AGL3080: Amod AGL3080 GPS Data Logger (Windows and Mac Image Software included)
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| Brand | ABsuper |
| Map Type | North America |
| Battery Life | 15 Hours |
| Item Weight | 0.5 Pounds |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
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Product information
| Package Dimensions | 7.8 x 5.9 x 2.4 inches |
|---|---|
| Item Weight | 8 ounces |
| ASIN | B000WO6HJW |
| Item model number | AGL3080 |
| Customer Reviews |
2.9 out of 5 stars |
| Other display features | Wireless |
| Color | Pink14 |
| Manufacturer | ABsuper |
| Date First Available | October 2, 2007 |
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There have been two things that bothered me about it. One was the battery configuration: 3 AAA batteries is an odd configuration; I had to settle for 6 rechargeables and a charger that charges two at a time. The bigger problem was that when I looked at my logs to correlate them with my photos, they showed that I wasn't moving at all for minutes at a time (as though the GPS wasn't receiving anything), and then I jumped to a new position, yet the quality indicators in the logs said the GPS was receiving just fine. I figured that it was just that the quality indicators were lying and for some reason it was having trouble getting a position in many of the places I was hiking. (I had myself convinced that it didn't work as well when the battery was low, so I was going through the annoying recharging of the batteries even more often.)
However, about a month ago I read some of the newer reviews on this page, and discovered that this is actually a feature called "Static Navigation" that makes all the GPS tracks have these huge gaps in it, and it can be disabled by installing new firmware. The process of installing new firmware wasn't particularly smooth: it required finding a Windows machine, downloading the firmware from the company's somewhat-sketchy-looking Website and running a pretty sketchy-looking piece of software (was it installing some spyware too?) that crashed the first 10 or so times I ran it and then finally worked as I tried starting it slightly different ways.
But in the past month, now that I have the firmware with "Static Navigation Off", the GPS records of my hikes have now become much more accurate, and I don't have to extrapolate between points to figure out where I took particular photos. It would have been nice if the device they shipped me a year ago worked that well, or at least if it had some information explaining how I could make it work better for my uses.
That said, the device is reasonably priced, and now that I have the SNOff firmware it does work quite well for what I want it to do.
It works like this: put in AAA batteries, turn unit on, wait for lock, then start moving. That's all there is to it; it records your track to internal flash memory, which you can mount as a normal storage device in pretty much any operating system.
One thing to consider: it's absolutely crucial to allow the device to get the initial lock, which is indicated by a *blinking* green status LED; the green LED on its own means bad signal (I find this counterintuitive, so be sure to pay attention to the instructions). If you don't stay stationary at boot up to allow for the unit to get a lock, it may take a *long* time to get one when you're on the move; however, if you get the lock first and *then* start moving, the tracking works great, even giving me good data indoors.
As R. Simpson mentions in his review, there are six modes of operation which provide varying degrees of sensitivity and storage consumption. You toggle these by holding both buttons during startup, and the status lights flash in certain patterns to indicate the mode. You *must* refer to the documentation to understand what mode the various lights represent, so don't just toss the manual; if you lose it, search online for the AGL 3080 manual v2, as the original manual did not document this.
I use the "GGA/GSA/RMC/VTG 5 second" mode, AKA "Mode 3" which is indicated by a solid GPS LED during mode selection and gives 360 hours of data. 5 second granularity is good enough, and this ensures I can record multiple tracks on the device with no worries of storage requirements even if traveling without my laptop. Even the default mode gives 72 hours of data, though, which should be fine for most use cases.
So far, I have yet to run down the batteries all the way; I use rechargeables, which I just charge overnight after a day's use so I'm good to go in the morning. I guess if you leave the device on all day you might drain them completely, but I have yet to do this.
When you're ready to geotag, your workflow is going to depend greatly on which software is at your disposal. The device outputs data in NMEA format, one "session" per file. I personally use gpsbabel to convert this to kml or gpx data, and I use that data along with a perl script (gpsPhoto by Peter Sykora and Andreas Neumann) to tag the photos. It helps to keep your camera's clock synchronized as closely as possible with real time; if you're off the mark, you'll need to compensate for the offset within your tagging software of choice. If you're interested in writing your own script, the heavy lifting can be done by libexif, and wrapper modules exist for most scripting languages. I find gpsPhoto.pl to be a capable solution out of the box, though.
The only thing about this product that I would like to change would be its size. There are now smaller units that have internal lithium ion batteries with similar battery life that would be more appropriate for e.g. sports tracking. This thing isn't huge (easily clipped on a belt or camera bag) but it's not tiny either; those more expensive models might be worthwhile if you value portability.





