On the first day of Christmas

Prompted by On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: Anscombe’s quartet https://t.co/0olyAiVaBY — Judy Robertson (@JudyRobertsonUK) December 2, 2015 and with apologies: On the first day of Christmas My true love gave to me A testable hypoth-e-sis On the second day of Christmas My truelove gave to me Two sample … Continue reading On the first day of Christmas

Prompted by

and with apologies:

On the first day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
A testable hypoth-e-sis

On the second day of Christmas
My truelove gave to me
Two sample means
And a testable hypothesis

On the third day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Three peer reviews
Two sample means
And a testable hypothesis

On the fourth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Four scatter plots
Three peer reviews
Two sample means
And a testable hypothesis

On the fifth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
FIIIVE SIGMAA RuuuuLE

(I always thought the carol went down hill from there)

Using Garmin eTrex Vista HCx with Ubuntu 14.04LTS & QLandkarte GT

I have a rather old Garmin GPS eTrex that I use for GPS on walking holidays and cycle rides. I use it with OpenCycleMap contour maps downloaded from talkytoaster. To plan routes and manage the routes, tracks and maps on Ubuntu I use QLandkarte GT.  This summer was the first time I used this combination on … Continue reading Using Garmin eTrex Vista HCx with Ubuntu 14.04LTS & QLandkarte GT

garminI have a rather old Garmin GPS eTrex that I use for GPS on walking holidays and cycle rides. I use it with OpenCycleMap contour maps downloaded from talkytoaster. To plan routes and manage the routes, tracks and maps on Ubuntu I use QLandkarte GT.  This summer was the first time I used this combination on my new PC, and I found some of the config difficult because the info I could find (e.g. this from GPS babel) related to old versions of Ubuntu (not surprising, this garmin is from the Ubuntu Feisty era). What needs doing seems similar but how you do it has changed.

I edited /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist to stop Ubuntu loading the garmin_gps module.  I don’t know if this is necessary, but everything I want seems to work with it there. That file now looks like:

# stop garmin_gps serial from loading for USB garmin devices

blacklist garmin_gps

The to make sure that the Garmin is automounted r/w for all users when plugged in to a USB post I created /etc/udev/rules.d/51-garmin.rules , with the content

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="091e", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

I found the lsusb and the gpsbabel utility  useful in testing the connexion. With it installed and the etrex plugged in I now see

phil@shuttle$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8001 Intel Corp. 
[...]
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 091e:0003 Garmin International GPS (various models)

phil@shuttle$ gpsbabel -i garmin -f usb:-1
0 3834401962 694 eTrex Vista HCx Software Version 3.40

And then in QLandkarte I can go to setup | general and under the “device and xfer” select Garmin in the main drop-down and EtrexVistaHCx in the Device Type (other Device options left blank) and happily transfer routes and tracks between the PC and the GPS.

Screenshot from 2015-08-07 09:11:51