Showing posts with label gear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gear. Show all posts

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Product Review: Royaltek RGM-3800 Geologger


I got this product almost a year ago in preparation for a long trip to South America. I looked into several options at the time, and this one had a good price point and the capacity that I needed for a trip lasting over two months.

The Royaltek RGM-3800 has space for 650,000 data points when recording standard information (Longitude & Latitude) with capacity decreasing when you add elevation, velocity, etc. Logging in this manner allows for 180 days of recording, 12 hours a day.

The one drawback to this particular device and most others of its size is the limited battery life. On two AAAs the battery lasts between 6-8 hours, so when outdoors or in remote places it limits the usefulness or makes you bring along a ton of extra batteries.

I got around this by using an external battery (Digipower shown) (connected by the USB port) which added a lot more capacity. [On the technical side, two AAAs usually have around 900mAh, and the Digipower device has 3400mAh, giving approximately 4X longer life.] With this battery pack, I got about 3-4 days use out of it between charges.

The log files are stored in the .nmea format, compatible with many geotagging programs, but I've found a useful program for converting .nmea files to KMZ/KML (Google Earth) or GPX if you need to convert to different formats.

Overall a great product I’d recommend for anyone interested in Geotagging their photos on a long or short trip.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

New Secure Digital (SD) Cards - Up to 2TB (2 terabytes!)

I've been looking for a new SD Card this week, and although that wouldn't usually be that newsworthy, I came across some interesting information in my research and "hunt for the best deal".
What blew me away was finding out about the anoucement at CES that a new format - SDXC promises up to 2TB of storage and 300MBps transfer speeds (all theoretical at the moment unfortunately), but according to Engadget,
"The first batch of retail cards will hit before March [2009] with read/write speeds up to 104MBps in unknown capacities"
Not that these new cards would be the "best deal", from from it, but that's a lot of photos!!