Anyone use a GPS Data Logger ?

gr0d0n

gr0d0n

gr0d0n

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5 Nov 2004
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Hi,

I was just wondering if anyone had used one of the above for hiking or anything. I got one a few days ago and have been testing it... and I'm really not impressed ! I got a GT-730FL-S which uses the supposedly good Venus 6 chipset but my results have been all over the place and the device just seems to loose its GPS lock for no reason.

The image below is a quick test I done today, The blue line is the logger and the thin yellow line is my galaxy s3 with a GPS logger I downloaded. I turned off wifi and mobile data to try and limit any other info it was using.

The phone managed to track me very accurately (except for the start in the trees, but I started both the loggers indoors so I expect some errors from that). But apart from that it followed me to within a 2 or 3 meters, even logs where I crossed the road, As you can see the blue one form the logger is a complete mess and pretty worthless... then stopped for the rest of the walk for no reason, wouldn't re-lock for the rest of the 10 min walk.



So if anyone has used any loggers in the past I would appreciate any input. Are they all this poor or did I just get a faulty one ? Unfortunatly I couldnt find a lot of tests online for them to look at and I don't really have anything else to compare it to.

Thanks :)

Gordon.
 
I've used the iPhone GeotagsPhoto app when shooting abroad. Mainly so that I was able to work out where my photos were taken and in some cases work out what I had been shooting later when processing my photos.

Does the job just fine.
 
used edomondo before which is basicly the same thing but a phone app and it showed a much more accurate trail than your shocking picture has.

Heres an example of one of my endomondo walks
U4NNuZr.jpg


pretty much exactly on the path as you would expect and you can even see where I walked between 2 cars in the car park rather than a line going straight through them

it logs speed, altitude , distance , time , minutes per mile, estimated calories burnt depending on the exercise you have selected (walking , running , riding etc)
 
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Thanks for the replies so far, I do have a good app on the phone for logging but I would like a good hardware logger instead. I want to use when I go hill climbing to see what route I have taken and so on. I would rather use a hardware logger than my phone to save battery life and the phone is usually kept somewhere safe like under several layers of clothing or in my bag if I am climbing to keep it safe. The hardware loggers are also usually small enough to get clipped on to the cats collar - and I would be interested to see what hes getting up to.
 
I use my bike one, an Edge 500

Used it today actually on a short social club walk.

http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/271726983

We had some awful weather this morning and once it got lock of the full range of satellites it was pretty accurate.

(see it weaving all over the place at the start of the route, but by the time I had got round to the road section it was spot on... it even has me crossing the road at the exact location. ( went over to wash my boots off in the gulley :D )
 
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It's a bit overkill for your needs but I use a £50 Qstarz BT-Q818XT BlueTooth GPS receiver which is linked to my Android phone via BT using a free app called RaceChrono which does the logging and mapping via google maps (or whatever mapping software you want). I use it on our Rally Car for GPS timing and route mapping etc.
 
I doubt any of these cheap GPS devices are as good as a smartphone which supports GLONASS and GPS. Obviously they cost 10x as much and so there is a trade off.
 
Cheap GPS units are a false economy, you have to remember that even ones that cost hundreds of pounds are only really accurate to a couple of m.

Compare this to the commercial grade ones we use for mapping at work which cost £14k and are accurate to a few mm ;)

The Garmin hiking ones are pretty decent and can be had for about £100, but there really is nothing wrong with using decent smartphones these days.
 
Windle said:
Cheap GPS units are a false economy, you have to remember that even ones that cost hundreds of pounds are only really accurate to a couple of m.

Compare this to the commercial grade ones we use for mapping at work which cost £14k and are accurate to a few mm ;)

The Garmin hiking ones are pretty decent and can be had for about £100, but there really is nothing wrong with using decent smartphones these days.
Click to expand...

That requires complicated local error correction doesn't it?
 
Yup, most systems now are real time networks linked to various fixed base stations and receiving real time corrections
 
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