[OSM-talk] handheld gps unit

[Russ Nelson]

Philip Barnes writes:
 > I can imagine it could be annoying if you are stopped in a tunnel and it switches off and later logs are then lost.

It sleeps until you start moving again.

Martijn van Exel writes:
 > I've been eying the Columbuses. Do you know what the difference is between the V900 and the (newer) V990?

Looking at the specs, the V990 doesn't have bluetooth, has a
longer-life battery, and a more sensitive GPS receiver that gets a fix
faster. It also doesn't come with a micro-SD card, nor a wall
charger. Otherwise it looks identical but $30 cheaper.

 > Also the built-in voice tagging seems nice, anyone tried that for mapping?

It's supafine! It's my favorite method of mapping. When you use my
columbus-to-gpx.py converter, it produces a GPX file with voice file
links that show up as audio bubbles in JOSM. Click on the bubble and
it plays your note.

It has some flaws, but the audio mapping is SO much fun that I ignore
them:
  o The plastic surrounding the corner LED tends to crack.
  o There's a slight delay after you press the button before it starts
    recording.
  o It chops off the end of your audio note, so you have to release
    the button a few milliseconds after you stop talking.
  o It stops recording the track while it's recording your voice.
  o You have to pull the micro-SD to get the data off of it.
  o It has a bizarre log file format. It's a combination of
    comma-separated AND null-padded fixed-length fields. SRSLY>
  o It's so small and lightweight that it's easy to leave in your
    pocket when you do the wash, and it's not waterproof. I only
    washed it once, but once was enough.
  o It writes files into the root filesystem, and when you fill up the
    vfat directory space, it crashes.
  o Sometimes (I haven't figured out when) it crashes when I push the
    record button. Then it goes deaf, lights up the corner light white
    and then turns off. If I turn it back on, it quickly gets a fix
    and starts recording again. Takes about fifteen seconds total.

Like I say: flaws and all, I'll buy another one when this one dies.

-- 
--my blog is at    http://blog.russnelson.com
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