Multipurpose Gadgets

[Aggie]

Anyone currently use a smartphone with a reasonable gps and camera built in? 

The phone is not a mandatory item, necessarily (and in any case may not be supported by my carrier, although I think they are more flexible than most), but a GPS/camera would be an incredibly handy field item.  Having a phone included would cut my gadget load significantly, but I would not want to sacrifice GPS functionality for the sake of a phone.  Navigation capacity is nice to have (and standard on smartphone types, I suspect) but my primary purpose is accurately marking the location of sampling points.

I need a GPS and am wavering between buying the cheapest reliable waypoint-marker I can get my hands on (probably a Garmin Etrex Legend H; they are basic but work for my purposes) to match the cheap Canon digital field camera I use, or stepping up to the Garmin Oregon 550 with an integrated camera:

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145&pID=26875

3.2 Mp is plenty of camera for reporting purposes, and having the photos geotagged would be a great add-on.  What I haven't figured out yet is whether photos are geotagged with photo direction by the built-in compass, which is actually a bigger deal than the location in most cases. Going to have to do a little inquiring....


I get a $15/day camera allowance and a $15/day GPS allowance for sites where these are required; my cheap camera is already close to paid off.  If I was to pick up a cheap GPS it would not take long to pay off and then save profits towards a dual-purpose gadget ($10/day for phone, too... but that mostly goes towards airtime. I bought a near-disposable phone for $50 as my carrier requires phone purchase but does not tie me to a contract).  OTOH, why spend $150-ish for a cheap GPS when I could roll this into purchasing something more elegant? 

OTTH (if I had three), with new technology it is often better to wait for the bugs to get worked out, so a cheap unit for now would take the winter abuse and give me a chance to wait for refinements, additional models and potential price reductions.   The Legends seem to hate the cold, though....

[Griffin NoName]

Can't see a downside to a GPS phone with built in camera provided it is a decent one. But then I don't know much about GPS.

[Aggie]

Big issues would probably be accuracy and specific functions (downloadable apps could probably take care of the latter). Vehicle navigation-oriented GPS units don't need to be accurate within a few metres, and I think most phones would be geared for that or casual street navigation.   I also doubt a smartphone would have the type of compasses I need to get accurate spatial placement / direction.

If I was going strictly for a rugged, capable GPS I might look at something like the GPSMAP 60CSx (nearly as much as the Oregon 550, but a little more heavy-duty and possibly more accurate):
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145&pID=310#featureTab

Garmin does make a GPS phone, but I think it may be more navigation oriented and no camera:
http://www8.garmin.com/nuvifone/



I haven't looked beyond Garmin at the moment, as I'm familiar with their product  -  I am aware of one other gps-with-camera but the resolution is lower (2.0 Mp) and probably not sufficient (ooh, but it does come with a flashlight and a mp3 player built in - wish the camera was better!):
http://www.gpscentral.ca/products/magellan/triton2000.htm

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

While I love my smartphone (a G1) which has a GPS and a camera there are some downsides for what you want to accomplish. The camera is OK provided there is enough light on the shots, it doesn't have a flash and the phones with flash I know have a lousy flash so forget about pictures of dark places. As for the GPS either you must have a data connection to find yourself on the map or pay for an extra app that caches the maps for you, or if you need just your coordinates there are apps that can tell you but the accuracy may not be up to your needs. Also smartphones are proverbial battery eaters, so an adapter for the car is a must.

I have the feeling that a cheap trek GPS (you don't really need the map but the coordinates, right?) and a cheap camera will work better and more economically than a smartphone for you.
---
Now, did you know that I can play PacMan, Doom, card games, synchronize my mail and documents with google, view traffic on real time on my GPS (as long as I have data connection) and even a star map that tells me what star or planet I'm looking at just by pointing the phone at it?

[Aggie]

Yeah, the phone is the least of my worries.  Didn't know the data connection was required for GPS - that's a killer.  However, I'm still interested in the GPS/camera combo, especially since that Garmin will probably support overlays on Google Maps (i.e. can have photos with proper locations overlaid on an air photo - beautiful for updating clients / managers).   I really want to have photo direction included in the geotag, so I don't have to write descriptions of which direction I was facing - the 550 has the internal components necessary to do this, but I'm not sure if it actually does.

Flash is a non-issue as I shut mine off most of the time - photos are outdoors and the flash can trip fire-eye on plant sites (i.e. shut the whole place down immediately).

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I also have a G1, and I agree with regards to the camera.

As for GPS?  It's only accurate to within 20-30 yards or worse, so I've not bothered with anything beyond the freeby's it came with.  Although I'm given to understand there's a "better" GPS app you can add, for a fee.

My buddy has a Palm Pre, which includes a GPS that's pretty good, according to him-- it has a "walking" mode, suitable for non-vehicle use-- he reports it's reasonable accurate for what it is, and has used the walking mode any number of times, in cities, with good success.  He's not tried it in deep woods.

I've no idea about the camera, he's not said, being one of those "camera elite" types-- he's invested in thousands of semi-pro and pro Canon digital camera equipment, so that's hardly surprising.

Having a single device, "all-in-one" does reduce your weight.  It also reduces your reliability:  you've put all your eggs into a single device, so to speak-- and carrying a fully charged battery (or 2 or 3) would be a must-- most of these phone/GPS/cameras' batteries are severely limited, IMHO.  

On the third paw, I purchased a 3rd party battery for my G1, complete with larger back, that roughly doubles the phone's thickness.  But.  I can mess with the internet, the Google Maps (which uses GPS), and the cell all day long, and be only down by 1/2....  this battery brags it's 190% of the original in capacity.  And that seems about right.  I typically go 2-3 days before a charge.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Didn't know the data connection was required for GPS - that's a killer. 

In theory it doesn't and with an app that only gives coordinates it shouldn't be a problem but I had an odd experience while in Mexico where the GPS did not update it's position while disconnected most of the time. I don't know if it was related to the google maps app or that the other app (that caches the area) was in a trial mode.

On the third paw, I purchased a 3rd party battery for my G1, complete with larger back, that roughly doubles the phone's thickness.  But.  I can mess with the internet, the Google Maps (which uses GPS), and the cell all day long, and be only down by 1/2....  this battery brags it's 190% of the original in capacity.  And that seems about right.  I typically go 2-3 days before a charge.

I've been tempted but with the one with less capacity (ie: more capacity than the standard but on the same size) mostly because my silicon protector wouldn't work with the thicker battery.

[Aggie]

My buddy has a Palm Pre, which includes a GPS that's pretty good, according to him-- it has a "walking" mode, suitable for non-vehicle use-- he reports it's reasonable accurate for what it is, and has used the walking mode any number of times, in cities, with good success.  He's not tried it in deep woods.

-------

Having a single device, "all-in-one" does reduce your weight.  It also reduces your reliability:  you've put all your eggs into a single device, so to speak-- and carrying a fully charged battery (or 2 or 3) would be a must-- most of these phone/GPS/cameras' batteries are severely limited, IMHO.

I'd like sub-5-m accuracy; that GPSMAP 60CSx would fit the bill and would take an external antenna that might help (stick it to my hard hat? ).  I don't think a smartphone could come close at this point.  Anything more accurate than that, you'd need to go to a Trimble.

AFAIK, a dedicated handheld GPS will nearly always take AA batteries - one of the reasons beside the low price that I bought the most primitive digital camera I could find.  Rechargeable integrated batteries are no good if you're away from the truck, especially in cold weather. 

I would always keep a camera in my bag as a back-up and for flash or high-res photography, but I'm often taking photos at the same time I'm walking around shooting GPS locations, and as previously stated having the photos location-tagged is of great advantage for documentation purposes.  It's more a question of pocket space and losing something out of one's bulging pockets than it is about total number of gadgets hauled out to the field - I have to pack tons of safety gear, PPE and sampling equipment.


OK, if money issn't an object, I want this:
http://www.trimble.com/yuma-rugged-tablet.shtml 

Only $3999

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There are gizmos for GPS tagging:
http://gizmodo.com/191454/sony-gps+cs1-tags-photos-with-location
http://www.tristatecamera.com/lookat.php?refid=279&sku=GISCD111

That might help.

[Aggie]

The clincher is having photo direction included - which I think needs a sophisticated 3-d electronic compass.  I don't know if anything does this, though.

I still need a standalone GPS for waypoint mapping, and it's still an extra gizmo.


UPDATE:  I did end up buying an Etrex Legend H for the meantime (needed a GPS for current job and figured paying 10% off immediately was worth it).  I may get it paid for and then sell it at a discount to a co-worker, if they need one.

[Aggie]

Need camera advice.... calling DavidH!

Do you know anything about the Sony DSC-HX5V?  It sounds like just the ticket for what I'm looking for in terms of a camera with directional geotagging.  I've paid my Canon off six times over from camera allowances, so I can afford to buck up for this guy (which isn't ridiculously expensive, somewhere around $400).

Contrary to the above post, I think I can get away with just a geotagging camera for work, since I can shoot whatever I am taking a waypoint of.  I've still got a GPS (or two) around for anything I'd need it for, such as navigating back to a spot or just for general hiking.

For serious backwoods security, I'd be tempted to pick up one of these instead of a regular GPS (might have to see if the boss would cover the subscriptions if I paid for the unit):
http://www.delorme.com/about/pressreleases/SPOTcommunicator.htm

[Sibling DavidH]

Sorry, Aggie, I know nothing about it.  Googling it, it's small and light and has a lot of zoom for a compact, and good wide angle at the other end.  Also it has a built-in panorama thing, which you might find very handy. The GPS tagging  bit looks useful, too.  It doesn't have arty stuff like aperture priority but it has got a lot of scene modes.  One thing, though - it uses a special battery, so you might need to carry a spare on a trip.  Also it has no viewfinder, which I hate in bright light, but then nor does your A480.
I found it for $350.
But wow, that Delorme gadget really looks like the dog's thingies.

[Aggie]

Ayuh, we use the stand-alone SPOTs when out of cell range, but they don't allow texting out specific messages.  Having a GPS that could load aerial photos would be invaluable.

I admit that I'm drooling a bit over the panoramic function on that camera - I like my panoramic shots.   The directional geotagging, however, is invaluable for field use, and would keep me from having to explain photos.

The special battery, I forgot about, but I could either carry a spare and charger or keep my Cannon Canon around.  Weight is not an issue on field trips, so extra gadgets are OK to pack in the truck, just not on my person.

[The Meromorph]

Aggie, Sorry, I'm late to this thread, but the HTC HD2 does everything you were asking for. There are multiple free and paid apps for Geotagging/GeoCaching, Full GPS capability, Full Compass,, Navigation (data connection, and standalone) including Google Maps, Bing etc. 5 mp camera with flash, 1Gigaherz procesor, 1 gigabyte of storage, plus SD card (16 Gb), email, SMS. etc.
I love mine...

[Aggie]

Hmm, I'll take a look at it, Mero.

The thing is, I might not actually want to use it as a phone...  I am (surprisingly) happy with my carrier at the moment, and they don't do SIM cards, so they might not be able to handle a random phone.  Plus, my $50 beater Samsung phone takes much mud abuse and has nearly been lost down a hole a few times - I'd not like to continously pack a $500 gizmo.

I'm still somewhat sceptical (until I see one in action) that smartphone GPS has the accuracy and precision (sub 5m would be nice; 5 - 10 is more typical of my old Garmin) that I'm looking for, and is completely data-connection-independent.  I intend to go to the Sony store with GPS in hand and do a shootout of the camera vs. my GPS if I get a chance. 

[Sibling DavidH]

Yes, my old Garmin Etrex will claim 5m accuracy on a good day.  Since I really bought it to mark any odd archaeological finds when field-walking round here, it's not quite good enough.  An American archaeologist and I found a piece of Iron-Age pot on a site and I took a waypoint; days later I couldn't find the exact spot again.  However the grid-ref was quite good enough for him to tell his mates back in the US.  Same problem with some Iron-Age furnace-slag I once picked up.  I'm not sure just how much accuracy you need for your work.

[Aggie]

1 - 2 m would be nice, but not realistic without a Trimble.  When we need very accurate data, we bring out surveyors.  Most of the GPS work I do in the field is for site diagrams and trying to find given boreholes or monitoring wells (flush-mounts can be tricky to find again).  Patches of contaminated ground tend to be larger than a pot fragment, but if I could get that kind of accuracy in a handheld, it would definitely be useful.  Conditions can easily change over a 5 m radius.

[Aggie]

*paging DavidH and any other camera techno-wizards again*

Do you have any tips for manipulating EXIF data?  I'm seriously looking at that Sony but would need a way to rip the coordinates for a series of photos into a spreadsheet - the camera uses lat/long coordinates (degrees, minutes, seconds) and I would prefer to get them in NAD84 UTM coordinates.  Leave the conversion up to me...  but how do I get hold of them in the first place, other than manual input?

I'm not yet convinced that this Sony is going to give me the output I want, particularly with respect to the compass.  It's shown on screen as an icon of a compass.   I want degrees from north, or something else I can convert to principal compass points, damnit!

[Sibling DavidH]

There are many available EXIF editors - look at this for example.  Since you only want a few numbers, can't you read them off  and type them in again?  If so, good old Irfan View is all you need.  (I know you said 'other than manual input'  but I'm thinking that unless you've got a large number of photos, any form of software transfer is likely to be even more time-consuming.)

A compass icon is a bit vague, is the compass bearing in the EXIF info, I wonder?

For any siblings who don't know it, Irfan View is an old and well-tried piece of freeware which nobody with a camera should be without. Using it as a photo viewer, just press E to show the full EXIF file. The range of other things it can do is astonishing, e.g. producing Power-Point style presentations or batch resizing, renaming or type conversion.    I also use it for sorting through a batch of photos: F7 moves the displayed photo to another directory, F8 copies it there and DEL deletes it directly, etc etc...

[Sibling DavidH]

Hey, look what I've found!  BR's EXIF extracter (sic) is free and will run through a batch of photos and extract any bits of EXIF you choose, including Lat, Long, Alt and GPS date and time.  It saves them in a .csv format that opens in Excel.  A couple of quick runs show it it's easy to use, but I can't try it on the data you are interested in, as I don't have any.   

You can get it here.

[Aggie]

Manual input, eh?  Not too bad, I suppose, as the lat/long data is probably less than twelve digits (each) and I rarely process more than about 200 photos at a time.

Thank you for the link - I was playing around with a couple of other EXIF programs last night, and while I did find one that will do what I want (EXIFutils) it requires using DOS - something I haven't done in at least two decades (and I aten't even three decades old ).  I'll give EXIF extractor a go, since I'd love to have something I could pass on to others in the office. 

_{btw, I picked on you because you always seem to know what kind of camera I'm using, so I deduced some familiarity with EXIF data - thanks again!} 

Irfan View looks like a valuable program as well, so I will likely give it a try, too.  The batch resizes are problematic at home, since I don't have Office and therefore Microsoft's bit of photo-crapware to do it.

[Sibling DavidH]

Ooh blimey!  200 photos is a lot for manual entry, but then DOS isn't a barrel of laughs either. 

Batch resizing is a doddle with Irfan View.  I use it inter alia to cram hundreds of pictures into my LCD photo frame.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

DOS?  Crappy?  Bite your tongue... _{let's see...the DOS command for biting one's tongue was.... hmmm... no.. crap!  I can't remember the exact syntax...}

[Aggie]

I didn't say crappy - but one is so used to GUIs these days, it really does feel like stepping back to the 80's.

Bought the beastie, will post some photos soon.  The Sony software that came with it actually looks to be relatively easy-to-use and useful (too much social media interfacing, but not my concern).

[Sibling DavidH]

Great stuff!  Hope it does what you want.  If you post them via Imageshack as before, I'd be interested to see the GPS data in the EXIF.

BTW if you DOWNLOAD Irfan View 4.27, make sure you get the EXIF plug-in.  It's easy to find and add on.  There's a whole user manual, near enough, hidden in HELP>KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS.