Seeking GPS Suggestions
I pose this question to my loyal readership: Do you have a GPS unit? If so, would you recommend one like it to me?
Let me explain my expected use case so you can use that to tinge your suggestion: I wish to have geodata for content generation, largely photography. I’m not really so concerned with GPS directions for driving, really, because I typically have a good sense of direction [unless I'm on a date, and then it goes to hell ... no, really] and also have an iPhone, so I’m good when it comes to directions, mainly.
That posted … suggest away.
Posted May 6th, 2008 in Fooftatsic.
As one of the only former professional bullet catchers that you know, I feel I can chime in on this. I have a GPS, the same GPS I bought back in the heady days of high explosives and long walks in the moonlight. And even then, I didn’t use it much. A GPS is great in a “been dropped in the middle of nowhere and haven’t the first damn clue where you are, injured, and heavily medicated” situation, but nothing replaces the ability to locate one’s ass on a 2D representation of the earth’s surface. Nothing.
In fact, the only time I ever heavily used my GPS was getting the time to put into our radios and registering our baseplates (important for accuracy). Outside of that it was compass and protractor and map.
I have a nine year old Garmin GPS 45XL and it serves it’s purpose only when absolutely necessary. Sure I could replace it with something a little more accurate (at best it get’s within 20m), but when it says I’m no shit right here, I’m checking that against a map to be certain. It eats batteries like I eat Oreos after a particularly bad call with the ex, but again it isn’t used much so it’s not an issue. I’ll probably get around to replacing it come fall when I’m thinking I get heavily back into the “start walking one direction in the forest and see where it takes me” thing for something similar.
Key things to look for:
Weather sealing
Ease of use
Size (try punching tiny keys with trigger finger mittens on)
Battery type (proprietary NiMH battery packs are bad, AA/AAA good)
Available accessories
That’s about it.
May 6th, 2008 at 21:10Geof, have you ever seen the Sony GPS-CS1? Amy picked one up on eBay for something like $70, and it works pretty well. When it’s on it takes a GPS position reading once every 15 seconds and stores those time-stamped fixes in flash. When you import your pictures, Sony’s software simultaneously adds lat/long EXIM data by comparing the timestamps on the pictures to the data stored in the device.
The main advantage, of course, is that it’s cheap.
May 6th, 2008 at 22:46Will: That whole comment killed me. I think it was the bit about the Oreos that got me laughing so hard I was crying. But yeah, exactly.
Jeff: I haven’t seen that. That’s an interesting device. I guess the concern I have is using it with my Canon [which it seems it could do] and with iPhoto [which isn't clear to me; I guess I can Google to see what's up, eh?].
May 7th, 2008 at 06:07*nod* The device is pretty much camera-agnostic, since it doesn’t connect to the camera. You connect it to the computer (via USB) at the same time that you’re pulling your pictures in (from the camera or the memory card).
The other piece you need is software that knows how to look at the pictures for timestamp data, read the GPS device for the closest matching location fix, and modify the pictures to include the lat/long EXIF data. The included Sony software works fine for Windows, but that obviously doesn’t help you.
Unfortunately, I was forgetting that you use Macs. That may be a deal killer. I would suggest taking a look at the following sites for possible info and (in one case) a suggestion on an alternate device that’s more compatible with non-Windows systems.
http://macgpscs1.blogspot.com/2006/12/breakthrough-gps-cs1-works-on-new.html
May 7th, 2008 at 07:40http://scilib.typepad.com/techreviews/2008/01/amod-agl3080-ma.html
Yeah, I’m picky like that.
May 7th, 2008 at 17:17Thanks for the links … off to go read.
[...] As soon as I can get a GPS logger, the functionality of this site will increase significantly. [...]
May 7th, 2008 at 21:13My only GPS experience is with the Garmin Nuvi, which we had for our Spring Break trip to Orlando. While I thought it did a fairly admirable job, it was quite frustrating that the unit knew the name of a street but said street did not come up in it’s list of auto-complete options when we were looking up an address.
I, however, could not speak to the blogability of the device.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:40