Monday 2 September 2013

Lots of work to do tonight!!

Some Of The Work Carried Out Tonight

SOLVED MOUNTING THE SAT NAV AND SPARE BATTERY 

I have been having problems deciding how I am going to tackle mounting my Samsung Galaxy S4 to be my SATNAV.  I really like co-pilot on my phone so I decided to stick with it.  I have looked at all the phone mounts out there and nothing seemed practical, the waterproof ones didn't really allow me to use extended batteries or power etc..

In the end I decided on a handlebar mounted bag with a waterproof map case that would hold the phone and allow cable access for the external battery charger with the added bonus that it is easy to view when riding so a quick glance is all that's needed.

The bag arrived from Amazon today (amazing service 2 day delivery).  It's an 8 Litre Avenir bag with a sturdy map case on top fitted that fitted the bill nicely (picture below).


This gives more than enough room for a Samsung Galaxy S4 and room for the external battery source inside purchased from fleabay (picture below).

The plan is to recharge both whenever the opportunity presents itself, I am considering buying a second external battery they weigh nothing and I really don't want to run out of juice for my satnav.

The only issue is (can you guess) yep!! Where the hell does my front light go now.... I have an LED Lenser unit that mounts on the bike or on the head, I want to do as little night time riding as possible so after trying it out I have decided that the light is actually better off worn as a head torch on the occasions i may be a little late getting in.  

SETTING UP MY SUUNTO T4C WATCH AND PODS


I bought a replacement Suunto T4c and spent a good while setting the watch up again and pairing it with:

1. Bike Pod (gives me speed + distance)
2. HRM (Makes sure im working hard)
3. Cadence Pod (I prefer working to a high cadence I use it to motivate myself)
4. GPS Pod (new one to me and im seeing how i like it)
5. Foot Pod - gives me speed and distance for running USEFUL WHEN I GET PUNCTURE LOL




Gadgets aren't to everyone's taste but I can give solid advice on one thing, if your trying to lose weight through exercise get a good heart rate monitor, learn about the Karvonen forumla follow your heart rate zones and I promise you will get the results your looking for.


GETTING MY MAPS RIGHT


The maps were all over the place and i have made several alterations to them so I spent the evening checking the gpx files, renaming and stitching everything together properly.  I promise I will make a blog to show how I did it and what tools.  Suffice to say I have had to do the following:

1. get hold of a general route from someone else (don't reinvent the wheel)
2. edit it for my own route
3. annotate the gpx files
4. convert each gpx file to .trp files (used with co-pilot)
5. merge all of the gpx files together
6. convert the merged gpx files to .kml
7. create my own googlemap from the .kml file and link to it from this blog.

and that was enough for tonight!  even my dog agrees!

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