• log data to internal memory
• make sure there’s LOTS of memory
• and lots of battery

After looking at the Sony GPS-CS1, Wintec WBT-100 and GlobalSat DG-100, I concluded that the BT-1000P is by far the best unit for my needs.

• First of all, the GPS chip supports up to 51-channels, with sensitivity down to -158dBm, which allows me to get a satellite lock even at the university concrete monstrosity of a car-park.
• It has integrated bluetooth, so I can use it as a replacement for my ageing Holux-236.
• Most importantly, it can log around 200,000 points, with my current configuration of strings, only 122,398 (@5 second intervals, that’s 7 days of 24 hour logging before I have to clear it!)

What pushed me to purchasing after looking at the specifications though is the battery.

• The same as you find in most Nokia phones [BL-5C], which can be picked up cheaply off eBay
• Delivers a claimed 32 hrs of logging, although I was able to get 26 hours without any problems, before the little red battery starts to flash. Mind you – I didn’t fully charge it, and just started running it soon after receiving it in the post.

Now I needed the unit to work on a mac, which the BT-1000P doesn’t do out of the box. The good news is that there’s a project called bt747 that lets you interact with the BT-1000P.

Upon connecting the unit via USB the rest of the steps are quite simple:

1. Download and install the USB->Serial driver
2. Download bt747
3. Switch the BT-1000P to ‘LOG’ mode
4. Copy RXTXcomm.jar and librxtxSerial.jnilib into /Library/Java/Extensions
5. Run run_rxtx.sh

You should get an extremely ugly GUI

Just hit ‘Connect Port Nbr’ and you’re ready to go. You should get something similar to: After this, all you have to do, is run around the block a few times with your unit in LOG mode. Come back home, run the app again then: Under the ‘File’ tab, set the Output directory to a location that has world write access, then hit ‘Apply & Set the above values’ Alternatively create a directory in your /var and sudo chmod 777 <directory>.

1. Now -> ‘Log’ tab
2. Hit ‘Get Log’ button {this might take a while, depending on how long your jog was}
3. After its complete, feel free to select the output format, either CSV, GPX or KML.

If you chose to export a KML, and you have Google Earth installed, you should get a nice looking track. Unfortunately it is evident that the BT-1000P doesn’t filter its points prior to writing them out, resulting in data that isn’t representative being recorded, hence you can observe the spike.

Now to get ready for my last exam tomorrow morning, and then to start packing for the trip. Once I’m back, will report on how the unit goes in the field, and I’ll include some geocoded images.

UPDATE

Upon the comment below by Benn, I remembered a feature that this unit has, that every time you take a photo on your camera – you can also hit the big red button on the tom of the unit. This marks the POI in the data stream. Merely allows you to come back for any manual intervention and find interesting parts easier.

Everyone agrees that WebKit is the faster browser engine. Plus its my favourite browser/engine in OSX

Problem is that it doesn’t update itself automatically – and every night there’s a beautiful new build that comes out – which I simply must have.

So in order to save you time – here’s a little script that I put together this afternoon that will download the latest build at the push of a button.

Initially I wrote it with wget, but realised not everyone will have it installed – hence here’s a version with curl



#!/bin/bash

 Grab it and let me know how you go

MacBook Pro

Dell 2408WFP

You can evidently see that the Dell shows a purple instead of a blue. Very disappointed was I to think that a screen on which I just dropped some hard earned, can’t even display “BLUE”!

and then…

I just thought I would open it up the images in Firefox – just to check…. and voila

Unfortunately after a few more tests like the above – it seems across OSX is the same thing – ie. Finder when displaying the above photos – merely shows it in shades of purple as well.Now the only reason I even came across the fact that it could be an application specific error – is when I look at the photo in Lightroom 1.4, depending on which screen I have the image on – it changes the colours to suit the screen. So my question is – if Lightroom can do it – why can’t OSX?

Update

After re-calibrating both monitors with the Gretag Macbeth i1 Display 2, I have composed some windows together to show the difference between different applications and their adherence to the needed colour management.

The applications I used for this test, and in this specific order are:

1. Safari3.1 (5525.13)
2. Lightroom 1.4
3. Firefox 3.0b4
4. Preview 4.1 (469.2.1)
5. Photoshop CS3

Dell 2408WFP

The peculiar thing about the Dell, is that Lightroom actually showed a very strong purple instead of blue, and then after about a minute – without me physically interacting with the computer – it simply changed to the correct colour. Which is depicted in the shot above.

MacBook Pro

Analysis

It seems that in the initial shot with the 2408WFP, Safari obviously does the worst, showing a blatantly purple where there should be blue. Other applications vary slightly in the shades of blue, but otherwise display a fairly closely matched colour.

When it comes to the MBP to display the same set of images, Safari, Lightroom, and Photoshop – all display a shade of purple instead of blue.

The annoying part is that whilst writing this – if leaving the  specific application on either screen – it adopts the correct colour profile, and displays the correct colour.

As such – I have no choice but to personally conclude that it seems that OSX isn’t informing the application that it has been moved to another screen in a timely manner.

There have been reports that the Dell uses a new backlighting system that the i1 is finding difficult to actually meter, yet to me it seems there’s more software problems at play here under the bonnet of OS more than anything else.

Can’t believe I stumbled onto this shortcut, as its exactly what I wanted to do. You see, I didn’t want to disable the multimedia keys as defined by default in OSX – as it would lead me to having to hold Fn to do one-key thing such as volume. So I went about pressing everything I could – and by mistake I came upon the following shortcut.


Fn + Tab

Which hides both – your left and right panes.

Quite useful for both development view [at least until Adobe decides to provide secondary monitor support], and grid view.

Before:

.. and After: