Going round Africa - need to log it

Sockpuppet · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 12, 2006 Posts: 2

Hi Guys,

In Jan I'm leaving to tour Africa on a motorbike for 12 months. I want to be able to track this using gps but wondering what you suggest.

I need to be able to get at the logs produced (ideally in plain text/csv) be able to power it from the bike (12v source) and to have it mounted.

I'll be taking a small laptop so downloading the tracks shouldn't be an issue. From the reviews on PGPS I've read are good but most are 2006 so wondering if there is anything newer.

Regards,
Richard

Andy_P · Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:46 am Post subject:

If you are going by bike, your choice of sat-navs is fairly limited.
The only two I know of that are built for the rigours of bike use are the Garmin 'Zumo' and the TomTom 'Rider 2'.

I don't know much about the Garmin, but TomTom's won't output tracklogs without using a third-party add-on program such as "Tripmaster".

Unfortunately, I've got a sneaky suspicion that most TomTom add-ons won't work on the Rider as it is subtly different in lots of ways. The Tripmaster website does say it works on the Rider if it is running version 6.12 software, but that is very old now.

Sorry not to be much help!

PaulB2005 · Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:47 am Post subject:

Do you need a sat nav for directions too? If not a device like a GPS Data Logger would be ideal. Small, battery powered device could just slip in a pocket. I have a Columbus V-900 which gets 17-24 hours of a 4 hour charge. Outputs data to CSV files on a micro SD card. You can also record Voice Tags and POIs. The V-900 is just one example but it's ideal if you don't need directions etc.

Otherwise Garmin units do feature a Trip Log but i don't think it's a flexible as your might want it. It's OK for Google Earth and MapSource but i's not CSV format.

Sockpuppet · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 12, 2006 Posts: 2

Hi guys

Thanks I'll check it out. I don't need directions so a data logger was just what I was looking at.

I'll check out the V-900

Many thanks.
Richard

PaulB2005 · Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 9:16 am Post subject:

Whilst mostly not in English the website for the V-900 is here

You can download the manual and the Time Album program (for converting CSV to KMZ and also changing the settings on the unit). Might be worth a read before committing to it. Also someone else might recommend something beter....

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