New to the GPS world

Hey everyone, this forum seems to be pretty active as far as GPS threads/info goes from what I’m seeing around the internet so figured I’d join and post up here a few questions.

I picked up a Lowrance 5m Baja for an offroad truck I have.

http://www.pciraceradios.com/ProductDetail.jsp?LISTID=-8681106244548787967

I’ve been using it by simply drawing my trails online and uploading them to the GPS so I have a line to follow. I basically have been using it as a preplanned map maker and have had no issues with this.

But… I have a few questions.

What’s the difference between a “route” and a “trail”?

Also, if I just do a “delete all” to clear the GPS and make it blank, I’m assuming I can head out and do a run and have it basically trace my route. I should be able to put in notes or icons to help for return trips of where dangers and items of interest are at right? Also, once I have traced an entire route that I like and enjoy, I can get the distance from that and save it for future use again correct?

Any notes for new GPS idiots on doing a few of these things?

Thanks,
Khris

Route is something that your GPS unit could “navigate” along vs a trail is just a visual on the screen of a prior path you had taken. If you navigate the route the GPS will actually aid you by giving some rudimentary details about the route itself like its length, etc. It is NOTHING like a true nav aid though so I am not sure how helpful it would be.
Routes really come in handy in the boating world with the integration with the Motorguide xi5 trolling motors and “outboard pilot” which basically enables autopilot features. With your offroad vehicle this wouldn’t be possible. YET!!!

That’s such a simple explanation that it actually makes sense! The owners manual for the GPS basically tells you nothing as far as what the difference in them is and well, in general conversation a “route” and a “trail” could be used as the same so that’s where my confusion came from.

So then to take it a step further, I’d imagine I can clear my GPS, have it tracing my “trail” and once happy I should be able to save that “trail” as a “route” and then in the future I can navigate that “route”… If that makes sense? That’s basically exactly what I’m looking to do.

I’m definitely not using this GPS like you would your average city navigation GPS. This GPS is used actually out in the desert for playing on rural dirt roads. It’s just up till now, I’ve been doing all my scouting ahead of time on google earth, creating my “route” and uploading it to the GPS. Instead I’d like to just go explore and when I drive a section I like save it for future reference.

Also, it’s the same GPS we use in our race truck and we’ve been trying to do some fuel mileage calculations and I’m hoping I can basically record what I’ve driven during testing and then pull up the distance traveled from that run so I can calculate fuel mileage needs.

Anyways, thanks for the description! I think I’m on the right path for what I’m looking to do, just need to learn the logistics of how to better use the GPS functions to get there.

LOL, oh crap… I just comprehended what you ended your reply with info wise! That’s awesome!!! I didn’t realize we were at that stage where you could link the GPS into a controller and really basically have autopilot for a boat! (I’m not a boat person, completely foreign world to me)

Yeah, we definitely aren’t at that level for the offroad fun yet!

I actually have two of these Elite 5M baja gps’s… The thing is, the one in our race truck, I’ve never played with it. We simply load the course map which is generally something like a 40 mile loop up to our next race which will be 545 point to point trail. We load the course in and follow the line on the screen as reference. That’s it… I bought the same unit for my play truck though that we prerun with and so far I’ve been using it the same way that we do in the race truck, only difference being instead of the race course map being provided I create my own and load it. But now I want to use it more for exploring and creating my own “routes” 1st person style basically.

The 2 hoopties with the GPS’s…

Truck that the dash above is in…

And our race truck…

GPS for the passenger to tell me or my race partner who also drives the truck when we’re lost! LOL

That’s a sweet rig! One thing you can do is play around with creating trails. You can have multiple trails viewable on your chart at the same time and record to only one. Trails have a limitation of a set number of points along the trail. It’s like a max distance. Once you hit that on a trail you are recording to it will begin erasing the older points on the trail to record your new ones. When fishing I will create a navigation trail that I display and record to when getting to a tricky fishing spot. Then when fishing I will turn that one off and create a new trail that is solely used for marking fishing runs. Then flip back to the navigational trail for the trip home.

That makes sense. I’ve seen the option in the menu to record vs. not. I’m taking the race truck out this sat afternoon/night and will play around with a it a bit to try and figure out the actual functions of the GPS unit itself finally. It was more that Route vs. Trail description that had me a bit stumped cause while it seems like it should be obvious, like I said, the manual doesn’t give any explanation to the difference in them.

Thanks for the help… It’s enough to get me heading in the right direction it seems like at this point! Now I need to just get out and mess around with it. Heck, maybe I’ll do some GPS work around the neighborhood before I even head out to the desert with the truck…

khris wrote:

LOL, oh crap… I just comprehended what you ended your reply with info wise! That’s awesome!!! I didn’t realize we were at that stage where you could link the GPS into a controller and really basically have autopilot for a boat! (I’m not a boat person, completely foreign world to me)

Yeah, we definitely aren’t at that level for the offroad fun yet!

I actually have two of these Elite 5M baja gps’s… The thing is, the one in our race truck, I’ve never played with it. We simply load the course map which is generally something like a 40 mile loop up to our next race which will be 545 point to point trail. We load the course in and follow the line on the screen as reference. That’s it… I bought the same unit for my play truck though that we prerun with and so far I’ve been using it the same way that we do in the race truck, only difference being instead of the race course map being provided I create my own and load it. But now I want to use it more for exploring and creating my own “routes” 1st person style basically.

The 2 hoopties with the GPS’s…

Truck that the dash above is in…

And our race truck…

GPS for the passenger to tell me or my race partner who also drives the truck when we’re lost! LOL

John Deere tractors have GPS devices connected to the steering and will plant the straightest rows while the operator surfs the net or reads his favorite book

Routes are a series of waypoints you program in, while navigating a route you will get straightline navagation from waypoint to waypoint, as you have programmed them in, trails on the otherhand are like a trail of bedcrumbs following the twists and turns you take, most gps’let you change update rate by time,distance, or both.Many gps’ allow for changing color of individual trails.
Hope this helps.

That does help put the differences between the two in more real world “makes sense to me” mode! I understand the basics of GPS and understand what a waypoint is.

Curious though, so when I’m on my computer making my awesome dirt road route… I’m basically clicking corner to the next corner to the next corner. Sometimes if there’s no turns or chances of getting lost I’ll even just be lazy and say on a set of switchbacks just click at the top and then again at the bottom. So lets say I do a super simple 1 mile long dirt road that only consists of 10 clicks on my screen which would be 10 waypoints.

Now if I go drive that route creating a trail, is that trail being created by a whole bunch of waypoints or something different? I’ve seen on the GPS how to change the rate/distance/time and that stuff.

Just trying to get a better understanding of really what’s going on behind the scenes…

Khris

You know, now that you mention it with the John Deere navigation stuff, I guess I did know that existed cause I remember reading about that stuff at some point. I guess I just didn’t connect the dots in translating how it would or potentially could transfer over someday to other hobbies/industries…

Trails do not create waypoints per se, but depending on settings they log “points” and then connect the dots. It kinda similar to what you are doing on your PC.

khris wrote:

You know, now that you mention it with the John Deere navigation stuff, I guess I did know that existed cause I remember reading about that stuff at some point.

It’s darn nice too.
Remember several years ago when my dad installed GPS on his Internationals. He hadn’t used it yet, but sent me out to the field to rip ground. Well, i couldn’t NOT try out the GPS. Within an hour i was standing outside the tractor having a smoke while the tractor drove itself to the other side.

By far the straightest and best rip job i’ve done in my life.
Allows so much time for activities!
Now if they could just lift the plow and turn corners for you (Probably an option :O )

Slightly more expensive than our boat/off road GPS units though

LOL, that’s awesome and I agree, I’m sure the technology exists out there to make the turns at the end of a row when doing the plow work! And also like you said, I’m sure it’s not cheap but I bet it’s there! I’m sure you could find other work to do while you watch the rigs take care of the fields on their own! LOL ALmost a little scary though depending how you think of it…

Khris

Im certainly not real close to the farming world, but I had a buddy tell me that not only do these tractors now drive themselves and plant with the GPS units, but they will actually make detailed maps of your soil content so you can plant and fertilize differently based on the soil. That is insane! Totally awesome.

Yeah our combine maps the yields too, so you can chart the field.
Keep in mind, the technology my old man uses, is 15+ years old

I wanna say the GPS bill is upwards of $25k a year for just the service.

Pretty crazy prices, but that’s a squirt of urine in the operating cost bucket at the end of the year.

Whoa, that is incredible. Definitely a reason why you don’t see the “small farmer” much anymore.

That’s definitely impressive and I agree with the comment on probably being part of the demise of the small farmer unfortunately. I live in Vegas, not exactly the farming mecca of the nation and I’m ignorant at best to the farming world in all honesty. The technology involved though I’m sure is insane and I’d imagine like most industries if you can’t keep up with it and afford it you’ll fall behind? Pros and cons to the world we live in these days it seems!

On the other hand, I went out this weekend with the race truck and figured out hot to create a trail. I then saved it to the SD card and was able to upload it on gpsvisualizer and recover the distance driven from that info which is exactly what I was looking/hoping to do. I also was able to save the “trail” as a “route” and I can keep that in my file of fun stuff for future reference if wanted. I actually won’t be keeping this weekend’s file but that’s basically the process I was hoping to figure out and I think I got it!

Thanks for the clarifications last week on this stuff!

If you have 8 minutes to kill here’s a video about who we are and what we bounce around doing with these trucks. I’m pretty proud of this video and this truck even though technically, it’s not mine. The one way above without the body panels is mine, the green one is a partnership deal. I’m the sweat labor part of the partnership in exchange for seat time! (BTW, what you see is literally the most entry level bottom tier of the offroad truck racing world you can get at. My partner is just your average enlisted Air Force guy with 1 year left until he’s got his 20 years done, we aren’t some rich mega race team. The truck was built 100% solo by me in my garage after hours and payment for my labor is shared driver seat time…)

I’m the “Khris” in the video…

Dang, I tried playing the video, but it says “An error occurred”….

Really? That’s strange… I haven’t heard of any issues viewing the video. It’s got almost 1800 views.

https://w ww.youtube.com/watch?v=8YyGzhJ38XU

Maybe try copy and pasting that in your browser but remove the space I put in the “www” part at the begining so that it wouldn’t post the short cut here.

That’s strange… I’m at work right now and can view it.

Im at work and it may have to do with our Websense application blocking its content. I will try from home.

Stupid jobs always killing all the fun! LOL

I was able to watch it now. Congrats, what an accomplishment and though it may not be “your” truck that has to make you feel really proud of what you did to prepare it for a race like that!
BTW, do you know Reid Rutherford? I haven’t met him personally, but Ive exchanged messages, etc with him back when he raced an Arctic Cat Thundercat ATV at the Mint. That was back in 2008 believe. I am not sure if he still races ATV, but I know he is involved in trucks.
Looks like a blast!

Great video, Tks. Congrats on the finish.

Thanks guys and Captain, you’re dead nuts on with my thoughts on that truck! Funny thing is I prep and maintain it better then I do my own truck. Partially cause I know what my friend Jason has on the line financially committing to these races and traveling from London. Last thing I want to do is have him spend the cash and time to fly around the world to race to have something dumb happen like I missed tightening a bolt or something you know. But beyond that, just taking pride in the truck in general! It really has exceeded my expectations so I try to keep it at that level 100% of the time. Other then the front suspension system the truck is truly 100% built by me solo in my garage and it’s not my job, this was nights and weekends and still is really. For a self taught garage guy to finish let alone win a race like that is definitely pretty high up on my accomplishments from my shoes. Interesting thing is we’ve done 3 races total, our next race next month though will actually be almost the exact distance of those 3 previous races combined. It also will be the first time we’re not both in the truck at the sametime and it’ll be our longest distance each of driving. Jason is running the first 280ish miles and I’ll be doing the 2nd 260ish. It’s also a point to point race so even things like our friends that help pit, the logistics of making sure they can leap frog to stay ahead of us the whole time and having all the gear and supplies to hopefully make the finish is a whole new challenge.

I can’t say I know Reid but the name does sound VERY familiar. I’ve probably seen it on entry lists or maybe just in conversation. The race scene is a pretty small community really…

Anyways, glad you enjoyed the clip… Like I said, I’m pretty proud of it and I’d be lying if I said I don’t show it off! LOL

I’m heading home now to fix the tail lights on the race truck and start fabbing up some new side mirrors as I kinda ripped one off the truck a few weeks ago out testing. LOL, whoopsy!

Khris

khris wrote:

I’m heading home now to fix the tail lights on the race truck and start fabbing up some new side mirrors as I kinda ripped one off the truck a few weeks ago out testing. LOL, whoopsy!
Khris

Your secret is safe here (on the internet) your buddy wont know what happened all the way in London.

LOL, Big Dumbo sized stock mirrors…

To mirrorless…

To fully caged mirrors that cost a whopping $11 to replace down the road. These should hold up to smacking branches at speed much better! Yes, it looks like I took this picture with a potato and not a camera…

And the tail lights work again! I swear they used to work but looking at how I had them wired, I’m not sure how… LOL Whoopsy!