Mapping Hacks

Don’t Lose Your Tracklogs! #58

Chapter 5, Mapping with Gadgets

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HACK

This device will store position, date, and time, plus it has five “event” but-

tons on the front. Each time a button is pushed, it stores a timestamped

position with a label identifying which button you pushed. This allows you

to quickly mark positions. For example, you could do population surveys

while in a moving vehicle, or you could use it to mark noteworthy items

while traveling.

Hacking the Hack: Build Your Own Data Logger

Being a geek, you probably read that section and thought “Ah, I could make

one of those.” Well of course you can! You can get the same effect by con-

necting your GPS unit to a laptop and logging everything that comes

through. If you have a budget and an assigned project that requires a solid

“solution,” then the GPS data loggers are smaller, consume less power, and

are less complicated. But it is more fun to make your own!

You could write a small program to directly open the serial port and log the

GPS output, but that means that only one program at a time can get posi-

tion information. The answer? Run gpsd

[Hack #57] and then run a program to

catch and log the position information that it reports.

Figure 5-31. Prairie Geomatics DGPS-XM4-ME

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Chapter 5, Mapping with Gadgets

#58 Don’t Lose Your Tracklogs! ...