GPS bread-crumb trail maximum length in Street Atlas

I'm interested in knowing if there is anyway I could plot a 1K-2K mile trip with a breadcrumb trail that doesn't only stay at 5K points. It seems that the trail only preserves itself for about 150-200 miles at a 5000 point rate, which is the highest point rate I can assign it in the preferences.

Is it possible you are working at this backwards? Is it possible that a lower point rate will allow for a longer trail?

Sometimes the way these things are set up, the "point rate" is the density of readings for a given distance. So if there's also a hard limit on the total number of points it will store, the higher the point rate the shorter the trail it can log before it starts to roll stuff out the back. At least that's the way it works on my favorite Garmin device .. the lower the track "resolution" I set, the longer the distance it will retain in the track log.

I've never used the feature in Street Atlas ... actually I just spent ten minutes looking and I couldn't even find it. So I'm just guessing.

...ken...

Interesting point. I didn't try that.. I will report back

I don't think that will work. The setting is for trail length and there does not seem to be an adjustment for resolution.

Terry

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Terry you were right.

The smaller the number the shorter the bread crumb trail... Ugghhh! I guess I can only plot 200 miles at a time

I don't use that feature, so I don't know, but I wonder if saving the file periodically (every 100 miles) would help?

Thanks Terry. I didn't notice that sub-window has a scrollbar in it. DOH!!

Without an adjustment for resolution you're stuck with 5,000 points in the track log at whatever the default resolution is and that's the end of it.

How silly is that when you are running on computers that have a minimum of 160 GIGAbytes (cheap netbooks) of hard drive capacity, or larger!!!

My old Garmin iQue 3600 Palm PDA that keeps the whole track log in internal memory holds at least that many track points. And I can set the resolution lower to stretch the distance the track log covers.

That really needs to go on DeLorme's wish list.

...ken...

As I mentioned above, I haven't tested the feature. But based on the setup I would bet that won't work if you just keep saving the same file. You would need to save the file before the track log fills. Then you would need to open a new one immediately and save it as a different name before the track log fills. Then open another new one and save it with a third name before the track log fills. And.... you get the picture.

If you just save it periodically all it's going to do is keep adding onto the the existing track until it fills. I see no feature for saving the track log itself.

E.g. all my Garmin devices and Mobile PC have the ability to "save tracks". That will save the current track log into a named track. At that point I can clear the track log to start fresh and capture the next leg, saving each fresh leg into a seperately named track. I can, later, view each of those tracks by simply selecting it by name from the list of saved tracks.

If I want to view all of them on a map simultaneously I can transfer them into the Mapsource program where I can view them and even edit them to join them together into a single track if I wish.

I see no mechanism in SA to save the track log into a named track so you can clear the track log and start tracking the next leg of your journey. This may still be just my inexperience with the program, though.

...ken...

I will say that there is some power features in Street Atlas.. I do enjoy the ability to save the mapping features in layers, which is what your talking about Ken. The log file, the map file and the route file can all be saved separate. I enjoy those capabilities, I just wished it would "cache" more of the bread crumb trail.

Yes, I finally discovered tonite that you can save the log file periodically. SA is a really powerful program but it's not an interface that my brain works well with (it's warped from years of Garmin products) so I'm constantly finding more stuff when we have these sorts of discussions.

Once I discover something, it's usually fairly easy to do. Discovering it in the first place is the hard part.

...ken...