While not quite as unique as Gold Kiwi's
most recent device, Qstarz BT-Q818 is handy nonetheless. The DOUBLE 32 Bluetooth
GPS receiver purportedly tracks 32 satellites and boasts 32 hours of battery life, theoretically "doubling" your chances of survival when roughing it in the cold, dark wilderness. It also packs a tracking sensitivity of -158dBm, typically acquires a signal in around 39 seconds after booting up, and is
Bluetooth v1.2 compliant. This little geo-locator can withstand some pretty serious temperatures too, and while we certainly wouldn't want to be meandering around for 32 hours, you can pick this up for €89 ($117) if you're the uber-adventurous type.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Johan @ Dec 20th 2006 8:08AM
Given that there are only 29 satellites, and that line of sight is i required, being able to track 32 seems like over-engineering to me...
AlanJC @ Dec 20th 2006 8:15AM
There are 30 now, but yes, considering some with be on the other side of the world, I am guessing the maximum would be half, and it's safe to assume some of those would be too far on the horizon to use.
Oh, and you only need 4 to give you position, and speed.
Markp.com @ Dec 20th 2006 9:32AM
I've got one... its great, a little slow to find a decent signal 30 seconds or so, but it works very well. As we live on the 4th floor it things we're on the road behind (and above) the house when we're actually in the house...
Other than that it works very well! Can't wait to ditch the PDA and get some software to use it with my mobile/cell phone :)
p.s. they are only £40 or so on ebay!
dreadn @ Dec 20th 2006 1:05PM
You can see only some of the total number of GPs satellites, in the best cases (open space, not cities), you can have a maximum of 9 satellites alltogheter in the visible sky. The others are below the horizon.
You need 5 satellites to an accurate GPS navigation, so 12 channels have enough free channels to connect to a new visible satellite while another one is disappearing from sky.
http://www.holysmoke.org/gps/sat.htm
http://tt01.ripe.net:10259/cgi-bin/gps64s-std.cgi?RRD_START=now-48h&RRD_END=-estart%2B2days&RRD_W=-w600&Draw=Draw
Jeff H. @ Dec 21st 2006 3:52AM
Many of these so-called 32-channel GPS receivers are actually based on 14 tracking channel GPS chipset made by Mediatek.
Some Taiwanese vendor mis-interpreted "capable of acquiring 32 satellites simultaneously" as "32 channel" and put that on their brochure. Accidentally it sold quite well due to its comparable weak signal tracking capability with SiRFstarIII, lower power consumption, and claiming of having 32 channels.
Henceforth, Taiwanese makers using the Mediatek GPS chipset claim their GPS receiver to be a 32-channel GPS receiver.
With many of the GPS chipset having separate search engine from track engine nowadays, there doesn't seem to be too much of an advantage for a GPS receiver having more than 12 channels; many of the low elevation angle satellites are likely to be block in typical usage.