[Freegis-list] GPS/NMEA data processing

[Nils Faerber]

Hi all!
After the quite lengthy but very informative thread about GPS/NMEA GIS
data processing I thought I should share my findings with you. It is not
much but at least something.

For now it seems that GRASS is no option for me. I want to import
GPS/NMEA data into some GIS application to finally create maps from it.
GRASS is too complex for me.
I had a look at QGIS and Thuban now.
QGIS and Thuban do even look quite similar and offer similar
functionality - still not vector editing, i.e. you cannot modify the
shapes, but you can add annotations and export simple maps from imported
shapes. QGIS add the functionality of plugins, one of them a GPS import
plugin.
Though this plugin did not work for me it pushed me into the right
direction of looking for a filter to change GPS/NMEA tracks into shapes.
After some research I found a small program called "gpstr2shp.c" which
converts GPS track data into shape files. This track data is not NMEA
but a rather simple format. I am now writing an additional filter to
convert NMEA into track data which can then converted into shapes. At
least for my test-data it works ;)
I will publish a link when I have something more stable (in a few days).
Using the above mentioned filters I was able to import the resulting
shape-files into Thuban - quite a success!

The feature I would need most now would be vector editing in either
Thuban or QGIS to correct the imported shapes - some points are rather
random (when the GPS lost the link) and I would like to split and/or
merge tracks ... but that's for the future ;)

Anyway, many thanks for everyone who responded!
More to come later...

CU
  nils faerber

-- 
kernel concepts          Tel: +49-271-771091-12
Dreisbachstr. 24         Fax: +49-271-771091-19
D-57250 Netphen          Mob: +49-176-21024535
--