Gps at the ski piste

Olli_E · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 07, 2007 Posts: 3

Hi!

Downhill skiing being my gratest passion I've always tried to make detailed analyzing of my runs in the slopes. I have a suunto s6 wristop comp which has a possibility to start loggin the events but because it measures the altitude from air pressure it's a bit old fashioned at these times of gps. I use a gps mouse and a series 40 platformed phone for car navigation, but I wish to take advantage of them with skiing too.

So does anyone now a, preferrably freeware, program that would be handy for my intentions? It should have the possibility to start a logbook and afterwards explore the information of my runs. This would be speed, altitude changes, if possigle angles of the slopes, total descentage, total distance etc. A nice feature would be the possibility to export these logbooks to PC and view/print them. My phone is a Nokia 6280, so it whould have to work on java I guess.

Olli

p.s. Our skiing season here in Finland is 7 months. That's 1500 km of skiing/season. This would come handy.

mostdom · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 3:00 pm Post subject:

Dont know of any free software, but take a look at garmin's handheld gps devises as some have some pretty competent logging software attached, these are also good as they won't always try and lock you to the nearest road.

Never thought about taking the old garmin on the slopes, might be cool to know haw fast i'm going and how far I ski from day to day.
_________________
Dom

HERE LIES PND May it rest in peace.
Navigon 7310/iPhone Navigon&Copilot

robertn · Frequent Visitor Joined: Feb 06, 2005 Posts: 564

For Ski Slope altitude, I doubt GPS would be better than air pressure - if your individual Ski runs take over 4 hours then maybe GPS has an advantage.

I use Memory Map on my PDA for tracking and recording my moutain biking- gives lat/long and altitude and time/speed/distance etcc. The track can be overlaid onto the PC when I get home. I don't know if they do one for the phone, but you could always just record the gps data look at it later on the PC. - Look at Ozi Explorer, Vito Navigator and Memory Map.

By far the best solution is a Garmin handheld, one day I'll be able to afford one.

Olli_E · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 07, 2007 Posts: 3

mostdom · Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 8:46 am Post subject:

If you ski hard as I do, with short turns on fast runs then you wouldn't have a hope in capturing any information on a gps sytem, or at least not without spending a lot of money.
GPS is not acurate enough to capture subtle changes in quick succession.

But to track the overall days progress it would be good. info like average speed, altitude changes, time spent, actual speed at any time, and more importantly location. It would capture long turns, and your generall route at best.

Speed would be an issue because gps measures speed on the assuption that you are travelling on flat ground, so if you travel at the sames speed down a 45 degree slope your speed would only be recorded at half your acual speed.

Conclusion is that gps is not designed for extrem mountainous enviroments, it will track your progress, is not detailed enough for close scrutiny.

I'm still gona' give it a go anyway!!! 8)
_________________
Dom

HERE LIES PND May it rest in peace.
Navigon 7310/iPhone Navigon&Copilot

Olli_E · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 07, 2007 Posts: 3

kartracer · Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:32 pm Post subject:

I used to use a Suunto for tracking the day's skiing progress... number of descents and vertical metres, and also to work out a very rough estimate of distance skied. Then added a Geko 301 to get a better idea of distance covered and also to add speed. Now I have replaced both by a Navman A300 Ski. (What a gadget loving geek!)

These devices all provide pretty useless but nevertheless interesting stats. It was nice being able to show a bunch of guys I met on the mountain in 2005, who had been trying all week to clock 100kph down a straight only slightly bumpy piste, the readout on my Geko showing 102kph at my first attempt!
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Kam

robertn · Frequent Visitor Joined: Feb 06, 2005 Posts: 564

I'm impressed- with my 3 days a year skiing I would be happy to go 1/2 that and not die 8O - the GPS probably calculates a rolling average over a few seconds to. Would love to have seen a radar report on your top speed.

NickG · Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:04 pm Post subject:

This probably wasn't available when this thread started in March, but there is now a product available called SportsDo which seems to do pretty much what you want and works on a Java enabled phone.

http://www.sportsdo.net/

Skiing/snowboarding functionality:
http://www.sportsdo.net/Sports/Skiing.aspx

There are plenty of example tracks you can play with on the site too.[/url]

kieeee · Banned Joined: Feb 27, 2008 Posts: 22

maybe like that

AlexPresland · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 24, 2008 Posts: 15

Found this thread, as I was wondering if there was such a device to track your speed around the mountatin.

Some Google searching turns up a Navman A300 http://www.j2ski.com/ski_news/index.php/j2ski/ski-gps-clearance-sale-navman-a300/. However, that was there a few years back when I last looked.

We were in Arabba, Italy a few years back and they had a cool system which tracked you from what lifts you used. You could then log into a site with your lift pass number and get your "altitude track" for the day. Obviously, it can only track you between points at the top & bottom of lifts, but it was quite cool to see who the keenest and slackest (me!) skiers were. Above all, it was free! Very Happy

I've been to various places in the US and Canada which have systems, but you have to pay a small fortune to hire them and/or send an SMS to a shortcode to activate them. The shortcode bit doesn't work from a roaming UK mobile. The problem is that they're all linked to a ski resort rather than being something you can take with you wherever you go. These systems are:
http://www.slopetracker.com/
http://www.flaik.com/

However, I've got a friend who goes paragliding. He's shown me 3D terrain maps with a path of where he's flown over them. I believe that they judge competitions from each competitor's GPS readings, and produce combined files of all paths at the end. I'm pretty sure that you'd be able to use this on a ski slope - maybe I'll have to ask if I can borrow his GPS this coming season?
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mikealder · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 8:45 am Post subject:

A simple GPS Logger will do what you want to provide the information of where you have been, have a read through This for one such device. Altitude is always an issue with GPS as its never 100% accurate, but it should give you a good idea where you have been and distance covered - best part is they can be slipped into your pocket and they still work, light weight and easy to use - Mike

mostdom · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 10:08 pm Post subject:

I am now using the Garmin Edge 205 which is designed for cycling but proved very competent on the slopes too. Like similar data loggers you can then upload the info into mapping programs and view your days activities. I uploaded mine into google earth plus. v.cool.

_________________
Dom

HERE LIES PND May it rest in peace.
Navigon 7310/iPhone Navigon&Copilot

MattV · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 19, 2008 Posts: 2

I use SkiLog / Gtrek when skiing - http://www.gtrek.co.uk/

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