Fun with Bluetooth GPS

A little while ago in a moment of weakness I bought a little "black box" Bluetooth GPS. It really is just a little box with an on/off switch, a mini-USB charging socket and three LEDs. Nothing else.

One LED indicates whether or not it's charging, the second whether it's got a Bluetooth connection and the third whether it's got a GPS fix. There's lots of these about. Mine's a Navman B10 which I got for about thirty quid. A battery charge lasts about ten hours i.e. a useful day out.

You make use of it by connecting it to a Bluetooth capable device which knows about GPSs. In particular I've used it with my Nokia 770 with the excellent Maemo Mapper software and also with my Sony Ericcson K800i phone and Mobile GMaps which is similar to Google Maps Mobile (about which I've written before) but which knows about Bluetooth GPS (which Google Maps Mobile doesn't).

Tonight I discovered a new application called TrackMyJourney. It's incredibly powerful software giving you all sorts of information derived from the GPS data, as these screen shots show:

You need to squint a bit but it's really very impressive stuff. Take a look at the documentation to see lots more screen shots which will give you more of a feel for how it looks.

Underlying all this is the idea that you use the software to update the TrackMyJourney web site in real time, using the Net to send it your position every minute or so. Then you can look at your track later, or your friends can look at it now. This isn't the only site suggesting this, Mobile GMaps has a sister site called GMap-Track which is doing a similar thing.

I'm not convinced that this is something I want - the only person who I want to know where I am in real time is Beth and she's normally with me or only a phone call away, but TrackMyJourney is a very powerful general GPS tool.