I see battery life mentioned quite often in relation to using phones or
tablets for gps recording. One option for extending battery lives on
these devices (maybe not an ideal option, but an option nevertheless) is
the external battery pack. I have what must be the largest universal
external laptop battery pack - at 155Wh. This will power a small
efficient laptop through 10 hours of continuous real-world use - such as
watching dvd's, browsing the Internet over 3G etc. (plus the internal
battery of the laptop on top of that). It is a monster of a battery, at
close to 2Kgs - but it has USB output as well - so it can be strapped to
a tablet or phone (or the other way around, considering the size) - and
it will surely provide days of power for GPS recording.
Now, the above arrangement is a bit over the top in terms of size and
weight - many might argue - but I just thought I'd mention it as an
extra option.
As a side note, I've done GPS recording in the car and even on foot
using the above battery pack, a small laptop and a usb gps receiver. It
is a bit of weight to carry - but I already had all these pieces of
equipment and didn't want to invest into new stuff at the time. If on
foot, I'd recommend having a cheap SSD fitted in the laptop - walking
around with a laptop writing to the hard-disk didn't prove to be a great
idea in the long term :-)
Sebastian
On 26/01/13 02:35, Neil Taylor wrote:
To pick up on Andrew's point. The battery life we have seen on lower end
smartphones (Samsung Galaxy Pocket) deployed in the field (in Cebu in the
Philippines) when using GPS to send regular location traces to a server (not
OSM, but would be indicative of battery life of doing this) is 3-4 hrs
depending on conditions and intensity of use. This is significantly less than
12 - 24 hrs achievable on dedicated devices and means the phone is also useless
for anything else you want to do (email, text, phone, music) until you can
charge it.
Having lots of spare batteries can overcome this, but is operationally
frustrating when working in the field.
Best regards
Neil
Neil Taylor
Associate
Integrated Transport Planning Ltd.
----- Original Message -----
From:Andrew Salzberg <[email protected]>
To:"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent:23/01/2013 4:02
Subject:Re: [OSM-newbies] Wiki documentation on GPS devices - please help
answer some questions
I think this is a great topic to improve.
When I first got into OSM my question was : why not use my phone? Aside from
accuracy or any other issues, the best reason I've come up with not to is
simply battery life. My garmin will easily last 12 hours, and a simple GPS
logger 24 or more.
So in that sense having an answer up front about smartphones vs. GPS units
might be very valuable for a newbie (I know it was my first question). Again -
I dont have definite proof of accuracy arguments, but the battery one (+ lower
cost if you drop your logger in a lake vs. your iphone) seem to me to be the
strongest/clearest arguments in favor of dedicated units.
On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Dudley Ibbett
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
The real split here is probably whether you just want to log data or you want
to navigate using a gps, whether it is with a map or just following a gpx route
you've loaded up. I would also stick to dedicated gps devices. There are to
many other reasons as to why people buy a particular smart phone or tablet.
Top 5 things to consider when buying a gps perhaps? I'll post my list when
I've had time to think more.
Dudley
________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:01:28 +0000
From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [OSM-newbies] Wiki documentation on GPS devices - please help
answer some questions
Thanks both,
Good points all round.
The http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GPS_Reviews page is a beast! It's more a
catalogue than an buyers guide which I would rather see. I would imagine most
people wanting to give GPS mapping a go will look for a low cost entry into it
first - hence my questions about GPS on phones. Perhaps if we can get a buyers
guide / top 5 list the taht would be ideal. Help welcome :-)
I'll see how I get on with updating the wiki page on Recording GPS Tracks first.
Rob
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