Panasonic Toughbook GPS

One of my GPSMonitor users just sent me a note about how he's using the software on a couple of Panasonic Toughbook notebooks with an integrated GPS. Unfortunately the notebooks didn't have GPS software, so he tracked down several packages, one of which was GPSMonitor. Now he's happily monitoring sites across 3000 acres where he works.

So if you're looking for GPS softwar for your Toughbook, give GPSMonitor a try! There's nothing to lose but a minute's worth of bandwidth since the software is free.

This struck me as the ideal combination for the software, since you have the large notebook screen (compared with a typical GPS screen at least). If you just add in a modem card, you can even pull up Google maps as you wander around with the notebook.

It's always fun to see how people are using my software in ways I couldn't imagine on projects that are just mind boggling. I've heard about everything from fishing boats to environmental monitoring. What will you folks think of next?

GPSMonitor mapping update

GPSMonitor has an update to its mapping code which isn't actually a change to the executable. The current version 2.0.0.5 will automatically start mapping properly for a GPS which uses commas in the latitude/longitude rather than periods.

The application itself pulls the local number formatting information correctly from the computer, but it calls out to a web site to draw the map page. That means I need my web page to be smart enough to swap both number formats into the one my Google Map connection is expecting. It's much happier now. Here's a sample map. If you click on the marker or look in the data passed to the page, you can see it's using the European comma number format.

Also I noticed a typo which I've fixed but not yet distributed. The GGL tab should be labeled GLL. The code all uses GLL as it should, but I missed the incorrect text on the tab.