Qstarz Travel Recorder review

MikeB · Last edited by MikeB on Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:25 am; edited 1 time in total

Last month Nikon announced the D3 and D300 digital SLR cameras. So what? I hear you say. Both cameras have an interface to GPS to allow the location to be embedded directly into the image. Well the D3 is a pro camera with a retail price in the region of £3400, but the D300 has a slightly more reasonable price of about £1300. Still a lot of money but is much more viable for the serious amateur. It has been added to my Christmas list, but that is like whistling in the wind...

In the mean time if I want to know where a picture was taken then I have a number of other options available, one of which is the new, award winning Qstarz BT-Q1000 Travel Recorder. Essentially this is a GPS datalogging device that records where you travel and then with the supplied software identifies where a particular photo was taken. This positional data is then saved in the photo file and can be used with a variety of location aware photo sites.

Click here to read the full review.

We also have a short movie showing how the software works.

Click the above image for a quicktime movie, or here for a low resolution Windows Media version
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Mike Barrett

NickG · Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 10:28 am Post subject:

It would be really nice if the screenshots in reviews on this site would expand to a full size PNG file when you click on them.

MikeB · Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 1:04 pm Post subject:

maceie · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 05, 2006 Posts: 3

I got one of these back in July (from an ebay seller) and It's been a pretty good GPS device overall I'd say.
I got it primarily to replace an old SirfII device that had a short battery life so I could take it out on my mountain bike to track my routes and overlay them onto Google Earth.

It does a good job of this and i've been happy with paying the £76 odd price for it.

I'm not so sure the battery life is quite what they claim (30 hours i believe) but it generally lasts 20+ hours which is almost 2 weeks on driving to work and back at an hour each way (mon-fri).
If you want to record where you've been or nail down your photos as the reviewer did, then it's a really useful bit of kit.

If you're thinking of getting one, and want any specific info, please send me a PM and ask. I'll help if I can.
Si

DW4444 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Aug 24, 2004 Posts: 8

Hi Mike (and other forum members),

Thank you for your review on the Qstarz Q1000 GPS and logger. I am a serious photographer on purchased the unit on the strength of your and other reviews I had investigated. I have used many GPS units over many years.

The unit's technical performance and flexibility is excellent as you identified. I have however noticed one what I believe is a fairly major flaw when the device is to be used for both navigation whilst walking (with a PDA) and for logging tracks - exactly what I do as a photographer.

The problem is that unless a Bluetooth connection is constantly maintained then the unit goes into sleep mode and stops logging tracks. As a walker and photographer, I want to be able to check my location on my PDA on occasion but be able to download a complete day's track at the end of the day for picture matching. But I want to do this without having to keep the PDA switched on (batteries won’t last) or having to constantly change the switch position on the Qstarz (which is almost impossible when it's in its neoprene 'condom' !

I have worked through the supplied software and cannot see any way of overriding the auto-sleep feature which I believe is what is required.

Can you see the sense in my logic ?

I was going to write to Qstarz and propose a change to the software enabling the autosleep function to be disabled. Yes, battery life might be slightly worsened by having the Bluetooth operational but the ergonomics of use for walkers would be dramatically improved ?

Could I get your (and the forum's view) view on this and possibly your support for communication with Qstarz to see if they would be prepared to implement such a change. It would be nice if it could be a PC software mod rather than firmware and the weight of yourself from pocketgpsworld would undoubtedly help my cause.

Any thoughts ?

maceie · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 05, 2006 Posts: 3

Hi DW4444,

I found the same problem when I was riding the bike, and I ended up with a very low tech solution.

Basically, I'm using a Nokia 6680 with TT5.2 (I think) and found that by selecting "backlight on only when charging" I was able to increase the battery life massively.
I only did a 22 mile ride that last time I tried this, but I still had almost all the battery indicators on the phone. (and then I forgot to turn TT off anyway, but still had power in the phone about 10 hours later).

A firmware update for this would be handy, but I can live with my work around for the time being.

Hope this is of some help.
Si

hirschberg · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 10, 2007 Posts: 1

Hi, I am glad I found this post. This looks pretty close to what I am looking for.

I am a runner and biker (and driver) and I would like to use this device to record my trips. I am not completely clear on the sleep issue. If I turn turn the switch to logger I understand that it will collect data for my entire trip (without going to sleep). Is this right. I usually go for 2 hours runs (hikes might be longer).

Another issue I have is that I would like to down load the log data to my mac. Is is possible to download the log file and run the software with parallels? I could then move the log file over to the mac side. Has any one tried this?

David

Darren · Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 10:08 am Post subject:

Whilst this may do all you require, is is primarily a photologger and the PC software supplied is designed to that end. You may prefer a dedicated Datalogger such as the Zycast SG289, this does not require any software as the logfiles are saved to SD card. To read on a Mac all you need is an SD Card Reader.

Read our review of the SG-289 here.
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Darren Griffin

RobEz · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 21, 2010 Posts: 2

I bought the QStarz BT-Q1000xt which is a slightly newer version than reviewed here. I though the feature set was great. I was looking for two things. A travel logger that could also tag pictures (for my point and shoot) and bluetooth to connect to the new gps dongle on my d300s.

All started out well. I got a rush shipment so I could try it out before my trip and all seemed well. Both features worked. I could load the log into the computer etc.

Then I left for my trip. Toronto to Paris. I was looking forward to seeing my route in google earth. Would have been nice except I got the "no data in device" problem that seems to be common with these devices.

After some communication with Chipper from customer support and many attempts to get the log data it was determined that the flash chip is probably bad and the device needs to be sent back. And that's the only option. Send it back to the manufacturer or send it back to the dealer. Both of which are far from France. Needless to say this is inconvenient while traveling.

The bluetooth functionality still works so I guess if I mail it I'll have no geo tagging at all. Decisions. And so my search for a more reliable device starts. One with all functionality working reliably.

One other quick thought. There's an Amazon review that claims that this device can be used easily on a Mac. Don't believe it. If you can't run Windows on your Mac I recommend looking for a device that is supported on Mac.

NickG · Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:53 am Post subject:

I find that I often get "no data on device" when trying to extract the data if the battery is anything other than 100% full. Usually I can just charge it for a few hours and then all the data comes off normally. Smile

Might be worth a shot if you've not already tried it.

RobEz · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 21, 2010 Posts: 2

Thanks for the tip. It was worth a try to see if that worked. In reality I noticed that during my many previous attempts the device got completely charged. But just to be sure I let it charge for a few hours like you suggested and just tried now. No luck. In the past it teased me which how many bytes it couldn't download ("0 bytes read / total: 458752 bytes") lately it just goes straight to "No Data on Device".

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