GPS information in logs

You can save the information from a GPS device to a shapefile or geodatabase feature class. You can write individual points to the log or stream data. When streaming data, you can also filter the data by properties such as time or distance. To write data to a log, you must first either create a new log or open an existing log and append locations to it.

The log has the same spatial reference as the GPS device. Besides the actual coordinate values, you can save related information to the log’s attribute table.

The following are descriptions of the fields you can save to the log:

Field	Description
Latitude	The latitude value of the position.
Longitude	The longitude value of the position.
Altitude	The altitude of the position. The unit of measure is set in Display Properties.
Date_time	The date and time of day of the position.
Date	The date of the position.
Time	The time of day of the position. If the log file is a shapefile, this field is written as a string type field using the time format specified in Windows Control Panel.
Speed_KPH	The speed in kilometers per hour of the position. This is calculated using the coordinates and the date_time information of the current and previous positions.
Heading	The direction in degrees as measured east of north of the current position. This is calculated using the previous position's coordinate.
HDOP	The horizontal dilution of precision of the position. It reflects the effect of the current geometric satellite distribution.
VDOP	The vertical dilution of precision of the position. It reflects the effect of the current geometric satellite distribution.
PDOP	The positional dilution of precision of the position. This is a combination of the HDOP and VDOP and reflects the effect of the current geometric satellite distribution.
DGPS_ID	The identification of the differential GPS unit.
DGPS_age	The length of time since the last contact with the DGPS base station.
Magnet_var	The magnetic variation of the position in degrees.
Numof_sats	The number of satellites used to calculate the position.
Avgsat_SNR	The average satellite signal-to-noise ratio.
Sats_inuse	The number of satellites in use for the position.
Quality	Quality indicator of the position.

Fields and descriptions that can be saved to the log