Feature Request: Garmin Integration
It would be nice if I could connect CalTopo with Garmin Connect such that I could easily import activities directly from Garmin Connect into CalTopo.
Yes, I can export a Garmin activity and then import the file into CalTopo, however some activities (~8 mile hike) are too large for Garmin to export to a GPX file. I've tried exporting to both a FIT file and a KML file from Garmin Connect, but CalTopo doesn't seem to support those file formats ("Sorry, no importable features were found.")
By connecting CalTopo to Garmin Connect, I envision that I could select a recent activity from a list, or search for other previous activities, and CalTopo would be able to query the data that it needed directly from Garmin Connect and eliminate the need for exporting and importing files that may or may not work.
Comments
4 comments
We looked into what was causing the Garmin KML to fail and found the cause. We have modified our KML importer and can now accept the Garmin KML format.
I totally get the benefit of a direct integration, but in the meantime, while we don't import FIT files, we can import KML. KML is a very large and diverse spec; I'm guessing that Garmin is adding data in a way we don't know how to parse, but that modifying our KML importer to handle it would be pretty straightforward.
Do you mind sharing a sample a file (email help@caltopo.com and reference this thread if you don't want to share it publicly)? We'll take a look and see if we can at least make the Garmin-exported KML files work.
Hi Matt, thank you for your response!
I'll email a copy of the KML file and relevant information to the address you provided.
In case others come across this thread, I was able to use FIT File Viewer to view the exported FIT file from Garmin Connect and then export it to a GPX file. That GPX file imported into CalTopo perfectly.
FIT file support in Caltopo would be very welcome.
Garmin watches often create activities that Garmin Connect fails to export as GPX or KML, the only way to access these activities is to get the FIT file. Then I have to use GPSBabel to do tricky conversion to GPX, tricky because a straight conversion can cause a GPX file that is unreadable by Caltopo, so I have to reduce the number of points, etc. Online FIT conversion tools often fail in these workflows, which is how I ended up with GPSBabel and having to simplify the file along the way.
It would save a lot of time and hassle if Caltopo could just import the FIT file directly.
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