MacDive Forums

Is there a way to import the GPS locations of a dive site from a data file? The best file import I have found so far is using Suunto's SDE format, which gets pretty much everything right, except that there is no field for lat/long coordinates as far as I can tell.

I am in the process of migrating from a PC to a Mac and was looking for a dive log program for the Mac when I came across MacDive. So far I have been using my own web-based solution and would like to migrate my dive log to MacDive, but don't want to have to reenter all the dive site info again.

There is no ability to import GPS coordinates at the moment.

What I could do is extend the Suunto SDE format to include optional GPS coordinates, but you would still have to enter all of that information into the individual dives inside the SDE file.

nick wrote:What I could do is extend the Suunto SDE format to include optional GPS coordinates, but you would still have to enter all of that information into the individual dives inside the SDE file.

That would work perfectly. I generate the SDE file myself anyway, so adding another two tags is easy. Could also easily be added the to the perl script posted on the forum (which I used to learn how to generate SDE files).

Ok. For what it's worth, I already support a custom (and optional) country tag, if that's of any help.

I will add gpslat and gpslon tags which should be GPS coordinates in decimal degrees. If you can generate an SDE file with two or three dives/sites and send it through, I'll make sure it works for the next update.

Will confirm the tag names once I get a chance to add them. Probably this weekend as I have a couple of things I can't get out of tonight/tomorrow night. But GPSLAT and GPSLON should be fine.

Great! I made a small SDE file with 3 dives with the new custom tags GPSLAT and GPSLON in decimal format.

Thanks, I'll get to this when I can, and I'll do my best to make sure it is supported in the next update.

Ok.. I've actually done this, and it seems to work well with your sample file. If you would like a beta to play with, please drop me an email and I'll send it through.

For the record, I believe this was all functioning as expected during import and coordinates can now be used from SDE files.

So, as a quick summary, MacDive will read the following additional, custom data from SDE files if it exists:

<COUNTRY>country name</COUNTRY>
<GPSLAT>xx.xxxxxx</GPSLAT>
<GPSLON>xx.xxxxxx</GPSLON>

Once the new update is out, I'll add some information on this to the help.

Which reminds me, I had meant to send you a file from my Garmin GPS, but I forgot and haven't used it since April, so I haven't needed that functionality since then.

I need to see how to go around getting a .kml file off of it to send you.