[Openstreetmap] Which GPS receiver to get?

[Andrew Birkett]

Hi,

I've been planning on making a Free street map of Edinburgh for a year
or so now, and Steve pointed me towards this list.  I'm a developer, and
can help with the software side of things.  I don't yet have a GPS
receiver, and so I'm hoping that I can draw on the experience of others
on this list.

I am not clear whether I can pick up any GPS handset and expect it to
work well in a city.  For example, my dad has a Garmin eTrex that I can
probably borrow.  Will that work tolerably in a city?  Will it take
minutes to log each datapoint, or can I just cycle along a street and
expect it to get a reasonable number of datapoints?  Would a handheld
set work any better than a CF card GPS receiver?  Or should I be looking
at fancier sets to get decent reception?

Also, do these handheld receivers have some standard way of connecting
to a PC/handheld?  Or do you need to build custom cables and reverse
engineer the protocol?

Any help would be welcome.  I'm very keen to get mapping, because I have
a strong ideological view that there should be Free and accurate maps
available to people.

Andrew