Early feedback wanted: GPX tool for adventure motorcycling

GENERAL CHITCHAT
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Hey folks - I’ve been working on something and figured if anyone would be into this it’d be the BCADV crew. :slight_smile:

It’s a tool for working with GPX files from an adventure motorcycling perspective. The core idea is you can open a GPX, trim it, adjust the start/end points, and combine it with other tracks to shape it into exactly the ride you want to do. I built it largely because I wanted a better way to work with files people share here, BDR trips, etc. - and actually get them tuned and onto my device.

Here’s what it does right now:

  • Route editing - trim, combine tracks, adjust start/end points
  • Campground & camping data - I’ve got campgrounds across the US, dispersed camping sites, and BLM/USFS sites you can view and save to your route
  • Custom waypoints - add your own points to build out a longer trip
  • Trip planning - stitch multiple routes into a day-by-day plan
  • GPX export - export the full file or as a breadcrumb track for devices that work better with those
  • Print view - a day-by-day layout you can actually print out
  • Extras - route curviness rating, elevation profiles, a few other small things I thought might be handy

I’m not trying to rebuild Gaia or Onyx - this is more about scratching my own itch and hopefully making it useful for other riders too.

:right_arrow: You can check it out here: gpxplore.net

One thing worth noting: everything is stored locally on your device right now. No accounts, no server. You can export and import your data if you want to move it to another device.

If this sounds useful, I’d love for you to try it out. Really looking for candid early feedback - what’s working, what’s not, what’s missing or if you simply think another tool does this better. I want to make this something that’s actually useful for riders, so don’t hold back.

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let me know if you have any trouble accessing the app - there might be some kind of DNS issue I haven’t sussed out yet (like I said its an EARLY preview) :slight_smile:

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I’ll check it out - 25yrs in the valley/SF, and despite that, I still like poking at new products.

FWIW, a growing number of us here (and elsewhere) are using DMD Navigation, which is a full hardware/software ecosystem designed from the ground up for moto (and, lately, adding 4x4 and Texas Wheelchair verticals). It’s Android-based, so you can use other hardware as well. Overall, they have fundamentally changed the game for backcountry nav, route making, etc.

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Thanks! Yeah I’ve resisted going the DMD/tablet route thusfar - I have been surprisingly happy with this little device: https://beeline.co (its definitely got its drawbacks - hence the app - but I’ve done multiple BDRs with it and it beats Gaia on a phone most of the time).

How do you load tracks onto the DMD? does it have any quirks with the types of routes it supports?

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DMD is the navigation app, works on any Android device. I use it on a refurbished Samsung active three rugged tablet, on the 790. On the 500. I’m using it on a rugged burner phone that I bought off of Amazon years ago for about $100.

They also have navigation hardware, that is purpose built for motorcycle and off-road navigation that comes with DMD installed. I believe Gino and a couple other others are running these devices.

Like any software, and route planning platform, there is a learning curve. But once you dive into the the app it’s clear that it is designed by adventure riders.

as for loading tracks, there are a couple ways. The first, and freeway, is to create a folder in the Google Drive account that is associated with the email account for your android. Then to load a track under the device, you simply find that folder in the file management system of the hardware and load it from there.

For me, one of the friction points has been learning the android versus iOS systems, but I’m getting the hang of it

The other is to purchase an annual subscription to their DMD Hub platform, which includes a route planner, and file manager tool where you can manage all of your tracks and have them synced up easily to the DMD app on your devices. The subscription also has some social, group riding tools, but I have no interest in those. I basically purchased the subscription to Support the developers, and to use their route planner and file management system.

The app itself is free, so you can try it out on any android device, bang around on it and see for yourself.

One of the unique capabilities of DMD are the native route planning feature features of the app. That is, you can identify a point on the map, and have it create a route for you to your destination, and you can choose the flavor of routing that it gives you. For example, a fast road ride, a scenic road ride, or an easy off-road route, or hard off-road route. In addition, the map identifies dirt versus paved roads, and uses different colors of the Rhodes to identify the different conditions of the dirt roads.

It’s a very European centric product, and my sense is that cell signal is more consistent in Europe, and therefore Europeans are able to take better advantage of some of the features of the app

But it’s a good fit for my used case, which is to find, or plan a route using their route, planning tool, or Gaia, convert that route to a track, then load the track into DM D on the tablet or phone using the file manager system on their platform

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Thanks Rich! This is super helpful - this gives me a few ideas on how I could better support DMD now, I didn’t realize they have essentially extended the GPX spec for their devices! Now I just need to dig up a burner Android device. :thinking:

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Now on laptop vs voice to text…

I sometimes think the online route planner is too smart for it’s own good. That is, I was creating the Day 3 route for the WY weekend later this month and could not get the damn thing to follow a route through Granby…I just opened up Gaia, did that segment, downloaded the GPX, imported it the DMD online planner and it was easy to connect it to the rest of the route.

The customizability you can use to…customize…your Home and Navigation screens on the app is pretty cool. And it’s easier to navigate / follow a track on DMD vs Gaia. That is, the map has just the level of detail that you want, you can control the size of the font, the thickness of the track lines, etc. One very cool feature is that once you’re on a .gpx track, it knows you’re on and then tells you have far you are from the end of the track. @Arrivo found this useful a few times in NM, when we’d get separate for whatever reason and use the radios and DMD to tell exactly where we were in relationship to each other by using our respective “Distance to Track End” numbers.

I do miss the many different flavors of map layers that Gaia has. I especially like the NatGeo map, when it’s available for the area that I"m riding in.

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Good details @Rich_Strauss. One morning using DMD (with the ability to toggle to Gaia) was all it took. The auto features are amazing and the “where’s Waldo” tracking was soooo good. “Car in the middle at 57.2” over the radio alerted people following me or vice-versa

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The nice thing about running the Android device is that you can just stick the track in DMD and Gaia, and if you need to switch back back-and-forth, it’s right there.

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@djbriane I’m taking a look at gpxexplore.net. Super cool, I love it. As I get more familiar with it I can DM you and feedback.

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Just fyi - I added a few tweaks to make it easier to import/export for DMD devices. Should now respect the DMD2 symbols, auto-waypoints, hazard navigation cards (just to be sure folks wouldn’t lose data when working with those files in the app).

Also added a quality of life update that fixes one common issue I’ve had with the BDR tracks: when you know you want to ride an ALT HARDER bypass, creating a clean track for the section is annoying. Now you can just click on the route and it will prompt to connect it to the primary route as a ‘bypass’.

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So if I understand what you’re saying:

  • You riding Sect 1 of a BDR which includes the Main track (say, 150mi) and an Alt Hard (30mi) track. But you want to do the Alt Hard option, which starts at mile 20 of Main and reconnects at mile 40 of the Main track.
  • With your tool it will (1) add the Alt Hard option to your “ride plan,” let’s call it, as a bypass, and essentially cuts out the portion of the Main route that you’re bypassing. So now you know that the total distance for the day (as 20mi of Main + 20mi of Hard + 110 of the balance of Main) is 160?

Am I tracking here?

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Exactly - it will also let you extend / trim the endpoints of the track so if you wanted to ride half of section 2 as well you can add it on.

Part of the goal beyond exporting to my GPS was to help figure out what realistic BDR days might look like with plans for spots to camp, etc.

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Here’s a video of the main route features if you are curious how it works:

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I like it! How I think I’d use it:

  • Use your tool to create my planned route as combination of Main and Alternate tracks. Make these tracks visible.
  • Still Have the unedited BDR tracks on my device, but not toggled as visible.

As for DMD, I like the feature of putting auto waypoints at set distance intervals, as a group, all running DMD, could use these as collective Rally Points:

  • Each subgroup could use the RPs to get accountability within the group. IE, they know they’re all going to stop and regroup at every 10mi intervals.
  • A and B groups could use these and / or their location on each track to text each other updates via InReach. Ie: A is at mile marker 55.5, moving on. Copy, B at 47.5, see you at next gas.
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Thanks Rich - let me know how it works for you, even tiny annoyances!

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@Rich_Strauss I made a quick video showing how I used this tool with your route - had to make a couple of tweaks but this was a great use case!

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Awesome, thanks!

I’ll do this exercise myself using your tool, load that file into DMD, and run this track, as a combination of all of the separate tracks.

Regarding doing a ride like this that is made up of many “sections:”

  • The creator of the route, me in this case, will often create a track from terrain feature to terrain feature. For example, from the start at Spruce to the beginning of Switz. Since we’re all doing this together, I name it All_Sect_1. It makes sense to put a waypoint here, as Brian’s tool does. I was just lazy, honestly.
  • Then the next section of the ride is from here to the Sugarloaf staging area. Since both groups are doing it, I name it All_Sect_2.
  • From there the ride route splits into A and B routes, and you can see that by the naming convention I used for subsequent tracks: A_Sect_3, B_Sect_3, A_Sect_4, etc
  • As the creator of the route, I would likely have all or most of the tracks visible on the GPS from the start, as I know how all of the tracks work together. Or I may turn on the ones to the Lunch Tree at Elk Park, as this is a very natural stopping / reset point.
  • For those that don’t know the route very well, you may want to only have the current track visible then, when you reach the end of that, turn on the next track, repeating across the day.

Brian’s tool lets you stitch together all of the separate tracks to create one track, and conveniently puts waypoints at the end / start of each track, as a visual cue that you’re transitioning to the next track

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@djbriane Banging on your tool and the Routes page / dialog that I see only allows me to select 5 tracks to be stitched together. Also, some quick feedback:

  • In the GPS World we reference Routes, Tracks, Waypoints…and that’s probably about it
  • However, your tool references “Paths” and the header text of that dialogue says “Primary Route” and then “Reference Overlays.”

As a user, I uploaded a GPX file composed of ~14 tracks and a couple of waypoints, and now your tool is talking about Paths and Reference Overlay and me much confused now, and am chewing on my Comfort Crayon :zany_face:

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Thanks Rich! Sorry about that - the video I showed was a local dev build with some tweaks I added as I was importing your route. :flushed_face:

I just deployed a new version with all the stuff I showed in the video (20 waypoint max, route join waypoints, etc).

I’ll take a look at the terminology and see if I can tighten it up - really appreciate the feedback!!