off the > unit through a cable (either serial or, if one is available, a USB > cable) into Linux. It also would be nice to hand make some maps that I > can use to easily return to a particular spot, or to give to researchers > to get to a particular spot if I find a range extension for a species > that needs to be verified or a remnant population for a species in > decline thought to be gone from an area. Both of those things happen > fairly regularly where I am at (though not yet by me), as there is much > wilderness area that isn't well documented for herp species. > > It also would be nice to be able to look at a topographical map, and > enter waypoints into some linux program that I can then enter into the > GPS to guide me with respect to how to get to a location that looks > interesting. > > Has anyone done this kind of thing in Fedora, and possibly know where > pre-packaged RPMs exist? > Hi, Michael, Check the web for NMEA. This is a standard for navigation I/O that uses a serial port. Most GPS units can produce NMEA-182 output, and you can receive it through the serial port on your computer. There are some mapping functions that have generated it, but if you can write a small serial port application, you should be able to retrieve the data and present it anyway you wish. You can also send data to the unit by the same means. I had the Mariner, and it came with a cable to do just that but the supplied software was Windows. I haven't looked to get a version for Linux yet. Regards, Les H
