My brother and his wife surprised me with a Rayming TN-200 GPS this holiday season. What’s so great about it? It’s a tiny USB powered brick that interfaces easily with a laptop. The plan? Wardriving (yes, it’s sooo three years ago), better geolocation while traveling, matching GPS coordinates to photos, and as much mayhem as can be had with a computer-connected GPS.
Software Options
Rayming is Mac friendly enough to offer a page of links to Mac GPS resources and include the necessary driver on the CD. The Rayming site actually has more info than I found the first few times I looked. They’ve posted more links to Mac GPS stuff on a second page.
In terms if mapping software, however, the short list includes Route 66, MacGPSPro, and TrueNav. GPSy hasn’t been updated in years, but the site still offers some useful information. MacGPSPro doesn’t offer a demo version, but TrueNav does. I got the TrueNav demo running quickly, then realized it doesn’t come with any maps.
Finding Maps
I had some luck finding links to free USGS maps in DRG (digital raster graphics) here and here. Eventually I was led to the UNH Granite project, which allowed me to download all the relevant quads for my area. Even the US Fish and Wildlife Service points users to UNH’s Granite.