hiya, i want to put together a mobile mapping system for some nighttime shooters in outback australia and want to see what ideas people here have for the project. the budget will be between $1000-$2000 Australian. (approx 20 bucks US) there's no specific requirements yet, so it could be an all-in-one GPS, or a combination of PDA/small laptop and GPS etc. general requirements: ease of use: end-user will NOT be interested in programming and fancy stuff, just knowing where he is, and some basic plotting and editing. eg, adding fence lines and tracks and gates and such, or noting locations of dams and sheds or hazards, and perhaps other things such as downed game. low to medium accuracy: it's in the outback, they only need to know where they are to within a few hundred metres most of the time, but there will nearly always be easy line of sight to a whole hemisphere of satellites. reliability: this system will be on all night every night. don't want to have to keep changing or charging batteries, it should run off the car battery. the end-user will not likely suffer down-time, they would rather not use it if it requires too much effort to maintain. robustness: this system will be in a bumpy car all the time, so it is a definite requirement that it is NOT delicate. any connections must be solid, capable of taking decent knocks. other ideas: would like to interface with thermal sensing/night vision equipment. eg, rather than shooter having to drive around paddocks at 20km/h for 8 hours spotlighting for game, it would be nice if they could drive at normal speeds with a thermal overlay on the map which indicated heat zones. i know next to nothing about this side of things, but if anyone has any ideas i would love to hear them. this system will be within a darkened cabin environment, so requires easy access buttons and highly visible display with at-a-glance operability. minimal user interaction should be required for it's main functions. would also be nice if data were easily transferred to a home computer for a possible database and for sharing of mapping information with other users, and for easy updates to the system for some custom tools etc. if there is such a system out-of-the-box, then that's great. however i'm not scared of putting this together myself. i can do integrated mapping and programming and stuff myself, and i won't have any major difficulty learning new systems/languages. anyway, an intermediate system will be good for the short term, something that does MOST of the mapping stuff easily, so these guys will be happy with a mid-range GPS or something in the mean time while i make a fully featured system. answers to the ideas i've posted will be much appreciated, and i'd love to hear any other ideas that would be applicable to such a system. thanks ash
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