Automatic track recording (as in Garmin) - circular logging

Started by David, July 20, 2011, 08:24:44

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David

July 20, 2011, 08:24:44 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
Hi,

A nice feature would be to have track recording switched-on in background, all the time in a similar way as Garmin GPSs have.

Advantages:
- Makes the experience of going out with a GPS more hassle-free and makes sure an interesting route never goes unrecorded.
- Easier to explore new routes to go to the same destination because all the routes used to reach that destination in the past have been recorded and can be displayed, so it is easy to experiment new trails and perhaps revert back to an old one if better.

Suggestions:
- A track could be automatically stored using a timestamp as a name every x hours or every day or every time GPS is switched on/off/signal is lost (the latter one is what a Garmin GPS does).
- A circular memory could be set to prevent excessive storage memory usage and make sure old tracks get overwritten.
- In case an automatically recorded track is interesting, it can be renamed and stored separately in the normal track folder.

What do you think?
Thank you,
David
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David

#1
July 21, 2011, 14:48:04 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
Anybody likes this feature? :D I believe most of people enable track recording before a trip in the majority of cases and like to analize the trace later on.

Thanks,
David
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Menion

#2
July 21, 2011, 15:30:17 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
I don't like it if you want to know my opinion :). Maybe you don't :)) ... for me ... lot of work and I don't see much usage in this ... no problem to start record when I want record
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David

#3
July 21, 2011, 20:00:01 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
Urgh... you are right, I do not like your answer...  :)  I will give some reasons on why I think it is an important feature.

Garmin (sorry, Garmin again...) developed quite much its features around track logging. The use case (at least for me) is for outdoor activities in big national parks or nature, where basically you want to enable tracking always and all the time to be able to go back or to be able to find areas you did not explore even months after. A full history of tracks, always available to see where you have been. The best way to have it is to have tracking always enabled, so no risk of mistakes and  some archiving function.

Please take a look at these links:
http://garmin.blogs.com/softwareupdates ... iving.html
http://www.gpsfix.net/advanced-tracklogs/

I quote some:
"The major new enhancement is the ability to have auto archiving run daily or weekly.  Under Setup>Tracks>Auto Archive you will find three options: When Full (described above), Daily and Weekly.  As soon as you select either the Daily or Weekly option the unit will analyze your current tracklog and break it up into daily or weekly archive files with names like "Day 20-JUN-10 09.46.32 AM.gpx" or "Week 03-JUL-10 08.34.56 AM.gpx".   Thereafter, when you power on you GPS in the morning (daily) or on Sunday (weekly) the archive file will be created for the previous day/week and all of the tracks in the current tracklog will be moved to the archive file.  This keeps the clutter down in your current tracklog and provides an easier way to find your tracklogs for a given date."

Did I convince you?  :mrgreen:
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bender

#4
July 30, 2011, 22:32:27 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
+1

I switched to Locus from OziExplorer CE having moved from WM6 to Android and I was used to this feature there. It would really be nice not to care for manual recordings. I missed some recorded parts of tracks on my recent yacht holiday. :( It wasn't the developer's fault, of course. ;) It might be optional with default value off e.g. Thanks for taking it into consideration.
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David

#5
July 31, 2011, 14:03:41 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
Quote from: "bender"+1

I switched to Locus from OziExplorer CE having moved from WM6 to Android and I was used to this feature there. It would really be nice not to care for manual recordings. I missed some recorded parts of tracks on my recent yacht holiday. :( It wasn't the developer's fault, of course. ;) It might be optional with default value off e.g. Thanks for taking it into consideration.

Menion seems not convinced about this feature... It is up to us users to convince him!  :)  Please keep rating!

David
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jusc

#6
July 31, 2011, 16:11:46 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
Sorry, I´m not convinced too, because track recording ist just two clicks or touches away. I planned last tracks with Locus on my Defy the evening before I started. So why should I stop track recording after each start of Locus, if I only want to play with it? For me Locus is mor than a track logger.  8-)
I own a Garmin device too, and I start my tour and start recording by resetting the "old" track before. On the other side with another Garmin device (Forerunner) you have to start recording too, by pressing the start button. If you forget it, you have also nothing recorded.
2:2 :mrgreen:
J.
 please scroll the gifs down.
Regards J.
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bender

#7
July 31, 2011, 21:19:51 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
The autorecording feature is nothing we couldn't live without, of course. I just wanted to point at a (for me) very useful thing a competitive app offers. ;)
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stebu

#8
July 31, 2011, 23:48:52 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
There might be a compromise!
I'm sometimes forgetful, so I programmed for my own app (not Android) a short circular buffer about 30 minutes. This way I have 30 minutes of time from the start of the hike to remember to switch on recording (to a file). There should be an option to take all points from the circular buffer OR to start the recording from the current position.
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bender

#9
August 01, 2011, 07:24:39 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
Yeah or as I wrote above, simply have this feature optional with default value OFF, which should satisfy both kind of users. :)
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David

#10
August 01, 2011, 20:33:34 Last Edit: January 01, 1970, 01:00:00 by Guest
Quote from: "jusc"Sorry, I´m not convinced too, because track recording ist just two clicks or touches away. I planned last tracks with Locus on my Defy the evening before I started. So why should I stop track recording after each start of Locus, if I only want to play with it? For me Locus is mor than a track logger.  8-)
I own a Garmin device too, and I start my tour and start recording by resetting the "old" track before. On the other side with another Garmin device (Forerunner) you have to start recording too, by pressing the start button. If you forget it, you have also nothing recorded.
2:2 :mrgreen:
J.
 please scroll the gifs down.

Thank you for the explanation pictures! I also put the track button in the right menu to limit the number of clicks as much as possible before starting a trip. But if you count all operations to do before start (select waypoint, guide on, proper zoom, track on), it is still  many clicks... :) My point is to limit the staff to setup as much as possible and automatic tracking would help.

I see your point. You just want to have a clean track showing the route you are interested to record. Well, you can disable track log in your garmin; there is an option in the setup menu. Personally, I leave the tracklog always on as I like to mark all the areas I have explored, even months before, of a national park, etc. to be able to come back (I know that route brings somewhere out) or to avoid already visited areas.

In my opinion, a background continuous tracklog option (which can be enabled/disabled) would be nice to have. 8-)
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