Archives for January 2015

Garmin Releases Approach S5 GPS Golf Watch

January 21, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

Garmin International Inc. has announced the upcoming release of their lightweight Approach S5 GPS Golf Watch, expected to be available in Q1 2015. This watch has a beautiful color touchscreen and all of the standard GPS Golf features that you would expect from Garmin. The watch will retail for around $350 at specialty golf retailers and golf pro shops.

This handy little device has pretty much all the basic features that one would expect from a GPS powerhouse like Garmin including Course View mapping with more than 38,000 international courses pre-loaded on the device and free lifetime updates. Golfers can preview hole details and see the layout of the green with the creatively named GreenView, and Touch Targeting provides accurate measurements with a drag and drop feature to measure any distance on the course. read more

Filed Under: Garmin handheld GPS, Handheld/Sport

Garmin Introduces Large Format Marine GPS

January 20, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

Garmin International has been working to expand its marine segment during the last few months, with several updates to existing products and new capabilities for various marine instrument displays. Last week, Garmin announced the upcoming release of two new large format marine displays, measured at 7 and 10 inches.

The GNX 120 and the GNX 130 are designed to be easy to set up, calibrate and use. Both devices feature a GNX Keyboard for remote use and are NMEA 2000 certified to seamlessly share sailing data with other NMEA 2000 certified devices, including other Garmin GPS devices. read more

Filed Under: Marine

TomTom Creates GPS for Motorcycles

January 19, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

Riding a motorcycle isn’t the same as driving a car, so why would you want the same kind of GPS and routes? TomTom, the Dutch-based navigation company has announced the upcoming release of a new GPS unit designed specifically with motorcyclists in mind. Called the TomTom RIDER, this GPS unit will help bikers find the perfect route.

The glove-friendly, interactive screen features TomTom’s expansive mapping software with exciting new routing features that allow bikers to choose the level of twists and turns they want to create their own adrenaline-filled road adventure. And, once the perfect route is found, you can even upload and share share it with other bikers. read more

Filed Under: Auto, GPS News

Visualizing GPS with Light

January 18, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

A group of researchers and artists have created what they are calling “satellite lamps” in order to visualize technologies that are normally not visible to the naked eye. They have a pretty indepth website explaining the process in flowery and vaguely abstract terms. If you want to read it, you can check it out here, but personally I wouldn’t bother sifting through all of that. I’ll break their huge website and project down for you in a paragraph. read more

Filed Under: Featured, GPS News

Garmin Adds Features to GPSMAP and echoMap Lines

January 17, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

This week, Garmin International has released a pretty massive update to several different chartplotter units in their marine sector including the full echoMAP line and several of the GPSMAP lines. The update is free and available for download now and includes some pretty nice features including Auto Guidance 2.0, the ability to import waypoints, advanced sailing and safety features, routes and tracks via GPX and more.

GPSMAP units that will qualify for the update include:

GPSMAP 8000
GPSMAP 7400
GPSMAP 7600
GPSMAP 8×0/10×0
GPSMAP 5×7/7×1

Filed Under: Featured, Marine

This Week in GPS — January 16, 2015

January 16, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

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. This week’s featured image is a Garmin GPSMAP model that got a new update this week! Check back tomorrow for more details and links to the download.

Here are some other things that happened in the world of GPS this week: read more

Filed Under: More GPS News, This week in GPS

SPOT Satellite Devices Rescue 600 in 2014

January 15, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

You might recall that midway through last year the owner company of SPOT LLC, Globalstar, celebrated their 3,000th rescue since the company was founded in 2007. Globally, SPOT averages about one rescue per day, and they are probably one of the most well-known and trusted brands for satellite communication and tracking across the globe. If you are an active outdoors enthusiast or you frequently travel alone and you don’t have one, you probably should.

More recently, SPOT announced that they assisted in the rescue of around 600 people in 2014–500 of which were in North America. Currently, they are at around 3,400 rescues overall, and the company couldn’t be more proud. read more

Filed Under: Location based services

FAA Grants Two More Drone Exemptions

January 14, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

This drone, the eBee, is used to help with precision farming.

This drone, the eBee Sensefly, is used to help with precision farming

While the FAA doesn’t seem to be any closer to formalizing and announcing rules, regulations and conditions for the use of commercial Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) or drones, GPS World reported last week that they have issued yet more exemptions to the ban on the use of drones. At this rate, we won’t need regulations anymore—everyone who wants it can just get an exemption! You might recall in December how they granted five exemptions to various companies. read more

Filed Under: GPS News

Connected Pedal Tracks Your Bike

January 13, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

If you’re a cyclist, there are a plethora of different ways you can track your bike and your ride, from using your cell phone, a dedicated GPS unit designed for cycling, a sport GPS watch, a smartwatch and now, your bike pedals themselves.

At the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show, a French start-up company called Connected Cycle debuted the first ever connected bike pedal for consumers. This snazzy and totally-not-obvious pedal (which they claim can only be removed using a special coded key to prevent theft) is designed to record speed, route, incline and calories burnt for every single bike ride. These statistics are stored in the cloud and can be accessed (and shared) through a smartphone app. read more

Filed Under: GPS News

GNSS is the Future of GPS

January 12, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

Those of you who frequent this blog probably know that I like to keep track of what is going on with the other satellite navigation systems in the world, such as Russia’s GLONASS, China’s BeiDou and Europe’s Galileo constellation. Recently, GPS World published a really great article on its blog that explained perfectly why you should care about the other systems. Their points are all things that I already knew, but I didn’t really have the words for myself. If you get the chance, you definitely ought to give at least the first half of the article a quick read. (The latter half is all about Galileo and their issues and successes.)

Filed Under: Satellites