Let me start off by making it clear this this is a mini-review of the Mobile Action i-gotU GT-200 specifically for use by photographers.   There are many other uses for the device, but my review specifically relates to using it for geotagging images with the GPS coordinates for the location in which the image was made.

I say mini review because I didn’t subject it to rigorous tests or comparisons.  I didn’t beat it up, flush it down the toilet, or drive over it with my truck.  Rather, I simply used it.  I’ve had it for about 6 weeks and in that time I’ve made almost 3000 images (yes, that’s three thousand); I’ve used it every day while driving to work; I took it on a relaxing vacation at a cottage; I took it with me on a 3 day canoe trip into Algonquin Provincial Park in northern Ontario; and I took it to Banff National Park for a weekend of camping and photowalking.

Note that the real purpose of this device is to track the route that you take.  The bundled software then has the ability to display that route on a map, and it will also allow you to import photos to link from the map.  It really wasn’t designed as a device to embed GPS coordinates into the metadata of a photo; however, by combining the hardware with some after-market software it provides everything required to do so.  It is also relatively cheap (less than $100 vs. upwards of $200 for most photography specific GPS devices) and I had seen a positive recommendation of it for this purpose, so I went ahead and bought one.

There may be better gadgets out there to do the job, but this is the one that I have and I wanted to talk about a few of its good points and also about a few areas where it needs some improvement.  But first I’m going to talk a little bit about the options available to get started with geotagging  (feel free to jump straight to the review if you already know all about these devices).

Hardware Only Options: Canon vs. Nikon

This is one of those areas where Nikon has it right and Canon has it all wrong.  Users of most of the newer Nikon DSLR models have their choice of a couple of simple GPS device that plugs directly into the camera, which then automagically embeds the GPS location directly into the metadata for the photo.  A quick search on Amazon.com reveals several devices that will do the job from $120 (the Geometr) up to $200 (the Nikon GP-1). These gadgets work with the D90, D200, D300, D700, D3, D3X, and even the older D2Hs, D2X, and D2Xs models.  Plug it into the camera and you’re done.  Start taking pictures and every image will be tagged with the location.

UPDATE – if you’re a Nikon shooter then go over and see Matt Ballard’s article Geotagging Photos & Nikon DSLR GPS Options…

Canon on the other hand only provides the ability to directly tag images after you buy the add on wireless transmitter specific to your camera model.  The Canon WFT-E2A for the Canon 1D Mark III lists for $675 at Amazon.com, while the Canon WFT-E3A that works with my Canon 40D goes for about $700.  Similar hardware is available for the 20D, 30D, 50D, 5D, 5D Mark II, and all the professional grade 1D cameras.

But you’re not done there!!!  After buying the transmitter you must still purchase a GPS device to plug into the transmitter, and these are priced similarily to the devices made for the Nikons (in fact many of the after-market options will work with either Canon or Nikon if you have the correct adapter plug).  So Canon owners are looking at an initial outlay of $700-$800 just to get started if they want to go with the hardware only option.  Ouch.

Hardware + Software Options

If you don’t have a compatible Nikon DSLR, or if you simply can’t afford (or won’t pay) the price to get into the Canon hardware, then you have to go old-school and use software to do your geotagging in the computer after capture.  Software has been available to do so for several years, but it’s really only been in widespread use for the last year or so.  And you aren’t limited to Canon or Nikon, and for that matter this works with almost any image file.

If you use the right software then you don’t even actually need to purchase a GPS data logging device; you can skip straight into the software and add the GPS cooredinates for known locations manually. This can be pretty time consuming, but if you are a Lightroom user than you should check out Jeffrey Friedl’s Geoencoding plugin for Lightroom.  It is a very poweral option that works with or without a GPS data logging device.  You can enter the GPS data manually, or you can even pull it directly from a map location using Google Earth.

But if you do have a GPS device, then it all gets even easier.  I have already been using Breeze Downloader Pro to pull all the images off my flash cards and ingest them into my custom folder hierarchy.  This program has way too many features to even begin to talk about them all here (maybe the subject for another review), but one of them is Automatic geotagging of images as they are downloaded, by reading GPS data from a device such as the and storing latitude and longitude positional information in the shooting data of the image.  It works by reading directly from some GPS devices, or from a GPX tracklog that you can export from other devices.  This is very cool software that just works.  And it works very well if the data you are feeding it is any good.

An alternative is Microsoft’s Pro Photo Tools.  I understand that it also has a very rich feature set, but I’ve never used it so I can’t comment about it directly.

i-GotU GT-200

So new we finally get to the review.  Note that while I’m specifically talking about the GT-200, from everything I’ve read the GT-100 and GT-120 are essentially the same from a photography perspective; they have some different features and capabilities, but for geotagging they are pretty much equivalent.

Some things that need to be improved on the GT-200:

1. There’s no tactile onoff switch.  There is one button on the face of the device that you hold down to turn it on, and then hold it down again to turn it off.  It’s easy to turn on and off accidentally, and there’s no way to tell what position the switch is in.  In fact I have carried it around for entire days thinking that it was recording my every step, only to find out later that there was no data for the entire day.
2. There’s no screen or indicator light constantly shows you whether the device is on or off. There are two lights, on red and one blue, underneath a piece of semi-opaque white plastic that occasionally flash when the device is on.  Depending on the pattern of the flashes you are supposed to be able to determine the status.  Unfortunately the lights are almost impossible to see in bright sunlight and it’s not always obvious what the lights are trying to say.  I’ve stared at it for up to a minute before and still didn’t know for sure what the device was doing.
3. It really needs a fixed anchor point to easily attach it to a pack or a camera strap.  It is marketed as a gadget for the active user, and as such it includes a silicone sleeve that both protects it from damage and that has a belt loop to attach it the ourside of your bag, your belt, or a camera strap.  Unfortunately the silicon is very soft and it’s extremely easy to pull the device right out of the sleeve.  I had it attached the outside of my pack for an entire canoe trip and almost lost it twice.  A D ring or something similar firmly attached to the chassis of the device (like the attachment point for a camera strap) would be much better.
4. The included software really sucks.  It is buggy and crashes all the time.  I had to download several different versions from the website before I found one that worked at all on my computer, and even then I had to find an elaborate hack to enable the USB driver on the 64-bit version of Windows Vista.  I’m not going to post a link, rather I’m going to suggest that if you are running 64-bit Vista, stop right now and go find a better device.  I hear the Sony GPS-CS1 is nice.
5. The device does not mount as a drive in Windows (I’m not sure about on a Mac, but I doubt it).  If it did then I wouldn’t even need to use the software.  I only use the software because I need to export a GPX tracklog that can be accessed by Downloader Pro or by the Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom.  This omission would actually be a deal breaker for me if I were buying a new GPS data logger today.  While reading an article about the GT-200 prior to buying it I mistakenly interpreted the article to say that it could be accessed directly.  I was extremely dissapointed to discover that it doesn’t work that way.
6. While the device is reasonably accurate while you are moving, it goes haywire when you stop.  In fact I would even say it is very accurate while you are moving as it typically resolves my location within a few feet (as compared to Google Maps).  But as soon as you stop, it seems to think that it is still moving and it jumps all over the place.  When I look at my tracklogs for locations where I put my bag down and left it there for any period of time, the location shifts all over the place and it often shows a random path that jumps by as much as 100 meters from where the device sat.  It really doesn’t matter all that much from a geotagging perspective, but it is very odd and something that should be pretty easy to fix.
7. UPDATE – I forgot this one when I originally wrote the article, but it really annoys me!  The included cable to connect the gadget to the computer has a standard USB plug on the computer end, but a ridiculous proprietary plug on the other end.  So instead of being able to use one of about a dozen standard USB cables that ALL of my other gadgets use, I have to have the exact cable that came with this device.  And if I lose it?  It just escapes me how anyone thought this was a good idea…

The things I like about the GT-200:

1. It is very small and lightweight.
2. It is more than accurate for my needs, most of the time.  See #6 above for the rest of the story.
3. The battery life is very good.  Of course I have turned the scanning rate down so that it only records every 30 seconds, but that gives me more than 3 days of battery life.  If you need more resolution then the battery life will get proportionally worse.
4. It’s easy to use and it works.

As you can see, my list of likes is quite a bit shorter than my list of desired improvements.  Unfortunately the things I like about it are basic requirements for me, and I assume that any other similar device will also be good enough.

The Final Word

While the i-GotU GT-200 GPS data logger does what it says it will do, and it does it well enough, I want a better, more reliable device.  The fact that this device does not mount as a drive to allow direct access to the logged data would be a deal breaker for me if I were looking for a new device.  The fact that there is no tactile on/off switch, and that there is no immediate and obvious way to determine the status of the device is equally annoying for me.

I would not recommend this device as a data logger for anyone that is serious about embedding their GPS location into the metadata of all of their photos.   It would be fine for occasional use, or for somebody who simply wants a pretty map showing where they’ve been.  But there are lots of other gadgets out there that do that pretty well too.

I am definitely a gadget guy. I have some pretty cool electronic stuff that makes my life easier and more fun. I have a programmable Harmony Remote to to control my home entertainment system. I have some seriously cool photography gadgets (such as a wireless remote to fire the camera itself and a whole set of Alienbees remotes to fire flashes off camera). I have a GPS datalogger that I can use to create tracklogs to show where I’ve been, and also to Geoencode my photos.

These gadgets are cool, and very fun, but they all pale in comparison to my iPod Touch. This thing is seriously cool and I use it all the time. I use it to listen to my favorite music and to Podcasts every day during my drives to and from work. I use it to quickly check my email and my Twitter feeds when I have only a few minutes and can’t get to the computer. I check the current temperature and the weather forecast all the time! Occasionally, I even play games on it (and I’ve heard that it’s a better gaming maching than even the Nintendo DS), but I’m not much of a gamer so that’s not all that important to me.

One of the most amazing features of the iPod Touch and the iPhone is the ability to download and install applications from the App Store. There are Apps for almost anything you can imagine, and there are more being produced and released every day. While you have to pay for some of them, there are also a great many that are free. And just because they’re free doesn’t meant that they aren’t good either. Some of my favorite apps are free, or at least very cheap. Here are a few of them:

1. GooSync – This free App allows me to sync my Google Calendar to and from my iPod.  I use Google Calendar to manage all of my appointments and important events, so it was a no-brainer that I would want to be able to take that with me on my iPod.  I don’t understand why the native iPod calendar can’t sync with external services, so GooSync is a perfect alternative.  Note that there is a premium version of GooSync available for $14.99 hat has a lot more functionality, but I don’t need that so I stick with the free version.
   UPDATE (June 18, 2009) – I now sync my iPod Calendar directly to my Google Calendar.  Check out the tutorial on how I do it.
2. Byline – I also use Google Reader to manage all of my RSS feeds and wanted a simple way to sync those feeds to my iPod.  This is another feature that I would have expected the iPod to support natively, but until it does Byline works very well.  The one thing it can’t do that drives me crazy is to allow me to mark articles as “Unread”.  I like to quickly scroll through my feeds and have a quick look at all of them, and then mark those that I want to read in depth later as Unread.  This should be a simple change though and I have hopes that they will eventually make this improvement.  This App costs $4.99 and I had no problem paying that after trying several other apps for Google Reader.  Byline is by far the best of the bunch.
3. Sudoku – This is a free Sudoku App that helps me get a quick fix with the popular Sudoku numbers game when I’m bored or I need a diversion.  There are lots of other Sudoku apps, this was just a free one that I found.  It works well so I keep using it.
4. Sportacular – For any sports fan this app from Citizen Sports is the bomb!  It quickly and easily allows you to see the current scores and standings for all your favorite sports teams.  It has a huge list of sports and teams that you can follow, from pro to college, from mainstream to obscure, and it is always up to date with up to the minute news and results. And it’s free!  This app rocks!
5. iBird Explorer Plus – Any serious bird watcher (or photographer that shoots birds) must have this application.  It has an easy to use search function to help you find and identify the birds of North America.  The included range maps and photographs are essential for confirming the true identify of the birds you see, while the playable audio files are also extremely useful to help identify birds by their song.  This app is not free (and at $19.99 it is by far the most expensive app I have purchased) but it is a great example of why some apps are worth buying!