Customer Reviews

CD-110BT: GiSTEQ Bluetooth PhotoTrackr for Digital Camera GPS Data Logger with Motion Sensor (66 ch. MTK, Dual USB / Bluetooth interface)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this item to have GPS data to match up to my photos so my friends and family could view them on Picasa. The GiSTEQ met my expectations providing a fairly simply process to add the location data to the JPG files.

My previous GPS experience is with a Garmin Nuvi navigation unit. With that in mind, here are my specific opinions about the device:

1) The GiSTEQ finds the satellites faster than the Garmin and holds them better as well. It of course loses the satellite fix in tunnels or in buildings, but compared to the Garmin it does a better job of receiving the signals, holding them, and reacquiring them.

2) The battery life is great. I used it each day for 10-12 hours, but have no doubt it would go much longer. I recharged it every night just to be safe.

3) It has Bluetooth which I use to connect it to my Blackberry Pearl. Many newer phones have GPS built in, but if you have a laptop or cell phone with Bluetooth and no built in GPS, you can connect the GiSTEQ to add GPS functionality to your mapping programs.

4) The time on the device is set according to your PC's clock and it does not change when you travel meaning the GiSTEQ will not adjust to the local time zone. I found this convenient because I only had to synchronize the clocks on the cameras once. Some people may not like that the photos have a timestamp matching your home timezone, but there are ways around that. The important piece is that the time on the device and the cameras match. My photo timestamps were 6 hours off from the time zone where I was photographing, but because the device and camera times matched so did the GPS data which is all I cared about. You can check it to the minute at anytime by pressing a couple of the buttons. The device will speak the time using the external speaker. Using the software and time display on the PC screen, you can match the camera clock to the device to the second.

5) The GiSTEQ holds 250,000 GPS data entries. You can adjust the logging interval to ensure you don't fill up the internal memory before you have a chance to save it to the computer. I set mine for 6 seconds and used the device for two weeks. At 6 seconds, I figure I could have used it 24 hours a day for 17 days before needing to save the data to the computer.

6) The accuracy is acceptable. I found it to be accurate within several feet (probably less than 10).

7) The software is user friendly, but maybe a little less stable than you would hope. I have only used it on one PC; a Pentium 4 running Windows XP sp3. It sometimes freezes on me, but it processed 2,845 photos adding GPS data to them with no problems. I like the software and got a kick out of the novelty of being able to play back my trip seeing a little dot move on the map tracing my path showing direction and speed.

8) The GiSTEQ has a setting which will turn itself off when it has sit undisturbed for a configurable amount of time. Or you can just have it stay on until you turn it off. The speaker volume is adjustable from silent to fairly loud. The LEDs flash red, green, and blue indicating various status. I don't recall if the LEDs can be disabled.

The hardware side of this device works great. Long battery life, easy to use, fast satellite acquisitions. The documentation could use an overview of the buttons and lights and how the hardware controls work. This info can be found on the GiSTEQ support forums, but not in detail in the included documentation. The major hit is that this is advertised as having support for the Mac platform. The only part that works on the Mac is the bluetooth serial device connection. As of 8/26/08 the Mac Phototrakr software cannot communicate with the device to download the tracks and way points or to configure the device. The is no Mac firmware flashing utility either. The hardware doesn't work under Parallels running Win XP either. The only way of accessing the hardware to get the tracks/waypoints or to change settings or clear the memory is to use Boot Camp and run Win XP on your Mac. This is not "Mac Supported" hardware.

If you are a Windows user, I'd give this hardware/software package 3.5 stars, the software has quirks that are annoying so it wouldn't get a perfect 5 star. You can't delete out track points that are irrelevant or have bad fixes. Sometimes things seem to lock up and you have to kill the app via taskmanager. The software isn't the most user friendly thing out there, but it is functional, and the hardware is great. The documentation being lacking applies to both the Mac and Win side, and that ticks off at least 1/2 a star.

Got this device just a few days before leaving on a vacation so I didn;t have much time to learn how to use it. I was interested in geotagging my vacation photos and using a Mac to match the geotracking info with the pictures from my digital camera. This was not an "out of the box" solution as I had to download the software for the Mac from the GISTEQ web site, and the first link took me to an old version of the software that did not work with Mac OS 10.5. After poking around their FAQ's and the web site I found a newer version of the software and everything worked great, but not as described in the support literature. The support lit was for the earlier version of the software. In the end I got the geotagging done, and the ability of the GISTEQ software to append the geotag into the JPEG allowed that info to go directly into iPhoto. I am very happy with the product and would give it five stars but for the Mac software issues.

The device has never worked properly for me.

The problem is that software is rudimentary and fell over all the time. You cannot access the logs without the software. i.e. not a driverless device you have to use their software. Since the software did not work properly I could not get the firmware to update.

I tried to get it working on PC and then Mac but could not access or download any logs. Turns out other people have had similar problems.

The design of device is such that buttons are easily accidentally pressed if carried inside a bag, so the device turns itself on/off or changes states. It is then difficult to determine what state the device is in.

Also had to use sticky tape to stop the battery door falling off.

I paid to upgrade to pro version of software, but still nothing worked. I have given up on this device and purchased a different driverless logger (i.e. can be mounted like a usb thumb drive) and so does not rely on (flaky) proprietary software to download the logs.

I really wanted this device to work out but despite spending a lot of time and money on it, it just doesn't work properly.

I purchased this knowing that there was limited support for Mac OS, but was promised by the company that they would have RAW support for the Mac by the end of the year. I just received an email from them that now they do not plan any Mac RAW support. If this is the way they support customers, I will never buy another product from them and should have known right away not to believe them.

This device works great with its included software, which can only be installed a total of 3 times. If you have to reinstall the software for any reason, a new PC, system crash, etc, you will lose one of your allowed installations and if you need to work on more than one system, you are going to run out of them even quicker.

Without the software there is no way to get the data from the device, however, you can still get "current position" info using any NMEA software. You may be able to get more installs allowed by purchasing the $29.95 software upgrade from GisTeq, but I have not checked on that yet.

With this device you are locked into using the included software, there is no mass storage device retrieval of the log files.

I bought this product a month ago and have used it frequently and had four communications with the company which makes and sells it. The device is an amazing addition to the life of a field biologist: it takes about 90% of the work out of keeping accurate field notes and makes the final notes more automated and more complete. You just carry this GPS logger, turned on, all of the time, manually keeping time-noted observations as you go. When you get back to your office, you DL the tracks by USB with the included the software. THAT almost works perfectly.
As far as automatically geo-coding the image files you've taken with all your time-synchronized digital still cameras at the exact Lat-Long locations of the photos were taken -- that works Ok, except with each file-write it corrupts the Exif tags which cameras place inside each image. Specifically, my Nikon 990 images emerge fine, but my Nikon D70 images are all corrupted. It is not the Lat or Long tags which are mis-written, it is some of the camera information which is rendered useless.
Having said that, I also note that opening each JPEG with Adobe CS2 Photoshop (Tm)and "Save AS" the file, un-corrupts each image file. When I told GiSTEQ service of this problem, they asked for an example file, before and after, which I immediately sent them. After two weeks of waiting, I called California and talked with "Sean", and he promised to get back to me. After another 10 days he had neither returned my messages nor phoned.
What is so useful to me is the tiny cell-phone-sized device that picks up satellite locks from almost anywhere, and blue-tooths the present location (but longer tracks need USB cable) to my palm-top computer (Sony VAIO)and also USB downloads long tracks to the computer after several days of fieldwork. For consulting cases which might wind up in expert-witness court cases, it will be invaluable. I recommend buying one, (and ignoring my above complaints about file corruptions).

I purchased the PhotoTrackr with bluetooth in the hope that I could leave my Magellan eXplorist at home and rely on this unit to track my position while photographing in the field. It works perfectly for this. I also like the automatic "sleep" feature which stops recording if there is no movement for a set period. The software is cleverly designed and works well with Google Earth. The bluetooth capability is handy for connection a laptop or PDA for realtime map positioning, which I occasionally do. I did have some problems with the USB connection to the unit becoming read-only after a version upgrade; and the documentation could be better.

Length:: 0:23 Mins

Works for standalone photo geotagging, plus interfaces with my Nokia N800 tablet for map navigation. 5 stars with the caveat that it is a bleeding-edge device. Bundled software has a nice feature set and interfaces with the major photo-sharing sites, but is a little unstable.

Has a small built-in speaker that says, "Satellites positioning", "Satellites locked", "Bluetooth on" and "Bluetooth off". The volume of the speaker can be adjusted or turned off. Green LED indicates power, red LED indicates satellite lock, blue LED indicates Bluetooth on.

overall this is a very good product.
I used it when I traveled to NY. it is worth mentioning that it has a hard time locking the GPS signal when there are tall buildings all around (Manhattan).
but after it acquires the lock it keeps it.
the provided software has some quirks.
The fact that they decided to include a software activation machnism is very annoying.
I'd much rather if they verified that I am allowed to use the software by making me connect the GPS to the PC.

The software writes data (downloaded GPS log files, database) to a location under c:\program files, which is a bad practice, it will require the user to have admin rights in order for it to work.

Also, there is no easy way to export all GPS data logs and the rest of the data from the one instance of the software to another instance (i.e. an installation of the software on another PC).
which means there is no easy way to backup and restore it. hopefully this will improve in future versions.