GARtrip
The Windows PC shareware program for GPS data
By Heinrich Pfeifer

German Language Page / Deutsche Seite...

What kind of GPS receivers are supported by Gartrip?

There are mainly three classes of GPS receivers on the market:

• Dedicated handheld receivers with one-hand operation,
• Mobile phones (smartphones) or tablets with internal GPS receiver,
• Dedicated GPS navigators for cars, boats, and airplanes.

Gartrip supports all handheld and fixed-mount receivers made by Garmin and Magellan, provided they have a suitable connection (serial or USB), and all other devices including smartphones, provided they use GPX files for waypoints and tracks.

How do handheld receivers compare to mobile phones?

Advantages of dedicates handhelds:

1. Handheld receivers are water protected; some phones as well. This is true at least for the majority of models. Water protection is important for hikers, bikers, and some boat drivers.
2. Handheld receivers work up to 30 hours with one battery set. This is important if you want to record your track all the time while on the way - an essential feature of GPS receivers. It is recommended to keep the receiver on all the time, even if you want to check your position only occasionally, because a new receiver start may take very long under difficult conditions.
3. Handheld receivers use standard battery cells (AA size in most cases), phones use special batteries which cannot be changed on the way. For long trips, and for safety reasons, it is important to have spare batteries with you.

Advantages of smart phones:

1. The display is much better.

2. Better personalization for your preferences by different Apps (my recommendation).

3. It’s always with you.

What kind of GPS applications are addressed by Gartrip?

Gartrip is the best choice to manage collections of own waypoints, to plan map-based routes manually, and to analyze all information gathered by the track log - displayed numerically, and in diagrams (altitude, gradient, speed...).

These features are much more versatile than offered elsewhere, including extensive support of data exchange with other programs.

Test Gartrip. It is free. You will like it, even if you already own Mapsource or the Trip & Waypoint Manager from Garmin.

Why shall I use my own scanned maps, while Mapsource already has built-in maps for the whole world?

Most Mapsource or Basecamp versions have street maps suitable for auto-routing (City select), but not dedicated to biking and hiking. Other Mapsource versions (Topo) have topographical maps but this kind of vector maps are very poor when preparing a hiking trip. I am speaking about the German Topo maps available; maybe there are better ones for other countries. They do not show any differences between classes of paths, nor do they show all landscape properties as used by normal paper maps for this purpose.  Gartrip works with all maps available as picture files (format bmp, gif, or jpg). These picture files are obtained as export from any map CD, or by scanning your own paper maps.

Scanning a paper map is not convenient, I admit. But it is free of licence fees, and paper maps are available in a much bigger variety than maps on CDs.

If you like, you may also use online OSK maps instead.

Note: Gartrip cannot transfer maps to mapping GPS receivers. For this purpose you need Mapsource or Basecamp with its vector maps.

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