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Anyone ever used an online tool to convert an excel file into a format compatible with your chartplotter so they can be imported into said chartplotter? I've got an excel file that needs to be converted to GPX, but each time I do the conversion the coordinates are showing up in India? When entered manually, they appear to be accurate (time will tell). Love to not have to enter these in one by one...Thanks in advance!

Send them to me and I'll be glad to do it for you.

Make sure the machine you load them into is set to exact same datum and coordinate format as the one they came out of or you will have a mess. The most common datum for marine navigation is WGS-84, and the most often used format is DD.MM.MMMM (degrees, minutes, decimal of minutes.)

Capt. Steve Hobbs and I had a long discussion about this recently when I sent him to a wrong location....

- Steve Stinson

Not sure about the excel conversion, unless you have ArcGIS, but a lot of other online converter tools are out there. I use GPS visualizer (https://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input) to convert to GPX. I also use BaseCamp as my laptop map source. Its a free download from Garmin, nothing fancy, but does provide a free and easy way to back up GPX files in case your unit is lost or stolen, if have too many points for one unit and/or have multiple units that use different programs like I do.

That may not meet your needs if you don't already have the units in a format other than excel. I can do it on ArcGIS, but that isn't a free software like some of the other links and is definitely not user friendly.

May be a dumb question, but should my GPX coordinates be the same as the coordinates saved in excel? I was able to get everything converted and on the map all looks ok, but when I view the waypoint, the coordinates in my chartplotter don't agree to my excel numbers?

The coordinates should be the same. Just a guess, but since you were able to convert everything ok and they appear to be in the right location, the only thing I could think of as to why the coordinates say something different on your plotter would be it displays them in a different format...ie. your excel is in decimal degrees and your plotter is in degree, minutes, seconds. Same point...different number.

So many programs/applications/industries use different formats. It can get quite mind-numbing.

mblambert wrote:May be a dumb question, but should my GPX coordinates be the same as the coordinates saved in excel? I was able to get everything converted and on the map all looks ok, but when I view the waypoint, the coordinates in my chartplotter don't agree to my excel numbers?

Not neccesarily, could be in a different format or different coordinate system. Seems like you got it figured out, but I found this which looks like it would work, https://mygeodata.cloud/converter/latlong-to-gpx.

That's the converter I'm using.

wetbandit, thanks for the link.https://mygeodata.cloud/converter/latlong-to-gpx.
I just tried it out on a Garmin file from 2002 and it worked great. I'm gonna have fun with this.

I also liked the one posted by STMU (https://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input) It displays well in Google Earth Pro.


OD

Old Dog wrote:wetbandit, thanks for the link.https://mygeodata.cloud/converter/latlong-to-gpx.
I just tried it out on a Garmin file from 2002 and it worked great. I'm gonna have fun with this.

I also liked the one posted by STMU (https://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input) It displays well in Google Earth Pro.


OD

Just as an FYI...mygeodata has a conversion limit. If you are only doing a few hundred fishing points once then it isn't a big deal, but if try it multiple times or have 10,000's of points you have to pay for the premium plan.

Right. And the visualizer program is free and gives you the option--that I took--of contributing something to the programmer via PayPal. Any amount.

GPSBabel.

Been using it for probably a decade to convert and export my spreadsheet of ~10,000 waypoints to Lowrance, Humminbird, Garmin, etc formats.

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StMarksAngler wrote:GPSBabel.

Been using it for probably a decade to convert and export my spreadsheet of ~10,000 waypoints to Lowrance, Humminbird, Garmin, etc formats.

I also use GPSBabel and works good for converting points from multiple formats. I also use it with GoogleEarth to utilize past aerial imagery of low tide events to create paths following center of tidal creek channels and to avoid oyster/sand bars then convert to tracks on my GPS. Pretty amazing to how accurate those tracks are, which I can even use at night.

Using the low tide satellite images to "create paths" and "convert to tracks" sounds really cool and a bit beyond my skills. I'd love it if you or anyone posted detailed steps or a YouTube link on how to do that

geofish wrote:Using the low tide satellite images to "create paths" and "convert to tracks" sounds really cool and a bit beyond my skills. I'd love it if you or anyone posted detailed steps or a YouTube link on how to do that

Been a while since I have done one, but wasn't real difficult. Open GoogleEarth, go to View, Select Historical Imagery, use the slide bar to select different years to find a low tide event in the area you are interested in and ideally the most recent as possible to minimize changes due to storms. 02/2016 is good one to start with around St. Marks. Then select add path, give it a name, then use your mouse to draw the path by using your mouse button to create a node (point) each time you left click that you can use to follow the creek channel with each turn having a node. I suspect there is some limit on how long a path or number of nodes you can have but I haven't had that issue yet. Once you finish the path, click OK. Then on the left panel you will see the name under My Places. Right click on the name and then select Save Place As. Under Save as Type, select KML. Then select somewhere to save it where you can find it later.

Now open GPSBabel. Under Input, make sure File is selected, then change format to GoogleEarth (Keyhole) Markup Language, then click Filename and go to where you saved the KML file and select it. Now under Output I select File (haven't ever tried to do it to Device), then select the format you want the file to be. For me I'm using a Garmin, so I select Garmin gdb. Click on filename and name the file and select where you want it saved. Click OK and it is done. Then just upload the saved file to your GPS. On my Garmin GPS after uploading, I have to go into settings and find the Track files and turn on the ones I uploaded. Sounds harder than it is.