Three Useful Android Apps for Generating the Degree, Minutes and Seconds - Ateca

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One of the issues of some inbuilt car satnavs is that they tend to use Degrees, Minutes and Seconds (DMS) as the satnav input system - VW is one with the Ateca's inbuilt system. Stand alone systems use decimal degrees making a conversion necessary. Often locations are published in decimal degrees, hotel locations etc.

The simple Android App "GPS Convertor" can be found in the Android store which does a simple conversion between the systems so at the car's POI input screen you thumb wheel the coordinates in.

The next level of sophistication is to use an adjoint app which you use with Google Android Maps App. Drop a pin with your finger and then select Share and you need the Google Playstore App "Get Coordinates". This returns the DMS coordinates. It is also designed to interface for Sygic Maps.

The Rolls Royce app for all of this is N45, E25 - search under "map coordinates" in the Google store. This app will convert coordinates, gives the DMS directly by clicking on a Google Map in Normal / Satellite / Terrain / Hybrid. The app supports the crowd sourced Openstreet Maps which can be toggled in.

Openstreet tends to be used for outdoor activities with users marking up foot paths, bridleways, camp sites, parking, anything and everything. Thus for outdoor hiking / cycling etc this app can be used to find car parks / parking spots for outdoor activities. Anything that is not on the cars POI database or on Google may be here since it's generated by people doing outdoor pursuits (like me and digitising tracks and features in when they get home if it's missing). If not the satellite view may be enough to find the location you can head too. Named searches can also be made within the app.

General purpose hand held GPS systems can be used to identify the locations if it can be determined from the underlying map on that app and the decimal degrees location can be converted to DMS using N45, E25 or you just tap the point on the map by putting the two screens together.

Each pin generated by touching the screen in the N45, E25 app goes into a History section, these can be starred and become Favourites, the favourites are saved with the user name. Using this screen after toggling on the output as DMS (under settings) you can read out the values and dial them into the car's thumb wheel POI input screen checking the car's map with that shown on the screen. Basically that screen becomes your scrap of paper for copying over the locations once you get to the car.

Happy Hiking / Camping etc or just finding that difficult map location that don't have an address or aren't in the car's POI database.
 
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