UKC

This may, or may not, be a stupid question, but can any handheld gps be used to track your route?

I'm looking a something a little more reliable than a smartphone, but I'm on a bit of a budget. I don't really need the gps for navigation, as I prefer to use a map and compass to be honest, so it's purely for mapping, for trip reports.

Thanks
Scott

In reply to ScottTalbot:

Yes

In reply to Lion Bakes:


Thank you

In reply to ScottTalbot:

Something like the Garmin Etrex should be well within even a moderate budget for just tracking your route

In reply to ScottTalbot:

Bear in mind that a smart phone doesn't need a phone signal or data to track your route, just a GPS signal - the same as a GPS device. Not all GPS chips are created equal, but you'll never know what's in your GPS device or phone anyway.

In reply to nniff:

...however, watch out for GPS apps stopping when your phone goes into sleep mode or is screenlocked.

In reply to Toerag:

Strava doesn't. Turn off data, start it running and it will quite happily log everything as it slumbers away, until you find a decent wifi signal to bring everything up to date

In reply to ScottTalbot:

If you don't intend to use it for navigation, but just want to use it to log routes, then get a GPS data logger. Because there's no user interface LCD, they're very cheap.

You can get them with Bluetooth comms, so, if you did want to use them for mapping, you could connect to them with your phone (though, if your phone has GNSS function, you wouldn't need to, unless you were really trying to save battery life; trading GNSS receiver power against Bluetooth comms power).

My experience with smartphone GNSS is that they're actually pretty good, because they often track GPS and GLONASS. And they can get A-GPS data from a mobile data or wifi link, and thus get a very quick fix.

There are apps to provide tracking using mobile data too: e.g. Traccar. You set up a Traccar server, and then connect to it using a Traccar client on your phone (Android and iOS).

https://www.traccar.org/