New GPS unit for DSLRs

[CSBC]

AP News

[Fen]

If you need someone to 'trial' this on a semi-permanent basis...

Let me know

[beejaybee]

'Tagging geographic data is just the start,' adds Geotate. 'Imagine being able to layer on other data like meteorological conditions. So, for example, it would be possible to search for photos that match the description 'sunny London in winter'.

Hmmm, remind me again about the properties of empty sets?

[LargeFormat]

This is going to be a must have. My Galapogos trip last autumn would really have benefited from this as it is hard to remember which island was which without quite a lot of effort.

[john_g]

I've found the GPS built into my Nokia N95 mobile phone to be incredibly useful for all sorts of things, including recording where photos were taken, but it chews through the battery. I think the most innovative feature of this new unit is that it only activates the GPS when a picture is taken and then can get a fix in 1/5th of a second. Impressive if it works reliably.

[Barney]

This is going to be a must have. My Galapogos trip last autumn would really have benefited from this as it is hard to remember which island was which without quite a lot of effort.

I would have loved one of those when I was in the Gobi desert seven years ago, however as I was shooting on an F80 it wouldn't have been much good even if I'd had one.

[SqueamishOssifrage]

I've found the GPS built into my Nokia N95 mobile phone to be incredibly useful for all sorts of things, including recording where photos were taken, but it chews through the battery. I think the most innovative feature of this new unit is that it only activates the GPS when a picture is taken and then can get a fix in 1/5th of a second. Impressive if it works reliably.

I use a Nokia 6110 Navigator, and this also chews through the batteries. The clever thing about this new device is that it doesn't actually calculate the position when you take a reading, which is what uses all the power. Instead, it just saves the raw satellite data, which is then computed into a fix when the data is downloaded to the PC.

[beejaybee]

The clever thing about this new device is that it doesn't actually calculate the position when you take a reading, which is what uses all the power.

I'm surprised. Really. In my stupidity I would have thought that the problem with a GPS receiver is acquiring the signals - by definition they come asynchronously, are at very low strength and will therefore frequently be missed requiring remaining in receive mode awaiting retransmission.

Once you have (at least) four timing signals, the actual calculation of position is pretty well trivial given modern electronics.

[SqueamishOssifrage]

When the user has finished taking photographs, they unload their photos and raw GPS data captures onto a PC and run our software. Matching is quick and easy, since the photos and raw GPS data were captured simultaneously. Our server provides historic GPS satellite information corresponding to the times the raw GPS data was recorded. This is used by our PC software to calculate the position fixes and geotag the photos with location information.

Here

[Footloose]

Mountain rescue teams can locate people based on the GPS data sent from the users phone, so I am guessing that a mobile phone could also be designed to show this data to the user as well.

[beejaybee]

Mountain rescue teams can locate people based on the GPS data sent from the users phone

A common misconception - if you have a GPS unit you can of course send your location, but triangulation of a phone location (for emergency or forensic investigation) is done by comparing the signal strength received from the phone at a number of nearby base stations, nothing to do with GPS. Just as well as few phones contain GPS functionality.

The accuracy in mountain areas is often no better than a few hundred metres - better than nothing, but in nil visibility you can still expect a search to take significant time.