Hey folks,
If you're like me, you like to track your miles down to the minutiae. Some of you may use good ol' pen & paper, some use spreadsheets, tracking your miles, notes on what things you might have done differently (Pulse to 65, glide to 55 on this trip, 75 to 60 on that trip, etc), and your FE as a result. All with the goal of improving your FE by figuring out what works and what doesn't.
I think the GPS has become one of the more valuable tools in that regard. The little Garmin nuvi 260 I recently purchased has a feature which captures "tracks", a collection of coordinates showing where I have gone with it; this is a feature which I believe nearly every GPS has nowadays. When I was researching how best to extract those tracks for the purpose of logging the details of my commute, I stumbled upon logbook software which I think would be very useful for any dedicated hypermiler that happens to have a Windows PC (or a way to run Windows software).
The software is called SportTracks, available free to try at
SportTracks. It is intended for logging exercise such as running or cycling, but I've found it works beautifully for logging all my driving too.
The software allows me to set up different categories and sub-categories for my imported tracks (I like to separate out errands vs commuting; I could imagine someone using their car for business could set up a categories for that as well).
I can also set up various vehicles that a track could be applied to. Basically I can take the GPS with me into any car or when I go bike riding and I would be able to apply each GPS track to the corresponding vehicle. Below is the "Equipment" view where I can capture details about each vehicle and where I can see the history of the miles (or kilometers, if so set) driven.
It will import a Garmin .gpx file (which is the xml formatted file created by the GPS), compare against the tracks it already knows about, and automatically select for import those that are new. It then allows me to add additional details about the track, such as track category, vehicle, weather, location, and notes. Below is the "import" view, where I'm importing the last few days worth of GPS data all at once.
Once imported, the software shows the track on a map and allows me to select a variety of graph views to show things like speed, altitude, grade, etc. Of course, many of the things it offers are related to cycling or running, but I can ignore those. I can then select any point on the graph and the corresponding point on track shown on the map is highlighted, or vice versa. The view below is my favorite; I've combined both speed and altitude on one graph, and the track map is next to that. I can zoom in as close as I want on the map, and can show street view, satellite view, topo view, etc. The data table layout, the graph layout, and the map layout are all very configurable.
Another nice feature is the ability to select a subset of the graph, and it'll show the various begin / end points and appropriate summary information... in this case, average speed, altitude difference, and distance traveled. The corresponding track points are highlighted on the map as well (not shown in the image below).
There are also some nice reporting utilities built-in, allowing me to easily and quickly see trends over time. Here is my average speed per week for the commuting category.
Any window showing a graphic or data can be right-clicked and copied... the graphics will be copied as an image that can be pasted into a variety of other Windows programs, and the data can be pasted into a spreadsheet for further analysis.
The imported tracks along all other information entered is saved into a logbook file format, which is also xml and therefore can be manipulated by other xml-aware tools and programming languages. It's very easy to share the logbook files with others using SportTracks; it keeps a friend's data separate from your own so you can compare your data against theirs.
Overall, the software is really well thought out, IMHO. There are a few little quirks, but I've never seen anything better for being able to visualize my gps data.
The software also allows for "plugin" development, which extends the functionality. Seems like a plugin that is focused on FE would be ideal! If there were a way to take an MPGuino and modify it a little to include a GPS and have a way to capture all the data into an SD card, then it would end up being the perfect match for this software tool.
Today
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