Help with Garmin GPS's

[Rincon650]

I have tried both my Garmin 12 and my GPSIII (Both using the same Computer w/Vista OS, Garmin serial cable, Belkin Serial-USB adapter) and they produce the same results.

I don't have any trouble connecting and downloading my way points (with either gps) from the GPS/GPS Transfer (GPS config set to:Older Garmin Serial / Com port 1 / 9600).

I'm not having the same luck with the GPS/Live Tracking, With the configuration set up to match the GPS/GPS Transfer configuration all of the lights on the Belkinn adpter flash once and nothing happens.

If I set the GPS's to "NMEA/NMEA" and the GPS Live Tracking to NMEA/com port 1/9600 (setting it to 4800 makes no difference). I do get the running man showing my location but he is about 100 yards east of were he should be on the map (It's off on all of the maps and pics, and in proportion to the map size) plus the Elevation box in the Real Time GPS Tracking page stays at 0ft.

The Magellan configuration for:GPS/GPS Transfer (GPS config set to:Magellan/ Com port 1 / 9600) gets the Belkin lights flashing but nothing downloads. Hey I thought it was worth trying.

So my questions are:
1. Why won't the same configuration work for both tabs? (I have to shut down and disconnect everything reconfigure the GPS and the TopoFusion configurations then reconnect and restart everything each time I want to change from GPS Transfer to Live Tracking and again when I want to go back back!)

2. How do I get the location indicator (running man) to match the location on the maps?

3. How do I get the elevation to show on the Real Time GPS Tracking page?

I did search the forums and have answered most of my questions, so now these are the few remaining issues I can't figure out on my own.

[Krein]

There are a couple issues here, but I think the best thing to do is shoot for getting live tracking working using the "GARMIN" interface mode, rather than the NMEA setting, which may not be sending elevation and position data correctly.  This will also eliminate the reconfigure step.

So, if you would please, can you try starting a live tracking session  with one of the GPS's set to GARMIN interface mode, and the settings as works with the waypoint transfer.  If you get the same failure, close the program and email the TopoFusion.log file to support@topofusion.com and we'll take it from there.

Thanks.

[Krein]

For future reference (in case someone stumbles on this thread in the future), it turns out that both the GPS III and GPS 12 (most older Garmin units) don't support the Garmin "live tracking" (PVT) protocol at all.  So, NMEA tracking is the only way to go.

We are investigating the position and elevation discrepancies now.

[Krein]

A further update on this - the position error was due to a different datum setting.

TopoFusion (I thought this was universal, since there's no way to tell what datum the coordinates are being sent over in) assume that things are in WGS 84, so you'll need to set the GPS to that.

The elevation = 0 was indeed a bug in the software which we fixed  for the next release.

Thanks again for the help diagnosing this problem!