[Openstreetmap] Which GPS receiver to get?

[SteveC]

* Andrew Birkett (andy at nobugs.org) wrote:
> 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

My experience is 'no'. The accuracy isn't brilliant, and you can't log
stuff more than every 5 seconds on the unit itself (IIRC)

This is from taking an eTrex to Berlin (to record the flight) and around
the more leafy areas of london.

> 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?

You could hook a serial cable to it, get gpsd talking to it and that
would be ok.

> 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?

the eTrex serial cables can be found on ebay.

> 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.

Me too! :-)

have fun,

SteveC steve at fractalus.com http://www.fractalus.com/steve/