GPS Hardware

InfoWorld has a brief article about a new Swiss chip that appears to provide increased sensitivity, as well as utilising sats from both the Navstar and the formative Galileo.

The u-blox 5 chip, which Switzerland's U-blox plans to unveil at the 3GSM World Congress event in Barcelona next month, uses two global navigation satellite services: GPS, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, and Europe's Galileo, the vendor said Wednesday. The technology has a tracking sensitivity of -160 dBm, which enables indoor coverage. The abbreviation dBm represents the power ratio in decibels (dB) with respect to 1 milliwatt (mW).

I came across a brief report mentioning that WalMart is considering dropping the sale of GPS items from their stores. Some staggering figures are offered with 40% of Walmart GPS sales being returned, and 25% of North American sales. I wonder if people may be having trouble with the technology - perhaps consumer GPS is not yet simple enough to use?

Pfranc manufacture and provide some DIY cable connectors for various GPS units. Well suite

Maps, Navigational Beacons, Globes, Garmin GPS units and accessories. Electronic and Paper maps.

Why?

First and foremost, decide the purposes for which you are going to use the GPS.

It may sound obvious, but if you're hiking or hunting and want a unit that displays your position on a digital map then the lower-end units can be ignored. Similarly, if all you want to do is get into geocaching as cheaply as possible then a model like the yellow Garmin Etrex or Gecko may be exactly what you need.

This article focuses on GPS units for land-based handheld usage. For advice on marine and aviation units refer to the manufacturer websites such as Garmin and Magellan.