Difference between GPS and Google earth

[McThor]

Hey guys.

I've been fiddling around with quickmap (post elsewhere in the forum) and found it great for letting those back home know where I am.

So I tried punching in some coordinates and played around with it for a while. Then I put the coords for my home adress into google earth searchfield (the coords are taken from my Garmin GPS), and ended up on the other side of town. It's in the area, but quite a few kilometers off.

I have tried changing the options menu in google to degrees and what else you can change it to. But no matter what I change, the pointer indicates a coordinate that is much too different from what I get on my GPS. I would have thought it was just a question of sending the coords to my friends back home, and then they could see on google earth where I was. They'll propably not be any wiser if the coords I send are many kilometers off, but it just irks me that I can't get the same numbers on the two.

Can anyone see where I am going wrong? Or is google earth just that inacurate (doubt this)? I hope someone out there can help me with this.

[backofbeyond]

I'd always taken GE coordinates to be the same as those I'd get from my GPS's but never checked it before so after reading your post I went and did just that.

The two readings were not the same but were were only 1/10 second different - about 3 metres. I got the same level of error with my second gps so I'd guess that the problem lies somewhere in the way your gps is set up.

Do you have it set to the WGS84 datum? I've had problems in the past with this trying to take readings from UK ordnance survey maps which use a different datum and finding the gps is giving a position about 500m out on the map. I'm not sure what datum GE uses but both my gps's are set to WGS84 and give the above errors

[McThor]

Argh...found out now what I did wrong. Wasn't the datum but the format in which my GPS displays the coord. It was set for hddd-mm.mmm when it should have been set to show hdd-mm'ss.s. Works great now, allthough I am getting the same "errors" like you are, Backofbeyond. Very minimal differences down to a few meters.

Thanks for checking though. Just couldn't quite see what the problem was untill you confirmed my suspicion that it was me doing something wrong. Thanks.

[Walkabout]

Originally Posted by McThor

Works great now, allthough I am getting the same "errors" like you are, Backofbeyond. Very minimal differences down to a few meters.

An interesting philosophy; I am not sure that I would want my wife/girlfriend/mistress(s) etc etc to know where I am within a 3 metre precision!

[DAVSATO]

google earth is years out of date, our old cars in the drive and the tree in the back garden is half the size it is now

[Walkabout]

Originally Posted by DAVSATO

google earth is years out of date, our old cars in the drive and the tree in the back garden is half the size it is now

Know what you mean, but the pic of my house has changed once since I first started looking at Google Earth (can't remember how long ago that was, but it was not very far back!!).

I think Google claim to update the pics every 2-3 years or thereabouts - I guess that will be a rolling programme.

[backofbeyond]

The pics of my local area were taken on the 1st or 2nd Sept last year. There's a local music festival just down the road every Aug bank holiday for 3- 4 days and the photographs show the tents being taken down.

[kinvig]

Just tell me whose car that is in my driveay?!

g/f having an affair??? ;o)