UKC

Hi,

I've been looking around at various GPS's (mainly the etrex10 because it's cheap) but all I want is something that I can turn on, will give me an OS map reference and will then go away again. Does anybody know if this thing exists?

In reply to nicholas.groom:

Have you tried smart phone apps? Grid reference (app) does exactly that.

In reply to Stuart (aka brt):


As Consistently, as a GPS?

I have not found that to be the case when conditions are less than perfect for signals, my iPhone struggles to match a purpose made GPS device.

All depends if the OP wants to risk it in an emergency situation. There are certainly MRT recommendations not to depend on smartphones, so best to point that out and the OP can take his own chances with that information.

In reply to nicholas.groom:

That's what I want from a GPS too. The basic etrex is perfect for that.

In reply to nicholas.groom:



I am unaware of a mainstream GPS device that does not do that, it is what they do, some have extra features, mapping and such like, but the basic GPS purpose is :-

"A GPS navigation device is a device that receives Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to determine the device's location on Earth. GPS devices provide latitude and longitude information,"

Most will display L&L and UK Grid through settings.

Take your chances with a smartphone if you like, the ability to obtain a signal, and the accuracy of the position could be less than even a cheap dedicated device, which will also be better weatherproofed, and will not suffer the battery issues that smartphones do.

I like my smartphone, and use it occasionally, but It rarely matches the dedicated GPS .

In reply to nicholas.groom:

Foretrex 401 has no built in maps, can customise screen to show coordinates or altitude etc...Does have a map showing points or paths if you want.

In reply to Jim C:



Having compared my Galaxy S2 alongside my basic extrex I'd say it's consistent. The GPS on the phone serves both my Sat Nav for car travel, and dedicated offline OS map software (Anquet) with remarkable accuracy on the hill.

I know MR personal who use them on shouts.

So would I trust them? Alongside my knowledge of using a map? Yes, as a backup if necessary.

In reply to nicholas.groom:

If that's really all you want it to do, you might be best getting an old style etrex. They're bombproof and there are several on gumtree for £30/£35 just now, or take your chances on ebay - always plenty on there.

In reply to Stuart (aka brt):


Yes, because a GPS engine is a GPS engine is a GPS engine. Smartphone or dedicated receiver, they all do the same thing and in some cases might well be the same chipset. Antennas do make a difference, especially high sensitivity ones and also features like WAAS/EGNOS, but a smartphone vs a standard garmin will be close enough to not worry about. In a built up area, smartphones will be superior to most dedicated receivers because of things like wifi positioning, but I guess that's not too relevant.

Where smartphones fall down is usually reliability, ruggedness and battery power.

In reply to Jim C:


Yes but the point is, he wants one that ONLY does that.

In reply to Jonny2vests:


Ok, I cannot say that I know for sure which GPS will 'out of the box' JUST show position.

However, even if you go for a top of the range , you can easily suppress all the other features to just show position, and make it look and act like a basic model. The cheaper you go on the mainstream GPS , the closer you will get to the OP's wish, so he is on the right track.

He may have to just suppress one or two extra screens on initial setup ( 5 mins) on a lower end GPS, but thereafter he will have what he wants.

In reply to Jonny2vests:



if the GPS he wants is just for use as an emergency situation, then I personally would go for a reliability as you say, I would get a GPS model that has the high sensitivity that you mention, so in that sense, I might move up the range, and pay a few extra quid , as your other post mentioned.

so that if I was calling in a position to be rescued, I would have the best chance to find a signal in the more difficult reception conditions,. The 20 quid he saved, will come back to haunt him on the hill in an emergency, if it fails.

The accuracy when both the GPS are both getting a signal, is not the same as NOT getting a signal on a smartphone, when a GPS may have got a signal. My own experience us , my GPS is better than my smartphone obtaining a signal in difficult reception conditions.

(The fact that you know MRT that prefer smartphones to GPS, should be balanced with others including police that don't. (Easy to Google to find these. )

The thing Is important here is to give the OP a balanced view. Then let the OP do his own research , and make a decision with all the facts.

He wanted a GPS, he is being guided to a smartphone , he may already have a smartphone?
I would be interested on the OP's view now having read the comments on here.

(It goes without saying that MP and compass are taken as read)

In reply to Jonny2vests:

Does the etrex do that, i've played with a couple of them and cant seem to get it to just give me a grid reference.

In reply to nicholas.groom:

I have a garmin geko for emergencies and works fine.

You need to click on add waymark and that then gives you your grid reference on screen.

I'm sure the etrex works the same way.

Ebay will be your friend here.

cheers

Gaz

In reply to nicholas.groom:
Garmin GPS 12. Still going for £40 on eBay 15 years on. Put 4 AA batteries in, get coordinates out. I think it can take upto 36V over the power/data socket over which it also spits time/coordinates.

Set the right datum and it gives you OSGB coordinates on the screen after power up and acquisition. May take about 90 seconds to acquire a decent lock t it gives you precision of coordinates so you're informed.

And no, you can't have mine.

I was thinking of getting a small watch, or something small, to take on training runs and competitions. So far I've found the following on a popular auction site, although I have no idea if they are any good:


Mini Watch Style GPS Receiver Backtrack Personal Location Finder Key Chain UK: #400513488595


2014NEW!GPS watch tracker GPS301,watch GPS,realtime tracking,quad band,talking: #321255809230


1.5" LCD GPS Tracker GSM GPRS Surveillance Quadband SOS Mobile Phone Wrist Watch: #261161944915


~Does anyone got any experience with these cheap ones? Personally, I just want something to give a .gpx track, does to get OS coordinates as well would be a bonus.

In reply to nicholas.groom:


Never had the etrex model but I have had other Garmin models and I am fairly sure with all Gamin gps models, just select "mark" button or equivalent (as in waypoint marking) and it will tell you the Grid ref even before you save which of course you do not have to do. With my current gps, it would be a one button press after switch on to give the GR.
If that is all you want to have, than I would switch on, let it locate, press mark, read GR and either record (could be handy if you want a record of where you have been to head back to) or cancel, then switch off. Remember on "lower" models if you have moved area it may take 5 mins to locate the first time you switch on, so might be useful to switch on when getting ready so that it knows the area you are in, after which further switch on locating should be much quicker.

In reply to Jim C:


None of them will likely unless they are set to British Grid first . Once went walking with a guy that bought a second hand etrex having met the seller in a car park off the M8, and on first use he was agruing black/white
with me as to where we were. Even without with a GPS I knew his gps was wrong! He cursed it and the seller the rest of the day for buying a dud! That night in the hostel, I discovered he had not even set it to British Grid! Enough said.

In reply to Climbing Pieman:


Agreed, but if you buy in a decent shop, the assistant will quickly help you set it up the way you want it.

I came back from Ireland, and forgot I had set mine to Irish Grid when I was doing the Reeks in the mist. I switched back on in the mist in Glencoe last week, and it took me a minute to clock why I had no grid ref.

In reply to nicholas.groom:
I just played around with my own etrex Legend Hcx
there are 19 pages, ( far too many for your needs)

I just picked a screen that had the position info you want, and I removed all the rest in the Page Sequence menu
( deleted all then add the one you wanted back in is the quickest way)

It now switches on as if it was a basic unit with just one screen showing position.
( I can add back in , one by one, advanced features just as easily)

In reply to nicholas.groom:


The very basic extrex model that I have does just give grid reference. It's battery life is about 18 hours (continuoud) from fresh when I've used it to tracklog some of my longer runs and days out.

In reply to Stuart (aka brt):

My basic Etrex H will give me a grid reference in most recognised grids, a user defined grid and lat long. It has WAAS and works reasonably well in woods too.

In reply to wintertree:



You can have mine - it's been used about half a dozen times in 13 years, I'm a complete convert to smartphone....

Most of the MRT objections to smartphones are because few people have mapping saved to the phone, and are so reliant on Internet connection to get the next bit of map. With something like Memory Map, or Viewranger installed, and the appropriate mapping on the phone, they perform perfectly adequately the vast majority of the time. It's easy enough to carry a spare external battery if needed.

There were plenty being used on this morning's MRT practice, and I didn't see any paper maps or dedicated GPS (there were some in bags, but phone generally used first).

In reply to nicholas.groom:

The etrex summit is basic but capable. It'll do the usual waypoints and routes via memory map and of course, gives you a grid. I have the compass turned off to save power and the altimeter funtion is useful

In reply to Carolyn:

I am a great fan of smartphone maps. High res os 25k:1 on a >300dpi multitouch screen shames most consumer GPS units.

However, if things go badly wrong to such a degree my paper map navigation has failed and I want a GPS fix, I'd take the Garmin 12 over any smart phone I have yet seen or held. Order of magnitude difference in reslieance and reliability under the conditions that leave me wanting it, abd it can be used with thick gloves etc. It also runs on AAAs with some metal shims, so common spare batteries with the head torch. Mobile phone Li:Ion batteries crash in the cold.

Mobiles suck in the cold, most aren't waterproof or dropproof, many can't power down the cell radios separately to the gps so when you're off grid they drink battery trying to find a base station, their touch interfaces are fiddly, hard to use when shivering, messed up by water. Even with an external battery, life is limited. Great for fair weather outdoors, crap for emergencies.

In reply to nicholas.groom:


Well, you can set the display fields to show what you want. It does other stuff, but they don't get much more basic than the etrex.

If I read you right, you want something basic, cheap, light and small that lives in the top of your bag just in case. The more bells and whistles you get, the less likely it is to fulfill that.

So etrex or gecko (if you can find one 2nd hand) is it. Etrex H is a good shout, basic, but has a high sensitivity antenna and WAAS/EGNOS.

In reply to Carolyn:

I use my smartphone a lot too, but if you go anywhere truly grim or cold for an extended period, you are asking for it and may need MR yourself.

In reply to Jonny2vests:

I don't mean you personally, just anyone that puts themselves in a situation where they rely on a smartphone working.

In reply to wintertree:


Yes they can. Setting the phone to flight mode will shut down the cellular radio, the wifi and the bluetooth but the GPS will continue to work because it's entirely passive: the phone doesn't have to transmit. The aGPS (which uses mobile data to speed up the initial location fix) won't work, but the basic satellite-based GPS will.

As others have said, mobile phones maybe don't have optimal GPS antenna configurations compared to dedicated GPS devices. That's partly because they're designed on the basis that a shonky GPS signal can be helped out by aGPS and other cellular & wifi tricks. Out in the hills, those technologies often aren't available.


You don't have to be off-grid for them to drink battery: even in flight mode without aGPS available the satellite-based GPS on a smartphone is one of the most power-hungry functions on there. (Although the high-res, colour, backlit display is actually one of the main power drains on any smartphone.)

The average smartphone battery is around about the same capacity as a single rechargeable AA battery. My basic eTrex has the same power-hungry GPS circuitry but relies on a much less power-hungry low-res, monochrome LCD screen which only needs a backlight if it's dark and I don't have a torch. With two AA batteries on board, I can leave it switched on in my rucksack for a full day and it will still have juice to spare (and I can carry easily-replaceable spare batteries).

If you want something that will give you a positional fix as soon as you pull it out of your rucksack (as the OP suggested) then you need something that can be left on all the time, otherwise you'll be waiting for it to get a fix every time you switch it on. It's not great having to hang around waiting for the technology to get its act together in a whiteout hoolie on the Cairngorm plateau...


Another valid point.

In reply to Martin W:

Not on the iPhone - airplane mode turns the GPS of as well. This is separate to the issue of (not) getting the digest from the cell network. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1355?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I suspect It will be getting turned off because (almost) no radio receiver is genuinely passive - except for broadband SDR most things are downmixed which broadcasts some quantity of the other frequencies involved. Annoys the crap out of me because there are options to turn the WiFi and Bluetooth back on whilst the cellular radio is kept off, but none for the GPS. However, as you say the GPS also drains the battery fast - how much is the radio hardware and how much is the associated use of the LCD and backlight I don't know.

If you can switch the other radios off on an Android and not the GPS it could tempt me to switch, as it spoils the iPhone as a GPS logging device on long cycle rides etc, something for which I think mobiles work better for than GPS units - sat tucked away in a rucksack with the screen off, just recording position, then automatically uploading it when you get home, no fannying on with docking cradles or memory cards.

On the plus side, iPhones now receive GLONASS (the Russian equivalent) which I don't think many consumer GPS units do. This should really improve the chances of a good signal in cities and dense woodland. Horses for courses.

Another ten years time and we'll have bombproof mobiles with long battery life whilst the GPS runs transmitting the coordinates to a cold weather friendly smartwatch... Until then I agree with your sentiments and stick by my monochrome AA powered Garmin 12 as my backup "where the hell am I" device...

In reply to nicholas.groom:

If you're buying new, the eTrex 10 is what you need to get - they don't get much simpler. I use mine to record my track, and give me a grid ref/height if I need it. If you're going second hand, the eTrex H will be about half the price of a new 10, and do exactly the same thing. eTrex 10 uses GPS/GLOSNASS, the eTrex H is GPS only.

Plenty free smartphone apps will give you an OSGB grid ref, but if your phone battery runs out, you're stuffed...

In reply to nicholas.groom:

As those who have actually answered your question above have said, the Etrex 10 can be had from garmin shop for £69.99 with GARMIN30 voucher, or Cotsowlds for £80. Will do what you want, is small and light and rugged enough to live in your pack most of the time, and easily changeable batteries if they do run out (probably the same ones as your head torch if lucky).

I don't carry one, but if I did it would be this one.

In reply to nicholas.groom:

I've got the Etrex 10, I leave it on the Map screen and it shows the current grid reference whenever I look at it. You need to change the position format to British Grid first, and customise the Map screen so it shows the position data field.

In reply to Gazlynn:
Yes I agree, the little yellow Geko does the job - K I S S !

In reply to wintertree:

one way to use iPhone sat nav data with the phone bit de-activated is to set a PIN on your SIM card, switch the phone off, then on, but don't activate the SIM PIN. Thus the phone bit isn't working, but the sat nav signal can be received. With everything else on the phone off, this gives reasonable battery life... though as you say, I'd never rely on the phone as a nav device.

In reply to Carolyn:

.....There were plenty being used on this morning's MRT practice, and I didn't see any paper maps or dedicated GPS ....

Not sure if I am reassured by this.
If I come to depend on a MRT shout, I would rather they had the more durable, reliable dedicated kit, that worked not just the "vast majority of the time"
Especially in winter.

I will keep mine as a backup.

In reply to inboard:


Great; thanks. I'd never have thought of that in a million years.

In reply to nicholas.groom:

I've got a Garmin Geko 201 for exactly that purpose. Gives GR and L/L. Excellent battery life (AAAs like my headtorch) even with the breadcrumb trail left on. Small and rugged.

ST

In reply to Jim C:

I think it is team specific. Our team uses paper maps all of the time. Individuals may have a phone or gps in their pack, but the group navigator uses a paper map.

I'd be surprised to see any of our team navigating off their phone!

In reply to nicholas.groom:

For basic, position-only GPS receiver, the suggestions of old-model Garmins are probably good & cheap. Etrex-H, or Geko 201 are the first to use the SiRFStarIII high-sensitivity chipset (which was a fairly significant step in receiver sensitivity).

As for modern smartphones, whilst their antennas might be somewhat compromised due to the form factor, screen and general RF crud from all the processing going on, they are likely to be using very modern chipsets, and benefit from the improved sensitivity & increased numbers of parallel correlators available, thus allowing them to receive & track more satellites than the 12-channel SiRFStarIII; my recent Hudl was tracking 13 GPS satellites the first time I used it (and that's probably how many are visible at one time).

The downside of increased sensitivity is the ability for the receiver to track reflections, so the receiver can sometimes be fooled into giving a fix that is some distance from 'reality'; I've experienced this in hilly areas, and spotted the problem only for the receiver to snap back to where I thought we ought to be (using a prominent landmark as reference).

As for all GPS receivers providing a position display, this is, oddly, not true... There are some very cheap receivers available that are intended for 'point me to the car' use. These aren't much use in the hills, and could be dangerous if a naiive user simply followed the line-of-sight path back to the marked point; off a cliff, for instance... This latter is true for any receiver that offers such a facility, and must only be used with brain engaged. SPOT trackers don't have a display, either, but do include a GPS receiver for position reporting.

One option that I haven't seen mentioned is to buy a cheap GPS tracker device which has a Bluetooth connection; use this to find and track your position, and connect to it with a smartphone when you need it (you'll need an app that is able to take Bluetooth GPS data). Saves having the smartphone turned on all the time.

My suspicion of the iPhone flight mode not being able to use GPS is that they may have used the phone RF subsystem to generate the GPS local oscillator (LO).

I think smartphone manufacturers will eventually cotton on that there's a market for a rugged phone with good battery life and power control. Sony & Motorola have produced more robust phones, and Decathlon announced an 'outdoor smartphone' only last week.

http://www.quechuaphone.com/

One other thing to bear in mind with the 'GPS receiver only turned on in an emergency'; remember that, if it has been turned off for a long time, it will need to acquire almanac and ephemeris data, and that can take a while (12.5 minutes) if you don't have A-GPS, and can only see one satellite.

You could always build your own receiver...

http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm

Funnily enough, he uses two technologies I'm familiar with; fractional-N synthesizers (where I started my career, developing an ASIC for Vodafone's first GSM service), and Forth programming (which I played with in my youth...)

In reply to captain paranoia:

A good summary as always. I'm intrigued that iphone GPS won't work in flight mode, doesn't seem to be an issue on my samsung, (In fact just tried it now and got a fix in a couple of seconds, which is an improvement on normal).

There's definitely a market for a ruggedised smartphone with good battery or something like the Geko but with improved battery life and a decent almanac.

I'm also surprised, (but then again, maybe not), that being able to get OSGB grids from a GPS watch is only available on the very expensive units.

In reply to wintertree:


I didn't know that. Comes of not having an iPhone!


Hmm, while I know that receivers can also emit some RF, I'd need some persuading to believe that that is why iOS is different to Android. To my knowledge no-one has ever suggested that handheld GPS units shouldn't be used during flight (I've certainly used mine in full view and not been asked to turn it off). And while the cabin crew almost always ask you to put smartphones in to flight mode, I've never heard them asking passengers to ensure that GPS is turned off as well.


From past attempts to a smartphone in the same way as I use my eTrex ie on but in my rucksack (and therefore with the screen off) I'd say that it the GPS is a significant power drain in its own right. It's fairly well known that this is case, anyway.


You definitely can. All three of the Android phones I've had, including my current one, keep GPS on when flight mode is enabled. You can also turn GPS on when in flight mode, as well as wifi and bluetooth (although those latter two will be switched off when you actually enable flight mode). As far as I know this is all standard Android behaviour.

In reply to captain paranoia:

That's an excellent link at the end of your last post. I helped to develop a GPS receiver when working at Philips in the 1990s and more recently made a Matlab based decorrelator as a lunchtime project using unused lab equipment. It's refreshing to see a hobby project so well documented and with such a positive outcome.

In reply to nicholas.groom:

I have the Garmin Etrex 10 (old version) and love it. I bought it for £50 off Amazon when the new one came out. I use it solely to double check my location when the weather has crapped out.

In reply to nicholas.groom:

Have a look at the Garmin Foretrex301 or 401. They do not have mapping but will give you GR, elevation, bearing and trackback. You can also load routes from PC Mapping systems. The version I have is about the size of two large watches. I believe they have made them smaller and more stylish. I am basically old style 'map and compass' but invested in the 401 as a safety backup. It has very quick acquisition and appears to be accurate and intuitive to use.