Free GPS for walking/hiking?

[MikeB]

What free GPS applications are there for use in walking or hiking? I already have a GPS receiver (and TomTom), and would like to use it for other activities. Any suggestions?

[sgosnell]

Cetus is the best I've found. It's available almost anywhere you can get Palm software. There are others, but it's the most full-featured and stable I've tried.

[Tomohawk]

What is your setup? I would like to get a GPS receiver that'll plug into a T|E

thx

[MikeB]

I have a Palm OEM'd gps receiver, and a Palm T3.

[Tomohawk]

Delorme has a product called topoUSA that is available for Palm OS:

http://www.4x4books.com/topo.htm

You can use it to plan and execute your walk.

[bdhu2001]

Original post by MikeB:
What free GPS applications are there for use in walking or hiking? I already have a GPS receiver (and TomTom), and would like to use it for other activities. Any suggestions?
What version of TomTom are you using. I have TT6 and it allows you to set walking courses. The section that allows you to chose fastest, etc also allows you to chose walking or bike riding.

[sgosnell]

DeLorme and TomTom are not free, nor even cheap. Cetus (http://www.cetusgps.dk/download/CetusGPS11.zip) is the best free GPS program I've found. It gives you distance and direction to a waypoint in the standard format, as well as taking waypoint lists and making tracklogs of where you've been. It doesn't have maps, but no freeware that I'm aware of does. That's where the money is.

[Tomohawk]

I've tried Cetus in the car, and the tracking was not even close. It could be from the speed or anything else, but on a 15 mile drive, it was 3 miles off.

thx

[STBXXL]

Perhaps you want to give cotogGPS (http://core.de/~coto/projects/cotogps/) a try? I use it frequently with my Treo 755p and the Freedom Mini GPS to track walks and hikes. There's also a desktop tool that allows to export tracks into Google Earth format. Very nice. :) Best of all, it's free.

Cheers.

[sgosnell]

Three miles off what? Cetus just gets a position from a GPS and displays it. There is no way it can be 3 miles off. You may be interpreting the position wrong or something. I tried cotoGPS when I first started using a GPS with my Palm, and found Cetus worked better for me. It may be a personal preference thing.

[Tomohawk]

Using the tracking feature on COTO, the distance value was three miles off after driving 15 mies across town at suburban speeds.

[sgosnell]

The distance traveled depends very much on the quality of the signal. If the GPS is not getting a good signal, its perceived position can jump around a lot. I think your problem is with your GPS and its positioning, not with the software. What GPS are you using, and where is it located?