Holux m-241 & Yamareco

Do you have a Holux m-241 and use it with Yamareco but are having problems? Perhaps you have the same problem I did! I love this little GPS receiver but it does have issues. Thankfully, those issues are fixable. Here I will show you how to fix the date and waypoint name problems.

Holux Date Problems

First! My Holux cannot get the date correct. It will think everything is from 2002 or something years ago. That can be easily fixed by putting opening the GPX file in text edit. Doing a find and replace for the wrong date and replace it with the actual date needed.

Example: <time>2002-01-01T01:28:08Z</time>

The date in bold is incorrect. In Textedit or BBEdit search for "2022-02-03" and replace it with the date needed. The GPX file saves the date in Z time which is UTC. So, if you are in Japan and you start your receiver before 9am (which is midnight UTC), you will need to do this twice. Remember to set the before 9am date one day before your hike and those 9am and after to the exact date of your hike.

Example: You started hiking at 7am on 16 Feb, 2022 but your GPX file has two dates 2001-03-22 and 2001-03-23.

First: Search for "2001-03-22" and replace that with "2022-02-15"Second: Search for "2001-03-23" and replace that with "2022-02-16"Third: Save your file and you're good to go!

Why is this happening? It is because how the GPS receiver understands dates in what is called the GPS Epoch.

Waypoint Name Problems

If you upload your GPX to Yamareco and it looks like this ↓

I can show you how to fix this. However you will need to use a tool called GREP and a different text editor. Thankfully the free version of the text editor will work for this.

  1. Download and install BBEdit.

  2. Open your GPX file in BBEdit. Drag and drop it into the program if needed. Don't worry BBEdit can read GPX files.

  3. In the menu bar click Search→Find

  4. Type <name>TP(.*)</name> into the Find box

  5. In the Matching: section near the bottom make sure the Grep and Show matches boxes are checked ✅

  6. All of the <name>TP######</name> tags should be highlighted. Some of the <name> tags at the beginning of the document will not be highlighted. That's OK. You need those to name the tracks. It is the TP###### names that you want to delete.

  7. Leaving the Replace: box empty click Replace All

  8. The lines should be blank now. Save the file. You're finished!

If it works right your map should look like this!

Remember, I've only had this problem with the Holux m-241 if you have a different GPS recever it might work, but I can't promise that. Also, this is using a Mac but it should be easy enough to find a GREP enabled Windows text editor or you can just do it in the terminal on Linux.

Good luck and feel free to hit me up by Twitter or Email if you need any help.

Software

Adze: Visual GPX editor app. Great for checking your routes.
https://getadze.com/
HoudahGPS: App for getting the data off your Holux m-241
https://www.houdah.com/houdahGPS/
Textedit: Built in MacOSX text editor
https://support.apple.com/guide/textedit/welcome/mac
BBEdit: Text editor with GREP search ability
https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/


*Not sponsored, this is just what I use.