Skiing: GPS units
For a recent ski trip to Corvara (see trip summary) I took three different GPS units! Why three? Well, one for driving directions (a Garmin Quest [Amazon Link]), one for mapping locations (a Garmin eTrex Venture Cx [Amazon Link]) and one for geotagging photos (a Sony GPS CS1 [Amazon Link] unit).
Why three units? Well…
Garmin Quest: This is a great unit for driving. It is small, easy to install and use and generally does a good job.
The Garmin Quest 2 GPS Unit – great for directions and in car use.
Installation in the car consists of sticking the bracket (with a suction cup) to the windscreen of the car, and plugging the speaker/power supply into the cigarette lighter. Done. Programming is easy and it generally does a good job with directions. It did struggle up in the mountains in Alta Badia and the Dolomiti Superski areas. This seemed to be caused by the large number of switch-backs (hair-pin turns) in the road, the system seem to think we were off track..
Overall impression – it is a good little unit that gets the job done, ideal for driving but not very good for mapping point and geotagging/geocoding photos. Well, it got me to Corvara from Venice, over to Bolzano Bozen (read post)) and back to Venice on the last trip, and last year it worked well on the trips to Chamonix in France (from the UK – read the trip summary) and on a drive from Munich to Saalbach in Austria (read the trip summary).
If you are looking for a GPS unit then try theSnowSite GPS Store (powered by Amazon).
Garmin eTrex Venture Cx: The Garmin eTrex Venture Cx [Amazon Link] is a good unit for hiking, tracking and mapping. Again, very easy to use.
Garmin Venture Cx – great for hiking, tracking and mapping (and can be used of geotagging photos)
The unit worked well. The unit produced a great tracking plot of the drive from Venice to Corvara. It was also extremely good for mapping in and around Corvara. If you are looking for a GPS unit then try theSnowSite GPS Store (powered by Amazon).
Sony GPS CS1: This was a new one for this trip.
The Sony GPS CS1 [Amazon Link] unit is used for GPS tracking. There is no screen, only one button (two if you count the reset), three LEDs (one marked GPS, one BATT, and one MEM FULL) and a USB port. When the unit is switched on (by holding down the button) the GPS LED will start to flash. When the unit is searching for satellites it gives two flashes in quick succession, followed by a gap of 2 – 3 seconds. Once a satellite lock has been achieved the GPS LED flashes once every 2 – 3 seconds. The unit can then just be left to run – if the satellite lock is lost it will continue to search for a new lock with no user intervention.
The Sony GPS CS1 – ideal for geocoding / geotagging photos
The unit worked really well. During the six days of use I learnt the following:
When skiing it doesn’t work very well in a coat pocket as it kept dropping the satellite lock. This may be due to the fact that when skiing you tend be leaning forward and therefore shielding the unit from the sky, and hence the satellites.
The unit works really well in the top of a rucksack, or in a pocket on the side of the rucksack – I guess because it gets a good view of the sky. (This most probably says a lot about my stance whilst skiing!). One problem with having the unit in the rucksack is it tends to ‘chill’ and therefore shorten the battery life.
Very easy to use. Turn it on, and forget it. (Just keep an eye of the battery. Sony claims an 8 hour battery life, my unit was getting through a battery every day and a half).
When using the data for geocoding/geotagging photos it was sometimes difficult to calculate the ‘offset’ time between when the photo was taken and the GPS data. Also, as the GPS data was only captured every 15 seconds some track traces appeared slightly jagged and not as good as traces produced using the Garmin eTrex Venture Cx [Amazon Link].
For geotagging photos I used PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor (freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation)).
Overall, I was impressed with ease of use (press the start button and forget it), and that the unit did as advertised, i.e. it collected GPS data. One point to note, the unit does not work with Macs, I had to retrieve the data from the unit using a Windows machine As of Mac OS X 10.4.9 the Sony GPS CS1 [Amazon Link] works with the Mac!
