Cheap GPS data logging

[kawasicki]

hello all

anyone know a method of logging GPS data on the cheap? I'd like to analyse vehicle speed & position(lat, long and altitude).

Appreciate any info!

shane

[woof]

hi - i know the new Road Angel Navigator 7000 does it - but there are GPS tracker dongles that will record a trip then you download to a PC

[belleair302]

How about this bit of kit. Yours for around £90 inc p&p?

www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=671

[kawasicki]

that £90 kit looks interesting. I wonder if the sampling rate can be increased as the 1Hz mentioned in the ad seems a bit low. Have you used this kit?

thanks for the replies chaps

Shane

[taffyracer]

AIM do some good gear and have a stand alone GPS module

[pat cash]

I've just bought a Racelogic Performance Box...

For the money, its the dogs...

[url]www.performancebox.co.uk[/url]

SO impressed with the functionality - It will do laptiming, splits, position mapping etc etc and the software is easy to use.
Also, does a plethora of live performance calculations - instantaneous 0-60, 0-100 etc etc and everything in between. G force measurement based on GPS calcs,instantaneous and max. GPS engine is SO quick its incredible -10Hz Sample I think..
Favourite feature is calculated Power output at flywheel (based on acceleration against vehicle weight) and with a loss run, with will estimate losses through transmission and give a figure at the wheels - fairly easy to carry out.

On two different cars, with rough guesstimates of vehicle weight, and a quick run I got figures of 243bhp on an engine with a book figure of 245 and 422bhp on a book figure of 415... Its a great toy...

Its standalone too, so can be used on any vehicle... And its the size of a road angel.

Not only that but I loaded Gatso position files in from a Tom Tom and it gives Camera warnings from that too.

I've shown it to a number of colleagues and we've used it for vehicle testing at Millbrook. Everyone who has seen it has been blown away by it.

Think I paid around £350 all in...

I can't recommend it highly enough!

Oh, and porting the trip data across to overlay onto a Google Earth map works very well too...
And a 256Mb SD card included will store bags of data - about 11 hours I think.

Edited by pat cash on Thursday 12th April 18:13

Edited by pat cash on Thursday 12th April 18:19

[Locoblade]

The cheapest way if you've already got a smartphone mobile is a £30 bluetooth GPS off ebay and a suitable app to run on the phone. If you've got a S60 Symbian mobile phone (most Nokia smartphones like the 6680, and all the N & E series), then Aftrack which costs about £15 is what I use for bike rides etc, and will also use it on track over the summer. Im sure there's equivalent apps for Windows Mobile devices too if you have one of those instead.

Doing it this way means you can also use the setup for other things (TomTom Mobile for example)

Chris

Edited by Locoblade on Thursday 12th April 21:32

[kawasicki]

great info chaps.

I like the mobile phone method...gotta be worth a try!

shane

[cj_eds]

If you've got a Pocket PC then try MemoryMap. I think the logging bit is free, but then you then pay to unlock the bit that overlays your trace onto an O.S. map.

[Locoblade]

The only thing about GPS in this situation is that most GPS systems only log at 1Hz, i.e. once per second, and a quick track car can go a fair distance in a second so don't expect it to be 100% accurate.

A friend of mine is currently developing a GPS system specifically for race cars using a 4Hz chipset which will also do funky things like overlay the information onto a camcorder meaning you can use a bullet cam to record the session and also watch all the GPS / gear / throttle / brake information on the screen at the same time. Should be good when it's finished.

[Graham]

Locoblade said:

The only thing about GPS in this situation is that most GPS systems only log at 1Hz, i.e. once per second, and a quick track car can go a fair distance in a second so don't expect it to be 100% accurate.

A friend of mine is currently developing a GPS system specifically for race cars using a 4Hz chipset which will also do funky things like overlay the information onto a camcorder meaning you can use a bullet cam to record the session and also watch all the GPS / gear / throttle / brake information on the screen at the same time. Should be good when it's finished.

The Dl1 www.race-technology.com/description_2_47.html gps works at 10hz and you can do the video overlay with that as well

G

[Locoblade]

Yep, sorry I should have said that most of the non motorsport specific options only do 1Hz sample

[canam-phil]

Graham said:

Locoblade said:

The only thing about GPS in this situation is that most GPS systems only log at 1Hz, i.e. once per second, and a quick track car can go a fair distance in a second so don't expect it to be 100% accurate.

A friend of mine is currently developing a GPS system specifically for race cars using a 4Hz chipset which will also do funky things like overlay the information onto a camcorder meaning you can use a bullet cam to record the session and also watch all the GPS / gear / throttle / brake information on the screen at the same time. Should be good when it's finished.

The Dl1 www.race-technology.com/description_2_47.html gps works at 10hz and you can do the video overlay with that as well

G

And it incorporates accelerometers with data from the GPS and the accelerometers being combined. Also allows up to 20 seconds loss of GPS with a little degredation of speed accuracy.