The "Receiver Independent Exchange Format" RINEX format was first developed by the Astronomical Institute of the University of Berne for the easy exchange of the GPS data to be collected during GPS campaigns. The format consists of six ASCII file types, observation, navigation, meteorological, GLONASS navigation, GEO navigation, and satellite and receiver clock files. Each file type consists of a header section and a data section. The maximum record length for all types is 80 bytes per record.

RINEX stands for Receiver Independent Exchange and is a globally accepted standard format for GPS data. Most GPS processing software will read in RINEX data as well as the manufacturer's proprietary binary format. This allows data from different manufacturer's receivers to be processed together which can be very difficult if data in only the proprietary binary format is available. Most GPS manufacturers should also supply a conversion utility to convert their binary format files to RINEX files.

The compact RINEX format is a compression format for GPS observation data which is compatible with the RINEX version 2 observation file format. It enables more efficient storage and faster file transfer, but you need the conversion utility CRX2RNX to convert to RINEX for data processing. This utility and its descriptiioon can be downloaded as the file RNXCMP_4.0.3_Windows.tar

All products will be in a flat binary format, except for GLA16, which will be in Hierarchical Data Format - Earth Observing System (HDF-EOS). See NSIDC's HDF-EOS pages for more information.

Absolutely. For example, modify the command from the previous question to: teqc +qc -nav foobar_old.97n -tr d +dh 24 +nav foobar.97n +obs foobar.97o foobar.dat > foobar.qc where the +nav foobar.97n specifies the output RINEX NAV file, +obs foobar.97o specifies the output RINEX OBS file, and, if there were MET data, +met foobar.97m would specify the output RINEX MET file. Notice that instead of the RINEX OBS file going to stdout, now it is the qc short report.

overview about GPS can be found at The Global Positioning System Overview, Geographer's Craft Project, by Peter Dana, Department of Geography, The University of Colorado at Boulder. Other links about GPS data can be found in the Links section of the CDDIS web site.

Why don’t genealogists use the simple terms “primary source” and “secondary source?”

The formats are like TXT, CSV, and XLS (you can down load this data directly to your ERP/CRM/SFA systems etc)

GPS data base is to store track data, route data and waypoint data which are collected by GPS receiver. The extension of a data file is .GDB. TRK file, RTE file, and WPT file of GARMIN's GPS equipment can be read and added to the data base directly. This is similar to that the place name is added to the place name data base. TRK data of the GPS corresponds to data of the "YAMAOTAKU" and can not be edited directly.

This version of Photoscape 3D allows you to view or create GPX files. Please view the help file for full details.

From your GPS manufacturer. It is important that you specify how you intend to connect your GPS (serial, USB, Bluetooth™) and the specifications of your PC.

To integrate GPS or other data, we use a PC that has two ports or more. Many PCs these days have two PCMCIA slots that can take two ports each, providing up to four ports to merge into a single data stream. All commercial GPS units (Trimble, Novatel, etc.) have standard data output that can be merged with the GEM output in this way. For a long survey, the WinGEM software allows "remote mode" where the GEM data go directly to the PC, bypassing the internal data logger.