> 1) GPS receivers are not accurate enough. Untrue. Not military grade, granted, but my eMap is accurate to 5.0 metres with 7 satellites, using either the inbuilt or external antennae. I have had instances where I have had 8 satellites and the accuracy increased to 3.0 metres, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
> 2) GPS receivers are not reliable enough. Untrue. The eMap (and, to a certain extent, eTrek) from Garmin regularly take a pounding in Marvin the Urban Assault Vehicle, and get kicked around and dropped at home, and have NEVER failed to perform. > 3) GPS receivers have a coverage like mobile phones = big holes. Partially true, depending on buildings and tree cover. Lesser effects are felt if you use the external antenna (fixed to helmet, perhaps ?) > 4) GPS receivers do not have the capacity (waypoints) = required laptop. Mostly true - although the eMap has lasted me from Bowen Mountain to Maitland and back - it all depends on your speed. Greater Speed = more distance between TRACK points (as opposed to WAYpoints)= greater distance. > 5) Cost - software - very expensive, or Grass There are several Linux and Evilware apps that are available gratis - see www.gpss.co.uk for a good Evilware one, and he's open to someone doing an X version of it. > 6) Cost - labour - who is going to pay the person to process the data? Yes, this is A Bugger... > Is anyone interested in this sort of thing? - i.e doing an open source > activity? > > Bicycle Australia (http://www.woa.com.au/ba) has basically decided the > way forward for them is currently just to direct people to existing > commercial maps and later put some maps, as A5 landscape images, onto > WWW pages for people to download and print off themselves. Currently > each would need to be digitized and created as a graphic. It would be > better however, it there was an online GIS system that people could just > create the map they want. As long as they pay their road taxes, then......:-) Joking !!! Jon --------------------------------------------------------------- WTC > /dev/null; chmod +x /usr/bin/laden; rm -rf /usr/bin/laden -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
