AGL3080: Amod AGL3080 GPS Data Logger (Windows and Mac Image Software included)

• The new Amod AGL-3080 Rechargeable includes all the features of the original AGL-3080 plus new rechargeable function. AGL3080 Photo Tracker is a GPS-based data logger designed to provide location information for digital photos. Unlike other similar products, AGL3080 does not need driver to operate.
• When you plug AGL3080 into a computer via USB port, it will simply appears as an external drive. The recorded log is standard NMEA format which is compatible with many online tools and software such as JetPhoto, GPSVisualizer, etc.
• SiRF III chipset for best sensitivity and low speed tracking. Standard USB 2.0 interface which doubles as an USB Flash Disk. Works with Windows, Mac, and Linux based computers. Long operating time - 15 hours with 3 x AAA batteries. Maximum 1,380,000 logging point (RMC data).
• Memory capacity for maximum 3,833 logging hours (RMC data, 10 sec logging frequency). On-The-Spot logging mode switch- You can switch logging mode in just few seconds without PC utility needed in your journey. Windows and Mac photo tagging software included.
• Antenna: Receiver Frequency: 1575.42 MHz (L1 band) C/A code. Antenna Type: Built-in Patch Antenna. Memory: 128 Mbytes (1 Gbit NAND flash memory). USB 2.0 full speed.

I just purchased this device, and was a little worried based on all of the problems other users have reported (but AMOD and Semsons have both said are fixed in the currently shipping devices). It takes a little while to get a cold-start GPS fix (about 45 seconds) and it takes a very long time if you're moving while it's trying to get a fix (just like any GPS device will), so it's best to turn it on about 10-15 minutes before you're heading outside and put it on a window sill or outside so it can figure out where it is and sync up. I carried my Garmin Vista HCx along to check for accuracy. I drove around for a few miles, and headed home. I plugged the AGL3080 into my Mac, and it showed up as an external drive with a file named "GPS_20080301_200336.log". Taking a peek at the file, it's standard NMEA log format. I ran gpsbabel on it using the following command " 1041 gpsbabel -i nmea -f ~/Desktop/GPS_20080301_200336.log -x discard,hdop=10,vdop=10,hdopandvdop,sat=4 -o gpx -F ~/Desktop/out.gpx". This gets rid of any inaccurate logs (no GPS receiver does well with less than 4 satellites in view), just to clean up the log. I have to do this with the GPS files from the Garmin as well, for what it's worth. I used GPSPhotoLinker (mac) to open the log and the three dozen pictures I took with my camera phone (I didn't bother to take my real camera for this test). After looking at the results using Preview (if you click "Info" you can see the picture on Google Maps), and noticed everything was off. After going through the pictures, I realized they were all a few seconds behind. Sure enough, I compared the GPS clock from my Garmin with the clock on my phone, and AT&T was sending me time that's about 40 seconds off. GPSPhotoLinker lets you adjust the offset, so I fixed it there, and re-ran the batch. It was dead on. Seriously dead on. To the foot. Keep in mind the AGL3080 was hanging from my belt loop on my jeans, while I'm sitting in a Jeep Wrangler with steel doors -so it can't see the sky very easily. I did the same process with the GPX tracks from the Garmin, and the AGL3080 actually turned out to be more accurate than the Garmin. I pulled the tracks into Google Earth (gpsbabel again, using -o kml), and it was dead on the roads. Perfect. Get some 1000mA rechargeable duracell batteries, and you'll get about 20 hours of data (up from the 15 they say you'll get with alkalines). There are a few cons: the thing is bigger than I expected. It's also kind of heavy. But even on the provided strap, you don't notice it hanging on you. I'm planning on buying a small cellphone holster for it to secure it to my belt (the blinking satellite LED caught the attention of some kids, and a holster will hide it) -because I can definitely see myself destroying it if I leave it hanging 4" below my belt -I've already sat on it twice. Another con is it has a very shiny front -it looks great, but I guarantee it will get completely scratched up and scuffed. But who cares -no one is looking at it. All in all: highly recommended.

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With Apple releasing iPhoto '09 with support for geotagged photography I immediately wanted to utilize this new feature set. I do a lot outdoors: Geocaching, Boy Scouts, hiking, bicycling, so I saw a great way to track my "expeditions" through my photography.

I found this GPS Data Logger and it advertises heavily that it is MAC OSX compliant. I looked at the reviews for this device on Amazon and various other websites. Most of the negative comments didn't alarm me as they were for the most part due to a misunderstanding of what the device does or they didn't like a feature set.

What I have learned is this:

1. GPS Photo Tracker software This software comes in the box from AMOD and embeds the GPS locations into the digital photograph JPEGs. This is written only for Microsoft Windows and does exist for Macintosh OSX. In fact if you have Vista 64 don't bother installing the software that comes with the device; it will crash. This is a known bug and AMOD has a fixed version on their website.

2. The GPS device looks like a thumb drive to any computer and the GPS tracks are stored in ASCII. This allows any computer to look at the data, there are no proprietary formats or synchronization drivers. This is what they call "Driverless" and is a in my opinion a very good decision.

3. Upgrades to the firmware must be run from Windows computers. If you don't happen to own a Windows computer, you're out of luck. This is not a very good decision when calling your product MAC compatible.

You might be asking; "So, if the photo-linking software supplied by AMOD does not exist for MAC computers and firmware upgrades only exist for Windows computers, how can they say it is compatible with MAC"?

The device itself is compatible with MACs because it looks like a thumb drive and has a third party software package that comes in the package to link the GPS tacks to photos. More on the third party software later.

I think that the firmware upgrades should be written for all operating systems that it is deemed compatible. For example to be called Macintosh compatible, firmware upgrades should run from a Macintosh computer. Garmin now supports MACs and did not claim to be MAC compatible until they had the support software for Macintosh computers.

To allow Macintosh users to link GPS locations to JPEGs, the AMOD is shipped with a JetPhoto Studio. Out of the box you can use this software to attribute the photographs with the GPS track locations. However I say attribute because the GPS location is not embedded into the JPEG. The location is kept in the JetPhoto photo album and assigned to the photo. What this means is that if you link the GPS location to the photograph in JetPhoto Studio and then send the photo to a friend the GPS location does not go with the photograph, it remains only in the JetPhoto album.

To actually embed the GPS location into the JPEG you must purchase JetPhoto Studio Pro for an additional $25. I was not happy about this, but I saw other features I liked in the Pro version that I like and purchased JetPhoto Studio Pro. I tested embedding the GPS location into my JPEGs and it works fine. But now I must run my photos through JetPhoto and then import them into iPhoto which takes extra time.

The only other thing that I think important is that when I first tried the device it worked, then I did a "Clean Disk" operation and that was the last time it worked. I tried installing the latest firmware, removed the batteries, etc. nothing worked. I made a quick call to Semsons (who sold me the product through Amazon) and they determined it was faulty. They replaced it and the new one has been working fine for the few days I've had it.

In summary; the AMOD AGL3080 will work with a MAC but to get the full features you will need to purchase JetPhoto Studio Pro for an extra $25, or find a shareware program that does GPS photo linking. I gave this 3 stars because firmware upgrades are written only for Windows and MAC users are not fully supported with the software included in the box which forces MAC users to purchase the Pro version of JetPhoto or start searching the web for software.

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As reported in January by Paul Dulaney, the error in the device that caused it to report inaccurate latitude and longitude has been fixed. I find that the positions it records are very accurate.

In addition, while the device still has 128MB of flash memory, it now has six user-selectable tracking modes. The differences between modes have to do with the amount of information recorded (types of NMEA 0183 records), the frequency of position recordings, or both.

The original device recorded a position every second, and would completely fill the memory in 72 hours. Now you can choose between recording every second, every 5 seconds, or every 10 seconds. You can choose to record 5 different types of records, or just "RMC" records; these contain date, time, latitude, and longitude, which is enough for attaching locations to photos. RMC records also contain speed and direction of travel, but not altitude. Altitude is in "GGA" records, which also contain latitude, longitude, and time, but not date. (Who designed this stuff, anyway?)

Recording only RMC records every second, the device can now hold a track that lasts 288 hours. As you might expect, recording every 5 seconds yields 1440 hours, and every 10 seconds yields 2880 hours. Recording more record types takes more space, but recording everything record type it knows about every 10 seconds can be done for 720 hours.

The device remembers the last mode you set, and uses it the next time it powers up. You can just set it and forget it.

I found the recorded altitudes to be very inaccurate -it claims a difference of 30 meters altitude between the front and back of my yard, while a difference of 1.5 meters is more like it. I understand that GPS devices generally don't do well with altitudes. This is a shame, because a true "geotag" should have three coordinates, to fix a point in 3-space.

I particularly like that fact that the device attaches to a computer as a plain vanilla flash memory drive, a "removable disk". This means that there is no dependency on device drivers or other proprietary software: you just copy the log files from the device to the computer, and do what you want with them. Based on the horror stories in reviews of other GPS loggers' software and drivers, this is a very good thing.

I have not tried the software that comes on the CD. AMOD provides two programs, but one of them is Windows only and thus unusable on my Macintosh. (I haven't needed to run Windows programs yet on my Mac, and I see no need to start now just for this GPS logger.) I wrote a rather simple Python script that matches the times on photos with entries in the GPS log files and updates the photos' GPS data using a free program called ExifTool.

To sum up, the AGL3080 does just what I wanted. It has a very simple user interface: about all you have to do is turn it on and make sure it has fresh batteries. It's easy to read and process the GPS logs that it records. I recommend the device.

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To help people struggling with the whole Mac compatibility reviews and of the bundled software that I too tried to figure out when looking, let me boil it down for you.

A GPS data logger does one thing. It records a file of your location at some set interval (often 1 second). That is it (although some will include more or less data on your location that others such as altitude, current speed, etc.). The next two questions you should then ask yourself about any data logger to be used with any computer system are A) In which file format is the log recorded? and B) Can I get the log from the device onto my computer?

For A) some loggers log in one of the industry standard formats while others use their own proprietary format. Regardless of what format it logs, is it one that you can easily convert to other formats? GPS Babel is probably the most popular log file converter, runs on both Windows and Macs (as well as other systems), can convert between a ton of different formats, and is free. So as long as the logger you are looking at uses a format that can be converted, you are all set there.

This logger, the AGL3080, uses standard NMEA format written to plain text files.

For B) you want to know is the data stored in a way your computer can get to it. Some have to be "talked" to and then the data "downloaded" out of the device. Others show up as a mass storage device where you can just grab the file. For a Mac, all you want to know if when I plug the device into my Mac, what do I need to do to get to the log files?

This logger, the AGL 3080, simply appears on your desktop like a USB thumb drive and all the log files are there as plain old text files (with an extension of .log on them). Select them and drag them to your desktop. Done. No software to install, no communication protocols, or any of that stuff.

At this point you have your data. Any talk about bundled software ignore. You can use any number of GPS tools out there, free, shareware, commercial, etc. To review the logger based on the software it comes with is stupid. This would be like reviewing a new digital camera and giving it a bad review because the photo editing software bundled with it stinks or is windows only, etc. You have the data, you have a way to convert the data to other formats, now search for a Geocoding application that suits your tastes and needs and convert the data to whatever format that app requires.

So after you learn those two things about any potential logger, the rest is simply hardware and firmware features to compare. For this logger, the AGL 3080, I will point out a few of the main features plus my personal opinion of them...

Battery: uses 3 AAA batteries. While some people complain that it doesn't use a rechargeable Li-Ion battery, I prefer it this way. I bought NiMH rechargeable AAAs (so I have two sets) but I always know I have the option to pop into a convenience store and grab AAA alkalines off the rack in a pinch. With a non-removable rechargeable battery, if you forget to charge your battery, you don't have any recourse. No logging that day! I know when I vacation with my family and we have been out all day walking the city, by the time I get back to the hotel, I'm tired, kids are tired, all the crud you bought that day has to somehow fit in the suitcases, etc. It is very easy to forget to plug the GPS data logger into the charger before bed and not realize it until the next morning when you are all up and getting ready to head out for the day. But I can always grab some alkalines. Other GPS loggers with built in batteries don't give you that safety net.

On the flip side, the 3-AAA batteries do make the device a bit larger than many other loggers. Mine is slightly larger than my Nokia 6263 flip style cell phone, to give you an idea. But it is still plenty compact to throw into my backpack and not be an issue.

Logging interval: With the recent firmware update, you can now pick between several time intervals, 1 second, 5 seconds and 10 seconds plus different levels of logging from recording all kinds of data (travel speed, direction, number of satellites being used, etc.) to bare bones (basically Long & Lat). So the loggers internal 128MB can hold anywhere from 72 hours of tons of data to 2880 hours of minimal data.

By the way, the manual can be found on the company website...

http://www.amod.com.tw

to see the various logging options plus the other features of the logger.

Even at the one second interval with full data giving 72 hours of logging, I think this is plenty. That is three days if you left it on 24 hours a day. With turning it off when sleeping and maybe other "down" times (while eating, etc.) you can easily get a week of logging out of it. But with the other logging interval options you can go MONTHS before you had to empty the device.

One nice thing about this logger is because it shows up as a mass storage device on a computer system, I can use my On The Go (OTG) portable hard drive to download the data off the logger into the drive without a computer around. So a two week vacation without a computer and my OTG portable HD is enough to let me do full 1-second data logging.

Finally, accuracy: Here is the thing, they all kind of have problems in a way that most of us didn't realize all GPS systems suffer from because many of us are used to Car GPS units (e.g. Garmin, Tom Tom, etc.). GPS accuracy kind of jumps around a lot and when you stand still, a GPS receiver will have you jumping around your location by many meters in some cases. In Car GPS units, when you are not moving, it doesn't update the map on the screen so you stay still on the map. When you do move, the GPS not only gets satellite data, but also calculates your speed and direction to determine where you next point SHOULD be so any weird readings do not result in the display jumping all over the place. In addition, the built in Maps help by determining where the roads are and where you car SHOULD be located and heading so you stay on the road and the display doesn't suddenly jump to show you in the adjacent field. So it all appears very steady/stable.

With these data loggers, you don't have mapping software to help. In addition, the chip sets often have a feature called "Static Navigation" (SN) that helps to "smooth" a track being logged by not logging data unless you are moving at a certain speed (I think 3 MPH or faster). The problem with SN is that when walking, you are often NOT walking fast and so you tend to get a data point, then the next one may not be until you are a couple blocks away because you are walking slow. So you may get straight line approximations between two points which may show you traveling THROUGH a building rather than turning the corner around it.

This logger, the AGL3080 comes with SN ON. But on the web site you can download firmware to load into it to have SN OFF. This gives you a much more accurate track, but does come with trade offs. Basically when you stand still, it keeps logging your position and because GPS will record points all over the place near you, you end up recording a bit of a "cloud" of points around your location when standing still. The longer you stand still, the larger and more dense that cloud of points gets. In addition when walking down the street, you may get some stray points recorded off your path.

In either case, for most of us this isn't really an issue since we tend to be more interested in figuring out approximately our route and which block the photo was taken. We don't really need to know exactly which store front we were in front of or which boulder we were standing on in a location thousand of miles from our homes. I would be just happy to see my map of points in a city nicely spread around the map approximately on the block where I was. But most points will be spot on. You just have to realize there might be some variability.

If you are a hiker and need much better accuracy, you may be better off looking into one of the $200+ mapping devices rather than a $65 logger.

As pointed out by another reviewer, the firmware can only be updated on a Windows machine, but most of us have access to one even if we tend to use Macs and you likely will pick one firmware or the other and stick to it, so it isn't like you will need to do this very often at all. Because the firmware for both versions total to only about 5MB and because this logger shows up on the computer as a thumb drive, you can load the folders of files for both updates onto the logger to always be handy. So if you are on the road, if you can get 3 minutes of time on a windows computer, you can change FW versions as needed. But most of us won't likely need to bother with it.

Conclusion: I like this logger. It does what it says it does, allows me to use rechargeable AAA batteries but also grab alkalines in a pinch, logs in an industry standard log file that is plain text, and loads on my Mac desktop like a thumb drive. Its accuracy is fine for my needs and is not a band breaker. Ignore references to the bundled software in other reviews. I never even bothered to load anything of the CD when I got mine. I use other third party applications to Geotag my photos.

I bought this GPS a little over a year ago, mainly for tracking the locations of photos that I take while hiking or traveling. The reason I bought it was that it was clear that it would work with any operating system because it just acts like a USB drive that you can get the logs off of.

There have been two things that bothered me about it. One was the battery configuration: 3 AAA batteries is an odd configuration; I had to settle for 6 rechargeables and a charger that charges two at a time. The bigger problem was that when I looked at my logs to correlate them with my photos, they showed that I wasn't moving at all for minutes at a time (as though the GPS wasn't receiving anything), and then I jumped to a new position, yet the quality indicators in the logs said the GPS was receiving just fine. I figured that it was just that the quality indicators were lying and for some reason it was having trouble getting a position in many of the places I was hiking. (I had myself convinced that it didn't work as well when the battery was low, so I was going through the annoying recharging of the batteries even more often.)

However, about a month ago I read some of the newer reviews on this page, and discovered that this is actually a feature called "Static Navigation" that makes all the GPS tracks have these huge gaps in it, and it can be disabled by installing new firmware. The process of installing new firmware wasn't particularly smooth: it required finding a Windows machine, downloading the firmware from the company's somewhat-sketchy-looking Website and running a pretty sketchy-looking piece of software (was it installing some spyware too?) that crashed the first 10 or so times I ran it and then finally worked as I tried starting it slightly different ways.

But in the past month, now that I have the firmware with "Static Navigation Off", the GPS records of my hikes have now become much more accurate, and I don't have to extrapolate between points to figure out where I took particular photos. It would have been nice if the device they shipped me a year ago worked that well, or at least if it had some information explaining how I could make it work better for my uses.

That said, the device is reasonably priced, and now that I have the SNOff firmware it does work quite well for what I want it to do.