I've been planning a trip (with a length around three weeks) to Asia and I've been pondering whether to get a GPS. Last time I went, I used a combination of photos of local maps and Google Maps to map my photos with an accuracy between several meters to several km away depending on my memory and the location. The results were still pretty cool and I really like the idea of knowing where I visited and being able to revisit them when the chance arises to see how the place has changed.
(Given I have no personal experience with a GPS) I'm blown away by the idea that I could charge this thing *once*, have it record a path for three weeks, and then automatically annotate my photo locations with pretty good accuracy.
My question is this:
1) Is $100 or so a good price for this kind of thing? 2) Does anyone else have experience with handheld GPS units, particularly in regards to their battery life? Or ease of use in annotating photo locations? 3) Has anyone tried anything similar with annotating photos?
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I don't have a TON of experience with GPS units. But my understanding is that GPS units are made to have long battery lives. Some people take them on week- or even month-long trips and expect them to be usable for directions. From reading the page you linked to it looks pretty apparent that this thing is made to last a long time on a single charge. It advertises "low power consumption" as well as a "power saving feature".
However after searching and finding the actual products' home page here: http://www.gisteq.com/phototrackr.html and it says "Battery Life: Operation Time: 14 hours in continuous mode" I'm a little wary of how long it wold actually last.
If you would have the ability to charge it every couple of days, I think it would be a great tool to help synchronize your pictures. However, I'm not sure that expecting it to run on a single charge is realistic.
I'm sorry if I just confused you more, or didn't really help.
Posts: 349 | Registered: Oct 2007
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Theoretically you would need to turn it on only long enough to record a place marker for the photo taken. The one that I have looked at took a few minutes to acquire signal and determine the coordinates. So battery life would entirely depend on how many times you turn it on, and for how long.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Apr 2007
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This summer, I took a fairly cheap ($160) Garmin receiver on a weeklong, 100 mile trek. The batteries (2xAA) weren't quite fresh when I started, but they were still going at the end of the trek. I uploaded the track to the computer and was able to verify that it was accurate over the whole week.
Given that the photo tracker doesn't seem to have much of a display (if any), 14 hours on a charge is very reasonable. And those 14 hours can be extended a lot if you turn it off at night and when you aren't shooting a lot of pictures. Keep in mind, it will work just as well if you only have it on for the few minutes that you are composing a shot. The only loss is the info about the route you took to get there.
My recommendation, however, would be to get a full-fledged GPS with mapping capabilities, unless the software really matters to you. I'd take the navigation features over the software any day, especially since it is easier to write software than to retrofit a GPS with a screen and mapping capabilities.
Posts: 145 | Registered: Apr 2007
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adfectio: Yeah, that battery-life thing was major reason I wanted some opinions. When I looked at handhelds that are available in my local area, the Garmin units seemed to have battery lives of between 7 to 12 hours.
Thus, I was impressed by the comment in the comments section of the review:
quote: In September I had holidays, Thailand as two stopovers and three weeks in Italy. The Gisteq unit did not require charging during the entire trip. It was turned off when not taking photos for a couple of hours or more. The software matched the GPS to my downloaded photos ( approx. 1700 images ) with an accuracy that is outstanding.
I guess you may have a point, the battery life may or may not be substantially more, it might just be that the specific user just turned his on and off really well to last the three+ weeks.
The battery life is not too crucial though, two or three days should be enough since I'll have to charge my camera in the first place anyways.
NotMe: Did you manage to grab a continuous track over the weeklong? Or were you also careful to turn the thing on and off to conserve power?
See, the debate really is between a full-fledged GPS and something specialised like this. I'm really shooting for something I can easily use without worrying that I used the wrong control, can be turned on relatively inconspicuously, and can store locations for three weeks (although not necessarily be able to run more than two days or so on a charge). On the other hand, a less dedicated unit might be more useful after the trip .
posted
I had the GPS on whenever we weren't in camp. Towards the end of the week, the batteries were getting low, so I set it to store data points less often, and based on distance rather than time. On the days we were biking, I also turned it off during our lunch breaks. (I didn't do this while we were kayaking, because we actually sailed almost a mile during one lunch break.)
I don't have the data handy right now, but it works out to at least 12 hours of tracking, and it could have gone longer if I had set it up right from day 1 and drained the batteries. After the first two days, I set the receiver to "power saving" mode, which disabled elevation and heading tracking. That saved quite a bit of power, and I didn't need that data. (I had a compass and my elevation was never more than 20' above sea level.)
Posts: 145 | Registered: Apr 2007
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Cool. If you don't mind my asking, what model was your Garmin unit? There are a fair number here at the local stores and it would be nice to match your experiences back to a specific unit for comparison.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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It was the Garmin eTrex Legend, which is rated for 18 hours on a pair of AA alkalines. Beware, though, that the computer interface is serial. It won't work with my Mac, so I had to upload the data to one of my older computers. The more expensive models have even better battery life and USB connections.
I haven't done much looking at the raw data that gets uploaded, but a quick Google shows that there is plenty of third-party software to process it. I think the tracks recorded by the Garmin units also include time info, so even the basic eTrex would give you 10,000 points of location data to be matched up with photos.
I'll check on that, though. If it turns out to be true, then something like the $250 eTrex Venture Cx would probably be the best receiver to get, given it's 32 hour battery life. Otherwise, you would have to manually place markers when you stop to take a picture.
Either way, it seems like it would be pretty easy to write software to match up photos with the location data based on the timestamps. Flickr also seems to have a straightforward location API, so uploading the photos with location info wouldn't be hard. It's an interesting project that I might tackle after finals. (I've got another picturesque camping trip coming up.)
Posts: 145 | Registered: Apr 2007
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NotMe: I've been reading up on the various Garmin receivers. As you referenced, the majority of them will say their limit is 10,000 points, 20 tracks. Does that mean 20 tracks using 10,000 points combined or 20 tracks of 10,000 points each?
The reason I ask is that it seems like the Qisteq unit fits 250,000 points into a (seemingly) puny 4MB flash memory.
The latter would give me about 8 points per minute over a 21 day trip, which would be amazing. I could just charge the thing nightly and turn it on each day. The former, if it is only 10,000 points in total would be a bit more annoying since it could only log once every three minutes ... which is still do-able since I will probably turn the thing off at night anyways, but a bit strange since the unit is $250 and should have the same amount of memory as the cheaper Gisteq unit or more.
Any idea?
The other thing (not comparable to the gisteq unit since it has no display) but do the Garmin electronic maps seem a bit expensive? If you look at accessories, additional maps for different regions are $100+?
Also, as for writing your own software, it is possible, but it seems like there is a decent amount of software out there including one named "GPS Photo Linker." Edit to add: NVM, Mac only...sigh. But there are several linked to that gpspassion forum thread I linked to
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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