[OSM-talk] South Downs Way

[Christian van den Bosch]

Andy Armstrong wrote:

>> Ohh, USB to USB converter, that can handle garmin protocol on one
>> side, and USB mass-storage on the other side.  So to develop such
>> a device, we'd need a PIC board with two USB interfaces, and an
>> awful lot of software...

Yup, I was looking into this some weeks ago. Current USB-capable PICs
will only act as a single USB client. You'd likely need an SBC or a PDA
with a USB host port to do this job well.

If there were a PIC with USB host capability, it would be possible to
log to an SD card as Microchip supply source code to use SD with pics.

> You only need to do NMEA(serial) -> flash for a logger that'll work with 
> just about any GPS :)

Some recent links from the OSM IRC channels:

http://www.sparkfun.com/cgi-bin/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=13847 describes a
homebrew Sirf Star III to SD card logger which looks quite nice; it
seems the maker hopes to make and sell it in some quantity.

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=671 has 
similar functionality, but without Sirf Star III.

It seems both are highly configurable, with track length limited only by
SD card size.

Other units previously linked here include the BlueGPS (fixed memory
size, 30k points max, data extraction by bluetooth only, Sirf Star II 
(not III) receiver) and the NaviGPS (SD card logger, can be used as
standalone GPS - has display but no mapping capability).

Both of these should work with a mapping application on a bluetooth PDA.

I've no personal experience of any of the above, just Garmin and Holux.

Christian / cjb

http://www.cjb.ie/