GPS recording intervals - best option?FORUMS HOME SEARCH FORUMS

Hi everyone, we plan on doing a 4 day hike of ±40km soon and I was wondering if anyone has ever compared the amount of track points (for the same route) using the GPS's auto recording interval options of Most often, More often, Normal, Less often, Least often.

I'd like to get the entire 4 day's track as a single recording but don't want to go over the limit of 10,000 points.  I guess I can rather set it to record at say, every 5m which will result in 8,000 points but the route varies from very technical terraces where it should record as accurately as possible, to long straight stretches that don't vary much and where a trackpoint every 5m will be a waste.  This is exactly the purpose of the auto setting in that it detects this variations in speed, direction, etc and records accordingly.

I guess a nice test will be to do a short trail for 5 times as a test, each time setting the GPS to another recording interval, and afterwards compare the 5 tracks on a map and count each one's amount of trackpoints.

Any tips will be greatly appreciated should anyone have been in a similar situation!

Greeting from South Africa

Jan

Hi Jan,

I think you'd need to do some tests to find this out which settung is best as you suggested, but if you decide to create separate recordings for each day, you can combine them together afterwards on plotaroute.com using our Combine Routes feature.

John

Thanks John, much appreciated.  I actually did the first test this afternoon on a short 3km nearby path with the GPS set to the least amount of trackpoints.  Will do it soon again with it set to the most amount of trackpoints.  No real need to test every one of the 5 settings, one can get an idea already by just comparing the most and least options I guess.  Will keep you posted.