Ahrr! Just tell me what to buy! (click on image)

GPS2PDA is a fairly simple program. Below are the primary screens in the order you will see them. The screens shown below were captured from a Palm OS system. However, the screens for Pocket-PC are almost identical.

This is the screen you see when you first run the program. It is called the Splash Screen, and the main purpose of this screen is to give you something to look at while the rest of the program loads in the background. Palm programs especially can take a while to load and initialize, so this screen loads fairly quickly and by the time you get around to clicking one of the two buttons, the rest of the program will be ready.

There are two buttons on this screen. The Prefs button is used to load the Preferences screen. The Start button loads the Main Screen.

This is the Preferences screen. It shows the things that the software needs to know that can vary from user to user. Normally you would only have to set the values on this screen once.

GPS Receiver: Different receivers output data a little differently from other receivers. You need to tell the software which receiver you are using so it will know the format of the data.

Data Screen Format: There are two data screen formats available. One shows more information, but has smaller buttons. Both are shown in the screens below.

Comm Port: You may have to change the Comm Port setting if you use a Pocket-PC PDA and don’t use the standard cradle connector.

Enable Sounds: You can have the PDA make beeping sounds when you tap the buttons on the PDA. Some people like this, some don’t.

Adv. Settings: There are several other settings you may need to adjust if you are using a non-standard PDA. These settings are explained in the User’s Guide.

This is the main screen, where all of the action happens. In this screen, the software has connected with the GPS receiver and shows the data on the screen. No data is being stored yet.

This is the Large Buttons screen format. You can see the time and the speed of your car. You can also see the HDOP for this data, which is an indication of the accuracy of the data (see the User’s Guide for more details). You want to make sure these are ok before you start the actual run.

When it is clear that you are getting good data you can drive to the beginning of your route and tap the Start Run 1 button with your finger or stylus. You can also push the left most button on the PDA which is the same as tapping the Start Run 1 button.

You started the run. The background of the screen changes to green, the Exit button disappears and a new button labeled Node X appears, and the wording on the run button changes to Stop Run 1.

The software is now storing the GPS data every second in a file in the PDA.

You can mark new nodes by tapping the Node X button, or pushing the right most button on the PDA. The number next to the word Node shows you the number of the current node.

When you are through with the first run, tap the Stop Run 1 button.

You finished the run by tapping the Stop Run 1 button. The software stops storing the GPS data in the file, the background color changes to light red, the Node X button disappears and the wording changes on the run button back to Start Run 2.

You now have a choice. You can start a new run, typically in the opposite direction from run 1, by tapping on the Start Run 2 button or you can quit the program by tapping on the Exit button.

If you start a new run, the screen changes to the screen shown above and the process continues.

If you tap Exit, the software closes the data file and exits to the application screen of the PDA.

Below are the screens you see if you select Small Buttons in the Prefs screen. The screen also shows the Latitude and Longitude as well as two parameters that help you determine if you are getting good data from the GPS receiver (see the User’s Guide for more details). Which data screen you use is completely up to you. It doesn’t affect the way the data is stored in any way.

Once you have collected your travel time data, you need to transfer it to your desktop computer so you can process the data with PC-Travel for Windows. This process is different for Palm OS PDAs, which uses the HotSync program, and Pocket-PC PDAs, which uses the ActiveSync program. The details of how this works is explained in the User’s Guide, which you can download from the Download page.

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