Fixed a problem

I had a problem in the program that I use to generate Google Earth KML files. I wanted to add a user name, but I needed to learn about WPF validation to make sure the user entered a name. That was harder than it looks. I had previously done validation on a Windows form, but WPF is different. After quite a bit of searching on Google, and a question to Stackoverflow, I got it to work. Now my program asks once for the user to enter her/his name, and ever after remember that name, and uses it. I love working with WPF, but sometimes it makes you wonder what Microsoft was thinking. I love being able to view the resulting KML file on my smartphone.

More on the Garmin to KML conversion

This has been a very interesting program to write. I used C#, and WPF to create a program to display the input file from my Edge 800, and be able to see the data. The ability to write KML was just the finishing touch.

Seeing my bike ride in Google Earth

Visualizing bicycle rides in Google Earth

I started using a Garmin Edge 800 to track my bicycle rides. The Training Center software works very well, and shows me a simple map of my ride. I saw that other people imported their rides into Google Earth, and I wondered how they did it. I learned that Google Earth uses Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to map things. This is what I wanted. I knew C#, and so decided to write a program to display my bike rides in Google Earth. After a short learning curve, I now have a program to read the export file from Garmin Training Center (tcx) and outputs a kml file. I have three options to write the file, a simple path, an animated path, and a path with splits displayed. This has been a fun project, and now I can see where I went on a very good map.