Introduction To Moving Map Navigation With Oziexplorer – Part 2

By Chris Bibby

Setting up Oziexplorer with a GPS might seem like a bit of a daunting task, but it’s really very straightforward, once you have grasped a few simple concepts. You’ll soon be on your way to mapping out your next adventure, loading up track files and waypoints from others trips and saving your track files and waypoints to share with others.

This article will outline how to get everything up and running with Oziexplorer on a laptop or a car pc. Setting up Oziexplorer CE for use with a PDA will be covered in another article, but the basic concepts to waypoints and navigation presented still apply.

This article also assumes you have the latest licensed version of Oziexplorer, a GPS and some suitable maps. Have a look at Part 1 for info on where to get all the bits and pieces.

Hooking up The GPS

Detailed brand specific configuration information is in the Oziexplorer help file and will show you how to configure your particular unit. In this article I will show you how to set up a NMEA only GPS such as the Haicom HI-204E and other mouse type GPS units.

These units usually use a USB cable with a driver that installs a virtual COM port. You will need to find out what COM port has been assigned to the unit after installing the driver.

The easiest way to do this is to install the software from the manufacturer and once that's done check the installation by right clicking on the My Computer icon on your desktop. Selecting properties and then clicking on Device Manager on the next screen will give you a window like this.

fig 1.0 - Device Manager Showing Installed USB Serial Port

If the driver installed correctly you should be able to see the Virtual Com Port in the device manager window under Ports. The driver in this case has installed the Virtual COM Port for the GPS as COM3, write this down as you will need it to set up the GPS in Oziexplorer.

The next step is to get Oziexplorer and the GPS talking to each other through this COM Port. To do this run Oziexplorer and click File --> Configuration, or press ALT + C. It will bring up a tabbed menu of configuration items, the Tab we are initially interested in is the GPS Tab.

fig 1.1 - GPS Tab

Here we need to select the GPS Make to NMEA Only, the rest of the default settings we can accept. Note that if you were setting up different make of GPS you would select the relevant make here.

The next Tab we are interested in is the COM Tab.

Fig 1.2 - COM Tab

In the General COM Settings Tab select the COM port that you wrote down after installing the USB driver. Parity should be None, stop bits should be 1 and the NMEA Baud Rate should be 4800. You can accept all other default settings. When finished, click on the Save button.

And thats it, you are now ready to load up some maps and start using the moving map features of Oziexplorer.

Moving Map

The first item to configure is the map file path. I find it easiest to copy the map files onto the hard drive, as CD's and DVD can tend to skip when driving along. Also you'll find loading the maps from the Hard Drive alot faster.

We need to tell Oziexplorer where to look for the maps, this is done in Configuration screen, File --> Configuration or Alt + C and is on the System Tab.

fig 3.0 - Setting the Map File Path

With the map file path set, you're ready to turn on moving map. Go to the Moving Map menu and click on Start NMEA Communication With GPS. (Ctrl + C).

Oziexplorer will now look through the map file path you defined and display the best scale map for your location.

Voila, you have moving map!!!

The Moving Map control gives you additional features and gives you real time data in relation to yor position that includes your current speed, heading, as well as providing quick access to some useful moving map related features.

fig 3.1 - Moving Map Control

Icon	Feature	Description
	Start/Stop	Starts/Stops Moving Map
	Auto Scroll	Automatically scrolls map to keep the current position in view.
	Find Maps	Allows you to find other maps at your current position.
	More Detail	Always search and display the most detailed (best scale) map at your current position.
	Lock Map Path	Only looks for maps in the path of the currently loaded map. This is useful if you have a particular set of maps you want to keep being loaded.
	Ignore NMEA Valid	Ignore the NMEA Valid Data flag.
	Show Hide	Show/Hides the Moving Map Control

Working With Maps

There's a variety of ways you can organise maps, I find the most practical way is to utilise the Index Map feature of Oziexplorer. I use this as I have map sheets (as opposed to a mosaic) of varying scales and in a lot of areas I will have more than one map for that area, ranging from 1:25,000 through to 1:250,000. The index map is basically a large scale map that will show the extents of each map. If you click on the defined area, it will show you what maps are available for that area.

fig 3.0 - Index Map Window

Fig 3.0 Shows the index map window configured to look for all maps in the drive Z:. You can see here I have the 1:250,000 maps covering most of the state and the 1:50,000 covering the southwest. Clicking on an area in the south west will give me the option of loading either scale map.

Setting it up is easy, first of all you need to select a map to use as the index map, this needs to be a map of large enough scale so you can see the extents of all maps. You can download some I use from here. Then you select the folder where your maps are. This can be a local drive, network drive or CD/DVD.

Waypoints

Oziexplorer has some quite advanced features when it comes to waypoints and navigation which are probably better suited to a future article. The three most common tasks where waypoints are used are downloading waypoint files and loading them in Oziexplorer, plotting your own waypoints for a trip and entering waypoints from a trip guide. We'll go through a couple of practical examples.

Using Downloaded Waypoints

Waypoints come in a variety of different formats as not everyone uses Oziexplorer. There is now an open standard known as GPX format which is a kind of universal waypoint format that can be used between many different devices and mapping software. There are also programs out there which will convert waypoints to and from specific types, one of the best available is GPSBabel (www.gpsbabel.org). For the purposes of this article we will use GPX format, which is what most of the GPS Files on Camping WA are saved in.

We'll start by downloading the Point Road Campsite GPS file available from here .

The next step is to import this file into Oziexplorer, to do that go to File --> Load from File --> Import GPX File (Wps & Tracks) then locate the file you downloaded click on Open and it's done.

You'll notice that you wont be able to see the waypoint on the map if you don't have the corresponding map open, but thats easy to find from the Waypoint list Control (View --> Lists --> Waypoint List or ALT + W).

fig 4.0 - Waypoint List

Clicking on the icon will search for the most detailed map in the area of the selected waypoint, and display that map.

Creating your own waypoints on a map is as simple as selecting the Position and Select Waypoints on map tool and then clicking the location on the map where you want a waypoint to be created.

fig 4.1 - Main toolbar showing waypoint set tool

Entering waypoints manually is just as easy, from the waypoint list control (fig 4.0) simply click on the add button and then enter the details of the waypoint. You may fnd that many of the guide books and magazines will use UTM format as opposed to degrees, minutes and seconds, the reason for this is that UTM allows a greater accuracy.

To enter waypoints in UTM format you must first have UTM selected as your alternate Grid in Configuration. To do this go to the main configuration screen (file --> configuration or ALT + C) and select the Maps Tab. The alternate grid section should look like this :

fig 4.2 - Alternate Grid Configuration

Once you have configured the Alternate grid, choose the Display Position in UTM grid option on the Waypoint List control. You will now be able to enter waypoints in UTM format.

fig 4.3 - Alternate Grid in Waypoint List

So now you can download, enter and create your own waypoints, the next thing you'll need to know is how to use the navigation control to help you navigate between waypoints. Again this is an area where there are other more sophisticated features available in Oziexplorer, but the idea here is just to get an overview of the basic functionality so you can go out and use it and then build upon the basics.

It is important here to remember that Oziexplorer is raster based mapping software and no information pertaining to roads and routes are stored in the maps, any navigation is performed 'as the crow flies'.

Say you've loaded up the Point Road campsite waypoint on your map and you're driving down Caves road and want to know how to navigate to the Point Road waypoint. The first thing to do is to load the Navigation Control (Navigation --> Navigation Control or Ctrl + N) which will look like this:

fig 4.4 - Navigation Control

The circled button lets you select a waypoint from the loaded list of which to navigate to and the navigation control then draws a line on the map between your current position and a waypoint.