From VikingWiki

Viking currently doesn't have a lot of documentation. Any contributions would be appreciated. Also see the Geocoded Photo super-mini-HOWTO.

You can also take a look at the FAQ and Viking Reference Manual.

Uses

Viking aims to be easy to use, yet powerful in accomplishing a wide variety of tasks. Some of the things you can now use Viking for are:

• Uploading and downloading waypoints, tracks to/from GPS.
• Preparing tracks and waypoints for trips using maps from services such as Googlemaps, Terrasever. The data is only needed to upload to your GPS before you leave. The maps together with your tracks and waypoints can also be printed and used during the trip.
• After trips, tracks and waypoints from GPS can be downloaded, stored, managed and reused in your (or your friends') later trips.
• Analyzing OHV and hiking trips, understanding where you went and how far you were from something.
• Making waypoints and tracks to follow to easily get someplace you've never been before or don't have GPS data for but Terraserver maps exist for it.
• Making maps with coordinate lines.
• Grouping data from multiple trips using a hierarchical data manager.
• Analyzing speed at different places (to some degree), adding waypoints where you forgot to mark one but did slow down or stop.
• Downloading and storing Terraserver maps on your hard drive and looking at them later.
• Editing tracks and trackpoints, joining and splitting up tracks

Other things which Viking will be able to do in the future include:

• Show the live GPS position on the Topo or Ortho map (for use on a laptop)
• Preparing tracks and waypoints to be made into Garmin maps

Getting Started

To quickly get started using Viking, follow these instructions.

Go to an area of interest

Viking's default location is a 0 latitude and longitude, so you need to pick a place that interests you.

Method A

1. Use View -> Go to to move to a coordinate of interest.

Method B

1. Use GPS Layer or File -> Acquire -> From GPS to load data directly from your GPS into Viking. Currently Garmin and Magellan are supported.

     (NOTE: You must have write permission to the port used. /dev/ttyS0 is the first serial port)

Method C

1. Get data from files in GPX format. For other formats (kml, ozi...), use a converter such as GPSBabel to convert the files to GPX format first.
2. Open up viking and use File -> Open or File -> Append file to open the file.
3. Expand "Tracks" or "Waypoints". Right-click on the track or waypoint of interest and select "Goto".

Method D

1. Use File -> Append File to add your track and waypoint data to Viking. This has been tested with Geocaching.com's *.loc format, (others(?)).
2. Expand "Tracks" or "Waypoints". Right-click on the tack or point of interest and select "Goto"

Add a map layer

1. Use Layers -> New Map Layer, and choose a suitable cache directory where you would like to store your tracks and click OK. Zoom to a comfortable level (I suggest 4 mpp) by clicking the left and right mouse buttons on the gray area where your tracks are. Now from the menu choose Tools -> Map Download, Click where you would like to download a map. Regardless of what tool you are using, the middle mouse button always pans.

     (NOTE: You MUST have an open internet connection when you are downloading maps. If not, viking will likely hang.)

1. You will notice the maps are being drawn on top of the tracks, which is probably not what you want. Look at the Layers Panel to the left. Notice how the layer named "Map" is ABOVE your TrackWaypoint layer that your GPS data is in. This means that it will be drawn last, or on top of the other layers. Select the Map layer from the list and click the down arrow button beneath the list. Your tracks will now be drawn over the map.

OpenStreetMap

Viking allows to access to OpenStreetMap data. Actually, you can choose between 3 map sources rendered from OpenStreetMap:

• Mapnik (stable and coherent),
• Osmarender (quite up to date),
• Maplint (debugging layer).

All these map sources need the Google view mode (Mercator projection).

DEM layer

DEM (digital elevation model) layer allows you to add altitude information to the map. Altitude is shown with color, from blue for the sea to white for the highest elevation. You will firstly need to download some DEM data. DEM data are available from the following location:

• ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM3/ covers whole world
• ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM30/ covers whole world with a resolution of 3 arc-seconds (~30 meters at equator)

It is now possible to add the downloaded DEM files to the DEM layer.

Google Maps layer

• Use this viking file to have , transparent map tiles, normal map tiles and satellite image tiles

Using GPS layer

1. Use Layers -> New GPS Layer to create one. Enter GPS protocol and serial port to be used in the popup dialog. The information can be modified later using layer's properties dialog.
2. To download tracks and waypoints from a connected GPS, right click on the layer and select Download from GPS from the context menu. The downloaded data will be stored in the GPS download folder of the layer and can be copied or moved to other TrackWaypoint layers.
3. To upload data to GPS, first store all needed tracks and waypoints in the GPS Upload folder of the layer. Right click on the layer and select Upload from GPS in context menu.
4. As of Viking 0.1.2, tracks and waypoints in GPS layers are not saved. This policy may be changed in the future. (Notes: since r246, GPS layer saves its tracks and waypoints)

Uploading data to OpenStreetMap

It is possible to upload data directly from Viking to OpenStreetMap.

Upload a layer

One solution is to upload whole a TrackWaypoint layer. To do this, simply select the layer and right click on it. Then, select "Upload to OSM".

Upload a single track

One solution is to upload whole a TrackWaypoint layer. To do this, simply select the layer and right click on it. Then, select "Upload to OSM".

Fill in the form

On both case, Viking will reclaim some informations.

The email field is the email you used to subscribed into OSM.

The password field is the password you used with this account.

The filename is the name you want your upload has on the server. This information is displayed by the osm server.

The description is some descriptive information.

The tags field is a white separated list of tag.

If Viking Crashes

Moved to new wiki: http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/viking/index.php?title=Contribute#Crash

Acquire Geocaches

You can download geocaches directly into your file using Viking.

1. Install WWW::Mechanize and HTML::TableContentParser, e.g. by going to cpan.org and installing the tarballs. (You may have to download & install their dependencies and their dependencies, which may take some patience. I always use "apt-cache search mechanize|grep perl" etc. to see if there's a binary package available).

1. Edit the gcget script and put in your username and password.

1. Put the gcget in a executable place. I keep mine in ~/bin/ and have this directory in my PATH. Try running "gcget 90210 20" to check if it works.

1. Open viking, go to an area of interest, and goto File -> Acquire -> Geocaches.