What is required to turn my normal phone into a GPS Receiver
One of the advancement in the application of mobile phone is the area of GIS . Mobile phones provide a platform for developing powerful applications that can replace many other traditional independent systems like bulky GPS receivers,MP3 players, camera's etc.
Traditional GPS Receivers are bulky and expensive, an alternative to them is Bluetooth GPS receivers which are miniatures of the bulky brothers which usually dont have a display and feature minimal lights to indicate their status. They broadcast their location information correct up to +/- 1m accuracy, originally designed to be interfaced with Laptops, Bluetooth enabled phone thus turning your phone + simple BT receiver into a professional GPS receiver.
GPSWatch offers a lot more feature than traditional GPS receivers. GPSWatch offers exhaustive trip statistics, providers users ability to track their position on map images, trace their own maps, export way points to Google Earth, import trip data created in GPS Receivers and much more...It can provide better functionality at reduced cost.
Some advantages of GPSWatch + mobile phone + BT GPS over traditional GPS Receiver
- Compactness
- Cost effective
- Provides import/export to memory card
- Works on Internet Enabled Platform
- Bluetooth is wireless so the receiver can be far apart from the phone
- Exhaustive features on trip and location
- Easily interface with other applications like Google Earth.
So you can easily locate a GPS receiver for under $150 and add GPSWatch to your phone and go mobile with a sophisticated Geographic Information System on hand. various brands of BT GPS Receivers that are available in the market are:
Acoretech
Dconnecx
Dell
Delorme
Deluo
Emtac
Fortuna
Globalstat
Haircom
Holux
LeadTek
Navman
Pharos
Rikaline
Royaltek
Snanv
Sony Ericsson HGE-100 GPS Enabler
SysOnChip
Teletype
Most common models of them are
Holux GR230 / GR231
Holux GPSLim 236 (SiRF III Chipset)
Globalsat BT338
Still have questions on building your GPS solution? feel free to contact us @ support@i10n.com