The UK Digital TV and Technology Podcast

i-gotU GPS Travel Tracker Reviewed

A review of the tiny i-gotU GPS tracker, from UK podcasters FrequencyCast

What is i-gotU?

i-GotU GPS Tracker This is a nifty little gadget, especially if you're the outdoors type, like to travel, or own a digital camera.

Essentially, it's a tiny GPS receiver that captures your location, based on satellite positioning, stores that information on its built-in memory, then lets you do clever things with that information.

Here are some uses for the i-gotU:

Keep a track of your hiking, biking, walking or driving, and display your activities on Google Maps or Google Earth
Geo-tag your digital camera photos with a record of where you were when the photo was taken (Flikr and Picaso support included)
Keep a travel blog - your location, what time you were there, plus pictures

The i-gotU is pocket-sized, water resistant and easy to use. It comes with a docking station that connect to your PC via USB for charging of the internal battery, and for transferring the data to your PC.

The igotU is a GPS receiver that uses the SiRF Star III GPS chipset -It can be set to automatically capture and record your location at intervals between 1 and 60 seconds. You can also use it as a USB GPS receiver for your PC

It's supplied with a USB docking station and charger, a rubber case with slots for belt or strap fitting, plus a CD of drivers and desktop software.

i-GotU cradle

Battery life varies depending on how often it takes a snapshop of location - For example, using it on a a bike, if you set it to capture a waypoint every 30 seconds, you can expect up to 30 hours life on one charge.

If the clock on your camera is set to the correct time, you can marry up the time that a photo was taken to the location that the photo was taken (as the GPS receiver gets the time and location from the GPS satellites.

i-gotU Desktop application

i-gotU GT-100 UK availability

You can get the i-gotU from the following online retailers:

Available for £49.99 from Maplin (free UK P and P)

i-gotU GT-100 specifications:

Dimensions: 47 x 29 x 12 mm
Weight: 21g
Built-in SiRF StarIII low-power chipset
Power: Built-in rechargeable 230mAh Lithium-ion battery.
GPS acquisition time: less than 60 seconds cold, less than 38 seconds warm
PC compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista
Waypoints: Can store over 16,000 waypoints.

i-GotU

Using the i-gotU

Using the i-gotU tracker is pretty straightforward. The CD contains all the software you'll need, as well as a PDF manual.

The tracking is pretty reliable, although it's not happy if it's not able to get a perfect lock, and does need a generally clear sky.

The one down side is that the photo tagging promised with the i-gotU is limited to use within the i-gotU desktop software only - we were hoping that it would actually be able to add location data to our JPG images, but sadly not. Still - perfectly usable within the desktop software, or when posting to Flikr and Picaso online photo galleries.