GPS Explorer

Select tour name and track name

The very first step is to give names for the track to enable the website to retrieve your track(s) later on.
You can give two names for the track: Tour name and Track name.

The idea in behind is, that you can retrive a list of "your" tracks if you create a login name on my homepage same as the Tour name and click on the "My Tracks" button. You will be prompted for your login name (same as given Tour name) and password, then you will get displayed all the tracks you have entered.

Also this is part of the privacy concept in behind. The tracks themselfes are not password protected, so everybody out there is able to access and even to edit your track if you tell her/him the URL displayed in the image above or the Tour name and Track name of your track.

File Upload

You can add an arbitrary number of GPS tracks to your Tour/Track-combination. Just use the File Upload, the selected files will be inserted into the database (upon successful file verification).

The GPS-Explorer accepts GPX and comma separated value files (CSV). For the CSV-files, the formats of Kompass, Ape@Map and Bike-GPS are accepted.

Everytime you select a filename, an additional input line is added to the upload-section. This eases multiple file upload.

Display Tracks Table

Display of tracks and track-segments.

This two-level hierarchy is adopted from the GPX standard, where tracksegments are considered as sub-element of tracks. Trackpoints again are sub-elements of tracksegments.

• Track A
• Tracksegment #a1

Trackpoint a1-01 Trackpoint a1-02 …

• Tracksegment #a2

Trackpoint a2-01 Trackpoint a2-02 …

• Track B
• Tracksegment #b1
• Tracksegment #b2
• …
• …

Every tracksegment can be made invisible and also deleted. Tracks and tracksegments can be renamend by clicking on the respective name in the table.

• Change the name of track or tracksegment by clicking on track-name or tracksegment-name. You will be prompted for the new name.
• Display/hide tracksegments by selecting the respective checkbox "visible".
• Delete tracksegments by selecting the respective checkbox "del" and click on the "Update"-Button.

Tracks and tracksegments can be combined in the following way:

• Combine segments moves all the tracksegments which are marked in the checkbox "comb. seg's" into the track of the first marked tracksegment.
• Cocatenate segments sticks all tracksegments which are marked in the checkbox "conc. seg's" to the first marked tracksegment. This results in removal of the original separate tracksegment from its associated track. The sticked tracksegment dissapears from the list, but the respective polygon remains for shure, but now as part of the very first tracksegment marked in this column.

You can change the sequence of the tracksegments:

• Select a new sequence number for your tracksegments in the drop-down list "position" and click on the "Update"-Button. The tracksegments are re-ordered according to your settings, the association to tracks may change as the resorting works also across tracks.

If you combine these features, you can easily combine parts of different trackfiles to completely new tracks, or e.g. hold a database of possible trip sections and generate a new trip by just de-selecting some segments, optionally re-order the rest and recombine them to a complete new combination of tracks. Here it is, your new tour variant... :-)

Display Waypoints Table

Display of waypoints per track using waypoint name and comment. Every waypoint can be made invisible and also deleted. Waypoint name and comment can be renamend by clicking on the waypoint in the table.

• Change the name of waypoints and comments by clicking on waypoint-name and comment-name. You will be prompted for the new name.
• Display/hide waypoints by selecting the respective checkbox.
• Delete waypoints by selecting the respective checkbox and click on the "Update"-Button.

Show Trackpoints

You can show/hide the single trackpoints of a track by checking the respective checkbox. Please be cautious, displaying several hundreds of trackpoints may stall your computer for several seconds. Therefore only trackpoints of the current visible part of the track will be shown. If you try to display a critical number of trackpoints on the map, you will be prompted for confirmation.

Move Trackpoints

When you select the "Show Trackpoints"-option, you can easily move any trackpoint by drag-and-drop on the map. Just left-click on the wanted trackpoint-icon, hold the left mouse button down while you move the icon to the intended new position. Release the mouse button and the new trackpoint position is stored in the database and the track is refreshed.

Adding Trackpoints

When the respective radio button is selected, a click into the map results in adding a further trackpoint to the visible trackpoints. The trackpoint is inserted between the two most closest adjacent and visible trackpoints.

I recommend to check the "Show Trackpoints"-checkbox to ease the overview on already available trackpoints.

Delete Rectangle

For marking a selection rectangle on the map, be shure that you select "Rectangle" on the Left-Click selection.

In order to be able to delete a selection of trackpoints, you can draw a rectangle into the maps array by just clicking into the map. With two clicks on the map, you mark two opposite corners of a rectangle.

Click on the button "Delete Rectangle"

Every Trackpoint which is within the selected rectangle and is visible is deleted from the track(s).

Download Tracks

If you click on this button, a new window will pop up which provides links to download the respective track formats.

The visible tracksegments can be selected for download in the following file formats:

• GPX
• trk (ape@map)
• bgt (BikeGPS)
• tk (Kompass).

Large Map

Clicking on the "Large Map"-button shows a full screen Google Maps browser window with the current track.
You cannot edit any trackpoints here, it's just a maximum screen window filled with the respective map for the selected track(s).
(No advertising, that's why I like it very much!)

Reduce Track

When you click on the "Reduce Tracks"-button, a browser window for Track reduction using the Douglas-Peucker-Algorithm will pop up.

Just fill in the requested accuracy in the input field (in meter) and click the "Calculate"-button. The window will present you the original number of trackpoints and the number of trackpoints that will remain if the track is reduced according to given accuracy.

You also can compare the original track with the reduced map when you check the checkbox "show reduced track". The comparison is more impressive when you select the "show trackpoints"-checkbox.

The interesting thing here ist that you can see how unnecessary it is to sample a trackpoint e.g. every 10m or every second. The Douglas-Peucker-Algorithm reduces the amount of trackpoints significantly by marginal loss of information. Just try it out.

No changes at all will be applied to your track as long as you do not select the Perform Reduction checkbox. If you select this checkbox, a warning will be issued. If you click on the "Calculate"-button with checked "Perform Reduction", the original track(s) will be replaced by the reduced track(s). This change is not reversible, please either be shure you know what you do or backup the selected track, e.g. by downloading prior to track reduction.

Show Track Details

When you click on the "Details"-button at the overview-table, a new window is opened showing following details of the track(s):

• Track- and Segment-Name
• Nr. of Trackpoints
• Altitude difference uphill (⇑) and downhill (⇓)
• Average speed
• Track distance
• Runtime (breaks neglected)
• Total time including breaks

The following graphs are shown:

• Elevation versus Distance
• Speed versus Distance
• Speed versus Time (shows the periods in time when move and when you had a break)

Please mind that these information is available only if the GPS data contain correct timing information. In case one trackpoint misses timing information or the timing information is incosistent, all speed and time information is neglected and no data and graphs are shown in this window. A respective error message will be issued on the top of the window which may allow you to check your source GPS-file for possible mismatches.

Show my Tracks

All track names from "your" tour will be displayed in the upcoming browser window. Authentication via login is necessary here. The login must be the same as the requested tour names.

This is the main concept in finding the balance between data privacy and easy usability. Every track is accessible, if the user knows the combination of "Tour-" and "Track-"Name. You can collect all "your" tracks if you always use the same Tour-name and pick up a user name and password where the user name is the same as your tour name.

Like in the example: If your user name is Hans65, you get all tours with the Tour name Hans65 after selecting the Show my Tracks-Button.

You can pick up a new user name at http://www.manfred-roth.de/login.

In order to learn about the GPS Explorer, you can use the sample user account:

• User name: Hans65
• Password: hans65

You can edit and add tracks using this sample user name, but please note that everybody else can do the same with these tracks. Therefore please ensure that you do not upload or add confidential data.

A click on the track name in the pop-up window containing a list of all "your" tracks opens the GPS-Explorer browser window with containing the selected track. If you want to delete one of your tracks, just select the respective delete... link.

Delete Database

You can entirely delete the currently selected track using this button. Please note: All data are deleted, no backup is possible. Please ensure to backup your data properly, e.g. using the track download option.

Latitude / Longitude Coordinates

The latitude / longitude coordinates (in decimal form) and also the dimensions of your current map section are shown at the bottom of the Google Maps plan.

Why? I use the mobile phone GPS tool ape@map which allows download of Open Street Map-Maps. For the selection of the map section to be downloaded in the ape@map-tool, you have to enter the center coordinates and the dimensions of the intended section. That was not easy, therefore I added this information part in the GPS-Explorer.

It eases copy/paste because the respective coordinate is selected automatically when you move the mouse over the coordinates.