Not all who wander are lost

One of my hobbies is maps, in particular electronic ones, and their use with GPS. I have used OziExplorer for about 10 years, especially for marine navigation. It can use almost any bitmap image that one can figure out latitude/longitude placement, plus a bunch of proprietary formats. For US maps one can go to NOAA or BSB or any of several state sites.

Oddly enough, even though OziExplorer is an Australian product, I've had a really hard time finding useful map images of Australia. However we did find a road atlas that has latitude/longitud on most of the pages. So I decided to try a method I've known was theoretically possible, but never tried: photograph a map (or other image) and tell OziExplorer where it belongs on the grid.

So with a little fiddling with a digital camera over the atlas, and PaintShop Pro to clean up the images I've now got OziExplorer usable images. I read them into OziExplorer, using a bunch of calibration points (because of lens distortion and the page not being flat), and now my GPS can tell me where I am on the virtual atlas page, real time. Not only that, but I can sit down before the next day's difficult navigation and put in waypoints on the atlas image and upload the resulting route to the GPS for use as I drive. So I laid out a somewhat complicated route into Adelaide (a city of 3 or 4M, with lots of outlying suburbs, hills and large parks to navigate).

Then we called our friends we are going to visit who gave an entirely different route. No problem, I just poke in some more waypoints and upload the new route. It worked just fine, we got to their house without any wandering or wondering. Could I have done it without the GPS and mapping software? Maybe - maybe not. It would have been more stessful, and harder for the navigator. So I consider the method a success, although a bit cumbersome.

GEEK and proud of it.