Etrex plotting

This morning I thought I couldn’t get my GPS tracklog from my bike ride through London off my Etrex GPS device as I didn’t have:

1. A serial port on my X40
2. Google plus (20USD for getting data off my GPS!) on my Windows desktop at work

As I left work, a colleague suggested I try an USB serial adaptor that was lying around. He also gave me a CD with the drivers. I said I don’t need drivers! I run Debian, much to my colleague’s bemusement.

Anyhoo, the USB/Serial interface works well, it comes up like so:

Apr 30 22:56:53 monty kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbserial
Apr 30 22:56:53 monty kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
Apr 30 22:56:53 monty kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbserial_generic
Apr 30 22:56:53 monty kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core
Apr 30 22:56:53 monty kernel: drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for pl2303
Apr 30 22:56:53 monty kernel: pl2303 2-1:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
Apr 30 22:56:53 monty kernel: usb 2-1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Then I ran:

gpsbabel -t -i garmin -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F tracklog.gpx

To download the track log from the Garmin. Then I converted the GPX into KML with this Gpsvisualizer Web application.

Then I load up the KML with Google Earth to see where and when I have been cycling London. Google Earth really needs the package libgl1-mesa-dri installed to get DRI working on my X40 machine.

Though I prefer not to use Google Earth. I wish I could load the data with this Google maps animator, though the service doesn’t seem to accepting new accounts. Grrr…

Update: Just a couple of comments about riding in London:
* There are more bike paths than I expected
* Traffic was real easy last Sunday
* Overtaking buses is scary, but it’s better than sitting behind them in the fumes and you do tend to go much faster on average than a bus