On 2013-03-18 at 12:04:54 +0100, Hans Schmidt wrote: > Am 18.03.2013 04:09, schrieb Andrew Gregory: > > It's all down to your application. What do you want to do that you can't do > > on a $50 smartphone? > One problem of smartphones is that they are battery hungry and the > software tends to shut down unexpectedly. With a dedicated gps logger, I > can log one entire day without having to fear that the battery is low or > that some software crash erased all my data.
I've heard that modern (decent) smartphones have managed to reach full-day battery autonomy; I don't know if that assumes not using it most of the time (and logging breaks the assumption). On the other hand, a simple device won't crash, and it will probably have a better gps module + antenna. > I would really like to have a gps logger which a rudimentary display > (e-ink would be nice) I have considered using a nokia 3310-like display: it's not e-ink, but it is low power and easily available for cheap. (e.g. 6.95 EUR https://www.olimex.com/Products/Modules/LCD/MOD-LCD3310/ ) > and a mini sd slot, where all the tracks are just > saved as a gpx file, so that I can copy them to my pc without having to > rely on any software. If your GPS module speaks NMEA (which it should, if you want to be able to use it in a sane way) I'd recommend just copying it to the SD card: it takes less space than gpx, requires no interpretation on the device (something less than can crash / lose data) and it can be read by many programs on the PC, including gpsbabel, gpsprune and gpsd. > Well, building your own gps receiver will most likely have problems with > the not-crashing part, but it would be fun nonetheless. as long as the hardware (homemade solders etc.) works the software part can be made so simple that it can't fail :) -- Elena ``of Valhalla'' _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
