I want to record the route of an upcoming 2 month trip and don't want to use my phone to do it.
With all the smart fitness watches out there I thought there might be something designed purely for travel that has good battery life and simply records your route in kml, kmz or gpx format.
Any suggestions?
I should have mentioned this trip will be on a motorbike so I'm just trying to minimise the risk of theft as well as reduce the amount of things I've got to carry.
Almost all consumer gps are the same accuracy. Whether it's a $100 Android or $600 Garmin, you will not be able to tell a difference!
Almost all consumer gps are the same accuracy. Whether it's a $100 Android or $600 Garmin, you will not be able to tell a difference!
Not always. In tougher conditions where there's foliage, buildings, or when buried in a bag, a dedicated GPS with larger antenna will typically have better reception than a device with a tiny patch antenna.
What is the reasoning for not using your phone to do it? I use Google maps/timeline and it auto tracks in the background. You can set this to battery saving mode where it uses wifi and bluetooth to get an estimate of your address and you can look back. It even can, if you take photos along the way auto create an album of the different areas you go. I would highly reccomend using it unless you are super against using your phone and are privacy conscious.
The only thing I am struggling to find atm is a way to get say a whole month of travel lines to show up. Digging a little deeper it seems you may be able to do this once exporting the data.
The main reason is I didn't want to drain the battery, most of the trip will be on a bike in remote Vietnam so I'm pretty sure I'll need to have the GPS enabled, sorry I should have given more detail. I like the idea of using Google maps timeline, I hadn't thought of that. Normally I use an app called GPS Tracker on android, it's pretty solid but has cut out chunks of my routes in the past.
Oh ok I see, yeah I am not too sure on wifi coverage in remote Vietnam haha. Give it a read over though for other trips it may be useful.
To be safe though if travelling in remote Vietnam may be worth getting a dedicated GPS tracker as using your phone would probably kill the battery pretty fast and I am guessing there wouldn't be too many opportunities to charge back up.
Another option to use maybe a smart/fitness watch. It probably won't have as long of a battery as a dedicated GPS tracker and fiddly to stop/start the trip but at least you get a cool watch for afterwards?
Yeah it's a hard one, so many options. The problem is not actually knowing what might be available. Maybe a phone is going to be the most sensible option as it can do multiple things at once eg GPS Nav as well as record the route. Maybe keep it in a pouch over the fuel tank connected to a 20,000mah battery bank.
@f1ng3rs: You can also pick up one of those $30-60 prepaid phones that come up every now and then and use that as a dedidcated gps logger along with your power bank. That way your main phone's battery life won't be affected.
Of course if you're going to be using your phone for navigation anyway, you might as well use that.
Another thing you can do with a phone is, if you can get a local sim card and there's coverage wherever you are, if your bag gets stolen, you can track it… at least up till the point where the thief turns the phone off.
SpotGen3. Not cheap for subscription to the 5 min reporting, but very reliable. Waterproof to boot. I've used these to track drifting buoys in the middle of the Arafura Sea. Enjoy your ride! (https://au.findmespot.com/en/)
Thanks, I'll check it out and yeah I can't wait :-)
Wow @Igjuano it sounds like you had an interesting occupation there!
Considered a Garmin Fenix? It can operate independently of a phone. Many smart watches don't have in built GPS.
My recommendation is just buy a proper GPS, they're fairly light, not as expensive as they used to be and are extremely accurate.