This week in GPS is a weekly link roundup of (mostly) GPS related odds and ends, from GPS Tracklog and other places around the Web. To get a few of the biggest stories as they break, follow me on Twitter. This week’s lead video is a durability test of sorts on the new Garmin Oregon 6xx series. I suggest not trying to recreate it! Thanks to Atlas Cached for the tip.
From GPS Tracklog
Our posts from the past week:
Garmin
- Check out the new battery test section of the Garmin Oregon 6xx wiki
- Win an Oregon 650t (and you don’t have to place a cache to do it)
- Maps for Garmin fenix
- Garmin’s latest OEM offering has built-in smartphone link capability
- Garmin Official: NHTSA Guidelines Could Create Worse Behavior
DeLorme
- GPS City has posted some InReach tutorial videos; estimated ship date in now June 24
GPS in the news
- Most U.S. Drivers Say a GPS Has Misdirected Them
- Mother, 2 children narrowly escape death after GPS leads them onto train tracks (see image below)
Glad they made it out in time; Image courtesy Transit Police
GPS drones
- Remember the drone that got stuck on a courthouse dome? Parrot gets rescue mode
- PIC Arduino based Arducopter UAV, an open source DIY drone; via PIC Pocket GPS World
Arducopter DIY GPS drone
Geocaching
- Cops say don’t make a geocache look like a pipe bomb
- Podcast on Low Cost Geocaching
- Stats: Unleash Your Geocaching Geek
- Geocaching International Film Festival categories announced
Updates
- Garmin firmware updates this week: Edge 510/810, GPSMAP 62/78, Montana, Oregon x50
GPS tracking
- Thief steals gear including PLB; activates it!
- Sex offender drops from monitoring for months by letting GPS battery go dead
- School Board to Consider New GPS System; apparently it sends data via satellites instead of a cellular network
- GPS led authorities to a stolen tractor trailer filled with $500,000 of imported wine
- Software uses GPS to track home health care visits
Going mobile
- How Saga bypassed GPS to log your life without killing your battery
- All Points Blog says they should ditch the life tracking app and market their battery-saving technology
Satellites and such
- GPS L2C and L5 Signals Now Being Tested
- S. Korea Plans Navigation System to Defeat the North’s GPS Jamming with eLoran
Just geo
- Strava Global Biking Heatmap; via DC Rainmaker
- 19 Awesome Hikes Under 5 Miles
- Tips for optimizing Google Earth
- Visualizing 3 billion tweets includes cool map like tourists vs locals and mobile device type; via Google Maps Mania
- Find Photogenic Locations with Google Maps
- Kickstarter project is “bucket list” world map; via @maproomblog
- LIDAR reveals ancient city remnants beneath Cambodian jungle
- The Ruins of Nan Madol
- How to use the new Google Maps…
Looks a little distracting to me!
Miscellany
- LiveMap Is An Android-Powered Motorcycle Helmet With HUD, 4G LTE, GPS, And An Indiegogo Campaign (see image above)
- Garmin vs Mio cyclometers
- Not GPS but interesting anyway: California teens’ mountaintop rescue captured on camera
- On the sidelines of SparkFun’s Autonomous Vehicle Competition
- Spot Global Phone review: a satellite phone for the masses
- SiRFstarV 5e launched; via Pocket GPS World
- OpenStreetMap: One Community, Many Stakeholders
- GEAK smartwatch
- I guess that’s one way to mount a smartphone…
Updated GPS reviews
I’ve updated these review and resource pages with the following links:
- Garmin fenix – Military Times says the UltraTrac mode isn’t so good for runners; it’s also reviewed by Digital Trends
- Garmin Forerunner 310 XT – Speedy Jessica reviews this triathlete’s sportswatch
About Rich Owings