Hey Doogie,

Any progress to report on the VPL files? I've spent a little time trying to figure out the format but didn't make too much progress. The more the merrier!

I'll share my notes if I make any progress.

-dan

 

Just in case someone else hasn't figured this out yet (I just did after not looking at it for a while) you can download GPSBabel (a freeware tool) to convert GPS files from/to whatever format you want. If you download the 1.3.7 BETA release, it will support the Honda/Acura 'vpl' format. Note that the 1.3.6 release does NOT have vpl support.

You can find it here: http://www.gpsbabel.org/download.html#footer (it's at the bottom of the page)
in Windows, I used a line like the following:

for %A in (*.vpl) do "_PATH_TO_GPSBABEL_\gpsbabel.exe" -r -t -i vpl -f "%A" -o "kml,units=m" -F "%A.kml"

or

for %A in (*.vpl) do "_PATH_TO_GPSBABEL_\gpsbabel.exe" -r -t -i vpl -f "%A" -o gpx -F "%A.gpx"

to create kml or gpx files that can be loaded into Google Earth (which is interesting to see)
There are also more textual outputs, and many filters that can be applied to the data too.

Yet another example of "don't bother coding it, as it's already been done somewhere else online"!

hopefully this post has all the right keywords so it'll help someone else out there trying to do the same.

 

I just tried this with data from my HCHII, and it works like a charm.

As a recap, all you have to do is have a CF card in your nav radio, and have logging enabled from the maintenance menu on the radio.

I am using the GPSBabel tool for Macintosh, and found one issue. When I select the "Honda Acura VPL file format" and then try to open a .VPL log file, the Application will not allow it, however there is a pop down menu in the open file dialog box that has two options:

1. Honda/Acura Navigation System VP Log file format (*.)
2. All files (*.*)

In the first instance, all of the .VPL files are greyed out, but in the second instance they are accessible.

Any thoughts on why this is?

Otherwise, this application is exactly what is needed to quickly display a waypoint map of where your car has been.

It also creates a new log for every time the car is turned on.

Thanks for sharing this, it is great!

 

From what I can see, that's a bug in the graphical part of GPSBabel - it obviously should say (*.vpl) instead of (*.) That's what you get from beta software!

I used the command-line version for Windows as I too found problems with the graphical interface. While I don't have a Mac, I have done lots of unix scripting before. The following is my attempt to translate the windows command into a unix command:

for FILE in *.vpl ; do ; _PATH_TO_GPSBABEL_/gpsbabel -r -t -i vpl -f $FILE -o gpx -F ${FILE}.gpx ; done

this will loop through each file ending in '.vpl' in the current folder and create a gpx format file for it.

I'm not quite sure about the syntax around the ';' and the 'do' (this is all from memory). If you type ENTER instead of each ';' it should work.

 

That will work, but for me just using the all_files wildcard (*.* ) works just as well as the directory I use only has .VPL files in it.