Any GPS's with google earth built in?

[BiG Boar]

I was thinking about this one the other day. Are there any GPS's that you can see google earth on? Would be interesting to be able to see slashes, and where there are fields and what not. Right now, all I know about have lakes and roads, but no high def pics. Well not true, the iphone and a samsung both have google earth GPS's, however they both only work where there is cell phone reception. Any ideas?

[7mag700]

Best you can do is a GPS with Topo maps. GE requires an internet connection to work, I believe.

[BiG Boar]

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001623.php

Found one way to do what I want to do, however its a bit big. You need a laptop, a GPS with bluetooth, and to have already looked at the area on google earth to cache the data. A bit big, but I think a prepackaged smaller version should be here in a while. Since they do already work in the city, using cell signals.

What the above link is, for those who are not tech savy, is this. You bring your laptop hunting. Either in the truck, or in the trailer, or heaven forbid, wall tent. Previously you have viewed the area on google earth, while you had an internet connection. The high quality data would be cached on your laptop, so it can be viewed without internet. Now you link your gps to google earth, either wirelessly via bluetooth, or wired. Your GPS will locate you on your google earth. Now you drive around or look in the back areas and you can see exactly where might be better areas, where there might be houses, where there are rivers and creeks, and where the terrain changes. Sounds like a sweet setup. Is there a single GPS unit that can do this already though? Otherwise, this laptop set up will be staying in the truck/trailer.

[Hank Hunter]

Whats next, one that shows you 4pt deer and 6pt bulls. Is this hunting?

[Steeleco]

Isn't the Garmin Colorado showing spacial images?

http://www8.garmin.com/ces/colorado/index.html

[Kye]

I have an iphone with google earth, I bring it with me when I go out. Works pretty good.

[reach]

Yes the Garmin Colorado and Oregon use satellite/aerial images as part of their basemap, and so does the Bushnell Onix. Aerial photos should be pretty common soon.

It's not real-time updates over the Internet like Google Earth, but we're moving in that direction.

[todbartell]

AFAIK, the Bushnell GPS only has aerial photos of the US, not Canada (yet)

[reach]

That's good to know. From the user comments I've read, it's a piece of cr*p anyway :mrgreen: (never handled one myself)

But anyway, I'm sure all the manufacturers will have aerial photos available pretty soon.

[KevinB]

The problem with high-resolution georeferenced vector images is the file size associated with them - for a single 20K BCGS mapsheet, a 1 metre TIFF would be in the hundreds of MB, even MrSid imagery is pretty large if you want good resolution. So the storage capacity of your GPS would either have to be huge (with a pretty fast microprocessor), of you'd have to only have photos of a relatively small area. The regular Landsat type imagery is a lot smaller file size for a given area but a single image tile is still a pretty big file. Also most current GPS's will only look at linework, not raster images - they have pretty small microprocessors in them for the most part and probably couldn't handle the huge files very well if at all. but I'm sure that will change.

Hooking a GPS up to a laptop (or having a laptop with a built-in GPS), or a Palm, or something similar, which has the raster images pre-loaded onto it and some kind of GIS software to view it all in, is pretty much the standard for any kind of reasonable moving map display at the moment. The nice thing about GE is the nifty 3D views, etc. which are difficult to reproduce in other regualr GIS software. The only hitch would be obtaining the BC Gov's georeferenced ortho photos, but maybe they are available for download now? I know that the TRIM data (contours, water, roads, etc) is available to the public now and more stuff is coming available all the time.

So at the moment, the most compact and portable solution that gives you something useful on a decently viewable screen is a Palm or something similar, running a cheap GIS program like Oziexplorer, with a bluetooth SirfIII GPS (they are very cheap, have extrememly good reception, they are very easy on batteries, and there's no wires to mess up) - then download all the TRIM data you need, and somehow get the imagery, fire it all up in the GIS software, and presto you can set up a moving map or whatever.

Not as portable as a small hand-held GPS but plenty of people are using such setups for lots of different kinds of field work. At some point you will probably be able to buy a small GPS unit, with a reasonable screen, with a hundred Gigs of storage, and a processor faster than what you are finding in most PC's these days. But not yet, and probably not for a while...

[brian]

One of the things I usually do when going into a new area is to make some maps using google maps for satellite photos and super impose them onto topo maps in photoshop. Then I'll print and laminate them. In the gps I'll put a few markers to indicate where features of interest are. It would rock to have google earth in the GPS.

[reach]

I just saw a magazine ad that pointed out the Delorme Earthmate has aerial/satellite images as well. (no idea if they cover Canada.)

This feature is definitely becoming more common.

[Clint_S]

I'm quite familiar with GE but didn't realize it would cache the images or that you could set the cache size. Now I can do some low level fly overs of my general area at the local high speed internet cafe and then come home (dial up) and continue to play around. Thanks for the tip:!:

[hillman]

I use a Garmin 76Cx and I can track myself and take time sincronize digital photos that can be loaded into google earth. You can buy a program called RoboGeo that will download your tracks, waypoints and photos onto google earth. It is very cool.

Once you put a track etc into google earth, you can reference it to your area of interest on a laptop. This is good if you will be returning to the same area.