GPSLog Labs Blog

GPSLog Labs Blog

New features and tips for using gpsloglabs.com

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New blog

Thanks to Posterous shutting down, I've had to spend a lot of my time recently coming up with a new blog. Thanks Roberto and collaborators for the nifty Nikola engine.

You may notice a few changes in the layout, but the main difference is there are no longer comments on each post. These never got a lot of use anyway, the best place to comment is and always was the feedback forum.

The second change is to the email newsletter. I've tried to keep everyone subscribed, but I apologize in advance if anyone has been dropped off or added back onto the list after they unsubscribed.

Filed under  //  changelog   documentation   feedback  

Segmenting your activity using route checkpoints

Checkpoints are a powerful GPSLog Labsfeature for analysing your activity, they can:

  • Split activity into segments for comparison, without affecting the other statistics such as overall mileage and duration.
    This would not be the case if additional places were created as extra activity records would be created.
  • Compare your performance on a segment (such as a hill climb) for different routes.
  • Checkpoints are assigned on a route by route basis so they only cut the activity of interest.

The easiest way to explain how checkpoints work is to run though a few examples: Once you've uploaded some activity to GPSLog Labs, you next need to assign a route to the activity. Once that's done, you can go to the Splits tab of the route detail page and click the Add Checkpoint link.

Then, create a new checkpoint by clicking on a point on the map or a stop on the log file.

Checkpoints work just like places. The activity inside the circle will be ignored, and the circle has to be big enough for all the logs to pass through it, otherwise they won't be recognised.

After saving checkpoints at the beginning and end of the climbs, the route map now looks like this:

On the route detail Splits tab, a summary of the splits is displayed.

You may need to click the "Regenerate Splits" button, which will reprocess all the activity with the new checkpoints. This may take some time, so there's an equivalent button on the activity detail page's Splits tab that will reprocess only a single activity.

Clicking on the From or To checkpoint will bring up the split detail page. This page combines activity in both directions along the segment and lets you see maps, altitude profiles, trend graphs and other stats.

Checkpoints can be used to analyse short segments too, such as laps around an oval, or runs up and down a mountain (skiing or mountain biking, for example.)

Another use is chopping off the ragged ends of a run, like in the following example where, when entering the city, the GPS signal becomes unreliable. By adding a checkpoint at the end of the path I can avoid the messy log file and also the disruption to my times caused by traffic lights and pedestrians.

This is a tricky area of the site to describe, but it's really useful, so have a play with it and if you have any questions, please let me know.

Filed under  //  checkpoints   documentation   routes   segments   splits  

New Feedback Forum

GPSLog Labs now has a new Feedback forum, hosted on Idea.Informer.com.

You'll see a new button on the right hand side of the page where you can quickly leave feedback.

On the forum, you can see feature requests and bug reports other people have made and vote for them or add your comments.

Filed under  //  changelog   documentation   feedback   help   tips  

Inbox redesign stage 1

Just a quick note to say that the first phase of the redesign of the GPSLog Labs Inbox is now live.

The tabs have been renamed and some of the less used tabs have been changed to links at the bottom of the main remaining tabs.

There'll be some more big changes soon, until then, the documentation is going to be a little out of date. Please contact me if you get stuck anywhere and need some assistance before then.

Filed under  //  changelog   documentation   help   inbox  

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