GPS on a Mac

I have been doing some GIS noodling on my Mac recently, since it is an Air and very nice. So, what can you do without parallels on a Mac? Lots. The new QGIS with Grass plugins is great, but if you want to just get your hiking points in and overlaid on an image, you can use GPSbabel. Also free (with suggested donations though, and it is a good thing). You can download your waypoints, tracks and routes from your Garmin (I used a GPSMap 60CSx) with GPSbabel (use the GPX format) and use the GPS plugin in QGIS to easily map them. But, going the other way? that is more difficult. I used GPSbabel with csv format (x, y, id) and uploaded an important route to my Garmin. I was feeling all adventurous until a colleague sent me this link: ben sinclair's site: how to use a garmin with your mac which sorts it all out for you.

Comments

[Ken-ichi]

Sweet. I've been using and for geotagging with my 60CSx. I just turn on the GPS, throw it in the bag, keep a tracklog while I take pics, then sync everything up when I get home. I also recently discovered that have gotten to the point where you can load MapSource files from a Mac to the 60CSx (you have to convert them from a Windows machine first). Rock.