Recommendations for a GPS? Rechargable, USB, Inexpensive

dominik

Hi,

I've decided to buy a GPS to geotag my photos, but am as yet unsure of which one -- most of the literature on the GPS manufacturer sites seems to be directed at folks hiking in the woods, not people looking to geotag their photos.

In any case, I'm looking for a GPS unit with these features:
- rechargable battery -- I am not a fan of carrying around batteries and usually have power every evening
- USB interface -- I typically travel with my laptop and thus can upload and tag photos nightly (a USB-charging GPS would be ideal)
- inexpensive -- I'd like to stay under $150, and under $100 would be ideal

Any recommendations?

Many thanks!

Art Scott

What camera are you using?

I have a Garmin Etrex with all books for $105 including shipping by priority mail and insurance and paypal fees.

So if you wanted to pay by money order you could save about $10.00.


Great little unit that I used for marking tree locations for my Deer stands when bow hunting.....never left the stands out that way no one else could climb tree and use stand.....

It is the bright yellow unit and runs off 2 AA batteries.

I use rechargable AA's....2 - 4 extra batteries don't take up much extra room.....and should run approx 22 hours on a set of batteries....you can store upto 500 waypoints and even back navigate to home or a previous waypoint.

It is a great unit for the price and extremely reliable.....it would get me with 3-9 feet of my tree stand trees.....

Antonio Correia

I have been interest but I quit.
Nikon has a system which allows to connect directly to the camera.
Canon has nothing like this.

pathfinder

Antonio Correia wrote:

I have been interest but I quit.
Nikon has a system which allows to connect directly to the camera.
Canon has nothing like this.

I would like to know more about this Antonio. Canon is missing the boat here if they don't add this capablity very soon. Why don't Canon and Nikon just buiild the GPS receiver into the camera - not that expensive to add on their high end DSLRs either. Maybe $100 more cost??

Nikon also has a wireless remote cable release receiver built in some of their DSLRs also which is very cool.

rainforest1155

dominik wrote:

Any recommendations?

What I wrote in your other thread is still valid - no change.

Sebastian

rainforest1155

pathfinder wrote:

I would like to know more about this Antonio. Canon is missing the boat here if they don't add this capablity very soon. Why don't Canon and Nikon just buiild the GPS receiver into the camera - not that expensive to add on their high end DSLRs either. Maybe $100 more cost??

Nik posted an article over here that as good info on GPS in connection with a digital camera (the guy uses a Nikon and also talks about ways of connecting the GPS).

Hope this helps,
Sebastian

dominik

I'm using a Canon Digital Rebel.

As for sebastian's recommendation of the TFAC Pyxis... I'd love to get one, only I can't find where to get one :-/ I'm not crazy about getting electronics off of ebay (in any case none are listed at the moment) and Amazon doesn't seem to stock it. So I'm looking for something similar from Garmin or another established brand name. Thanks!

StevenV

it looks like mobilegpsonline.com has them. never used 'em, don't know anything about 'em, just found 'em via google.

http://mobilegpsonline.com/mgpsos/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=8

rainforest1155

StevenV wrote:

it looks like mobilegpsonline.com has them. never used 'em, don't know anything about 'em, just found 'em via google.

http://mobilegpsonline.com/mgpsos/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=8

That's in fact the store that also puts the Pyxis GPS on ebay every once in a while, where I bought mine. On ebay they are usually around 10-20US$ cheaper.

Sebastian

rainforest1155

dominik wrote:

As for sebastian's recommendation of the TFAC Pyxis... I'd love to get one, only I can't find where to get one :-/ I'm not crazy about getting electronics off of ebay (in any case none are listed at the moment) and Amazon doesn't seem to stock it. So I'm looking for something similar from Garmin or another established brand name. Thanks!

See my reply to Steven's find. Also here's the link to the ebay shop of the store Steven listed. You could drop them a message via ebay and ask if they'll put another one up anytime soon as they're selling them a bit cheaper then in their store.

As for Garmin and other established brand names: have a close look at them before buying. While I was doing research on a suitable GPS I came across the fact that some of those brand's don't leave the choice up to you on how you can use the GPS and what software you can use.
For example they don't provide access to the raw NMEA data and give you just limited data in form of their own formats, which might only support for waypoints without time/date references and thus making it useless for geo tagging.
Also keep in mind when they talk about how much memory their units have that this most of the time only applies to how many map data they can store, but not how much track log data if any.

I don't know anything specific anymore - just keep your eyes open and be sure to have the possibility to return it to the store.

Sebastian

Manfr3d

Garmin eTrex series are very nice, also take
a look at Garmin Forerunner wrist watch
type of GPS. Ideal for biking! Those GPS are
able to record up to 10000 gps points (may
vary with model) as you tour. You can
download these waypoints via usb or serial (!)
cable (which I do with my Garmin GPS 12XL)
with a most of the time seperatly sold adaptor.

If you dont have some sort of a script
it can be a pta to compare file timestamps
with gps waypoint timestamps and then
put the gps data into your exif. I dont
know if there is a software that automates
this in any way?!

Art Scott

Here is a LINK to the only GPS camera I know of.....but this little Ricoh Pocket camea ain't cheap........and you must use WAAS enabled CF cards for it to work.