Richard's Tech Reviews

Qstarz BTQ1000P (Platinum) GPS logger with photo geocoding - reviewed

NOTE: This 2008 draft blog post is being published in 2022; it may be incomplete and the information is certainly out of date.

Summary

The BT-Q1000P is the second generation of this logger from Qstarz, featuring some hardware enhancements and completely new software.  The hardware interface has been bumped from 38400 to 115200, making for much faster downloads, and track storage has been doubled.  The software features selective track download, sophisticated Google Maps integration, photo geocoding, altitude view and speed view.  This combination of features makes the Q1000P my new preferred logger.

As with the Q1000, the Q1000P is also compatible with the Mac over USB and Bluetooth, using BT747.

It can be set to 5Hz (5 track points per second) logging. [using special software?]

Details

The Qstarz BT-Q1000P (available through Amazon.com in the USA) is a compact GPS track logger, it stores tracks in its internal memory, as well as providing the ability for real-time navigation using USB or Bluetooth GPS-mouse mode.

It uses a replaceable, USB-rechargeable li-ion battery, with reported battery life of [].

The basic hardware appearance and controls are unchanged from the Q1000, so you can refer to that review for more information.

The hardware changes from the Q1000 are:

• interface speed increased from 38400 to 115200, much faster downloads
• Bluetooth download and control??
• storage increased from [] to []

You can see the GPSpassion.com review for additional information about hardware improvements.

Note that the number of storable track points Qstarz advertises is for logging lat/long ONLY.  With altitude (which is included by default), the needed storage space increases, so that actual number of track points available is only about ?135000?  This is an area where some standardisation of counting record storage would help for comparing between loggers.

The Q1000P also brings major software enhancements over the Q1000.  It includes two applications, an updated version of the original Travel Recorder software (now called V3), and a completely new application, called Travel Recorder V4.

I will not look at the V3 software, it is an incremental improvement to the original software I got with my Q1000, with photo geocoding added.

Travel Recorder V4 is similar to the GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr application, it is great to see the vendors starting to provide sophisticated mapping and photo geocoding applications to go along with their excellent hardware.

I will caution that I had a fair bit of trouble connecting successfully to the Q1000P over USB.  Although I am using the same USB-to-serial COM port driver as with the Q1000, it seemed to have some initialisation issues.  I was pretty consistently successful if I first turned on the logger (to LOG mode), and only then connected the USB cable.  You may find that a Windows reboot is the only thing that clears connection problems.

Travel Recorder 4 (henceforth TR4) opens with a blank Google Map (unlike GiSTEQ, you do not have to register for a Maps API key).

Before you're able to start using the product, you will have to enter the product key provided by Qstarz.  Keep this in mind if you're installing on a laptop before heading off on a trip.

When you select "Read GPS Log" TR4  will scan all the logs on your device and then offer you the option to download only selected tracks.  This is by far the nicest implementation of track downloading I have seen so far, compared with the GiSTEQ, which downloads all tracks every time, and the original Travel Recorder software, which also downloaded all tracks and then required manual editing in Excel to separate/split them.

You can see that Qstarz is using a sort of brushed metal look reminiscent of iTunes in some of its internal dialog boxes.

Uses idea of project, imt format, bin format.

Sony HGE-100 GPS Enabler for cellphones

NOTE: This 2008 draft blog post is being published in 2022; it may be incomplete and the information is certainly out of date.

Trying to get the software for this device was very frustrating.
The GPSApps directory that is supposed to contain the software was empty.

I was able to find the download location for the Wayfinder software from a discussion thread on Esato.

The other two, free applications was another matter.
They show in the Fun & Downloads when I visit from my computer, but when I went to the exact same page using my phone, the applications weren't shown, with my settings of Canada and K790a.  I finally had to change the Sony Ericsson site on my phone to locale United Kingdom (possibly necessary) and K800i (basically the same model as my phone, and definitely necessary) before the Tracker and GPS Location applications would show up.

The Wayfinder apps want to send SMS messages and didn't do anything particularly interesting; it's not clear if they were even talking to the GPS.

I installed TrekBuddy

AT5
E:/Other/ make directories

 

Conclusion

This is for you if you want:

• a sleek, tiny little GPS
• that is also headphones with a media control (play, stop, etc.)
• that is directly connected to, and only works with, a Sony Ericsson cellphone

The HGE-100 is a nice piece of kit, but it doesn't come with anything to justify purchasing it over an external Bluetooth GPS or GPS logger.   IF you want driving directions and navigation on your phone, Wayfinder Navigator may be of value, but you still have to pay a subscription fee and data charges.  The Tracker and GPS Locator applications are available for free with or without the HGE-100.  So what you're basically getting is a small GPS (of unknown sensor type), that is also a set of headphones and media controller, that will only work with Sony Ericsson phones.

Additionally, in Canada, where cellphone data networks are slow, limited, and expensive, anything that requires substantial use of cellphone Internet is a non-starter.

The good news is that most J2ME GPS applications can talk to the Sony GPS, so you have a variety of additional software to choose from, but from a pure cellphone GPS logging perspective (and for the same price or less), you're better off putting together your own combination of Bluetooth GPS (e.g. Holux GPSlim236) or Bluetooth GPS logger (e.g. Qstarz BT-Q1000, Holux M-241) with free J2ME software on the phone.  Having the ability to store in the phone's large memory will enable you to save hundreds of days worth of tracks.  Depending on the software you use, you may also be able to display maps.  However, I don't know how running Bluetooth constantly will affect the phone's battery (time between recharges).  Phones are not designed for the kind of continuous active multi-hour operation that is typical of GPS logging.

In the end I find again that the idea of consolidating everything on the phone (music playing, GPS logging) still doesn't work better for me than separate dedicated devices (iPod nano, standalone logger).

If Sony wants to make this a more compelling product, they're going to have to

• killer app: automatic geocoding of photos.  I actually am really surprised that Sony doesn't provide this capability.
• provide information on the GPS sensor used
• provide much more custom software and provide free maps
  • including advanced track logger software that saves in a standard format like GPX
• provide the ability to download both software and maps using a computer, and then transferred to the phone
• provide information on the battery life impact of using Bluetooth or the HGE-100

I will have future reviews examining the various J2ME GPS software options, in concert with various Bluetooth GPS units.

Facebook photo privacy and locations

Location Privacy

Facebook has lately gotten a lot more interested in attaching locations to status updates and photos.

One route for it to get this information is directly from your device, e.g. from your iPhone location (if you've given it permission) or from your browser's location function.

In Firefox, if you've already given a page permission to access your location, there is no "location manager" to help you see what you've authorized.  You can only go per-page and then go to the obscure Tools->Page Info->Permissions tab and then change Share Location.

To globally disable location sharing in Firefox, open about:config and change geo.enabled to false.

See more info in Firefox Location-Aware Browsing FAQ.

In Chrome, it's buried in Preferences... Under the Hood->Privacy->Content Settings... (click the button then scroll down to the Location section).

However, even if you block the browser from sharing your location, it can still be extracted from the information invisibly embedded in your photos.  This may be full EXIF-GPS (the exact location the photo was taken, embedded automatically by most cameraphones and by some cameras) or e.g. IPTC keywords giving the location as a text string e.g. "Ottawa, Ontario, Canada".  (IPTC actually has many fields for location text strings, including creator contact address and image location broken down into city, province and country.)

It's not clear what Facebook is using and what it is storing.  It is certain that in some cases it has enough data to create plots like this of where photos were taken:

(from What Facebook knows about you)

Facebook has also gotten a lot more aggressive about asking for explicit location information, both when uploading (every photo now has an attached location field) and retroactively for albums:

There's not a lot you can do easily to protect your location information.  Some basics are disabling the location-aware features in your web browsers, and not completing the blank Location fields Facebook provides.  You can also disable location features in your camera phone, e.g. on an iPhone go to Settings->Location Services and either turn Location off entirely (which means maps won't work) or go into the list of apps within Location Services and set Camera (and any other photo apps) to OFF. 

Beyond that, you could strip all EXIF information, particularly GPS and IPTC keywords and location fields, but that is often difficult or impossible to do on a camera phone, and awkward to do in photo editing apps (which are more intent on preserving EXIF than destroying it).

Photo Privacy

It is important to realise that there is no "private" on the Internet.  There is only "systems attempting to enforce privacy".  Systems can be hacked or have holes, intentional or unintentional.

Facebook very much wants as much of your content as possible to be public.

One consequence of this is that every single photo in Facebook has a public URL (a public link) regardless of what limits you have set on it (e.g. "Friends only").

It is easy to find this link for an entirely album.  Simply go to one of your albums (your wall photos are also an album).  If you don't know how to find albums, go to http://www.facebook.com/media/albums/

Click a photo to go into a specific album.  Scroll to the bottom if necessary.  You should see "Share this album with anyone by sending them this public link".  That's right.  Regardless of your photo controls.  With anyone.  Public link. 

It's a bit more complicated to see this with an individual photo, but you can find it: Right click on a single photo within an album, to pull up your browser menu.  In e.g. Firefox then do "Open Link in New Tab".  At the bottom of the new photo tab that opens, you will find "Share this photo with anyone by sending them this public link".

With "more than 250 million photos uploaded per day" (Facebook Statistics) and Facebook already hosting on the order of 150 BILLION photos (yes, billion, with a "b") that's a lot of surface area for photo privacy attacks.

Facebook doesn't even provide minimal location exclusion features, unlike Flickr, which lets you geofence important locations, so that even if by accident you upload EXIF-GPS data for e.g. your school or your home, Flickr won't display it.

Thanks to Neil Saunders (@neilfws) for getting me thinking about this.

Nokia Booklet 3G as location-aware netbook?

Some interesting thoughts from UMPC Portal

Location-aware.

One of the biggest issues with XP and Vista in the web2.0 world is that the operating system isn’t sensor-aware. GPS hardware remains as an unidentified com port and applications wanting to access it require user configuration. In Windows 7 that changes to make geo-aware apps a real possibility. It is possible that Nokia could deliver an interesting maps and social networking application through OVI on Windows 7. In addition to HD content, maybe Nokia will be selling navigation and maps through Ovi.

UMPC Portal - Nokia Booklet. Specification Update. Price. Thoughts on Battery life / Performance - August 25, 2009

Via Engadget, which reports "The Booklet will boast a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530, and will reportedly boast a 120GB HDD, plus integrated 3G, a swappable SIM card, A-GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi."

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 and Photo Calibration Tool provide free photo geotagging options

Microsoft is providing two free tools with powerful digital photo geotagging capabilities, both manual and automatic.  (NOTE: I haven't tested them yet.)

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 (for XP and Vista) can read track logs in a variety of formats (NMEA, GPX, LOG and KML and automatically geotag photos against those track logs.  Otherwise, you can select a position on MS Maps.  It will also do reverse geocoding, turning a GPS position into embedded location (city, state, country) tags.  It's a free download.  For more information about how to use it, read Geotagging Goes Mainstream by Tim Grey.

Another option for geotagging in three dimensions (e.g. locating a photo on a particular floor in a skyscraper) is Microsoft Photo Calibration Tool.