Pharos Trips & Pics with GPS Receiver Review

Pharos Trips & Pics is a combined package of a GPS receiver/logger and geo-logging software which enables consumers to record their trips and photo locations and display them on a map. Trips & Pics will work with any digital camera so there are no compatibility problems. You just need to carry the GPS unit with your camera. As well a being useful for travellers, Pharos Trips & Pics can be a useful tool when hiking, biking or camping. Potential professional applications are also numerous and could include law enforcement, news photography, geological surveying, real estate and wildlife management.

Pharos Trips & Pics with GPS Receiver

The Trips & Pics hardware is a Pharos’ iGPS-500 receiver and battery unit combination that easily slips into a pocket. GPS data logging intervals can be varied from one second up to five minutes. There is also an off-switch for power conservation if you are stationary or not taking pictures. The unit charges quickly and battery life is about 24 hours. Data can be logged for between 1 ¼ and 45 days depending on the pattern of use. Data logged allows the software package to provide a record of time, location, heading and speed.

The Pharos Trips & Pics software comes into play when you connect the iGPS-500 via USB to your PC (Mackintosh not supported). Following a guided menu system, digital photos and GPS location files can be uploaded and geotagging accomplished. Geotagging refers to the addition of geographical positioning information to different media which may include a website, RSS feed or in this case an image.

Digital cameras store images to an EXIF (exchangeable image file format) specification which includes the image itself (jpeg, tiff etc.) and some metadata. The image metadata includes the more common time-of-shot data but also supports geographical information including latitude, longitude, altitude and even bearing. The Trips & Pic software correlates time and geographical information and annotates the metadata for each image. Any difference between camera time and GPS time is automatically compensated for.

Once processed, images can then be displayed on mapping software such as Microsoft Streets & Trips, Google Earth or Google Maps. There is an option to just process only your GPS log files for display of your trip route. Trip and photo information can also be integrated into a blog site or RSS feed as Trips & Pics supports Geographic encoded Really Simple Syndication (GeoRSS – a method of including location data in RSS and Atom feeds).

The software also supports KMZ format for easy archiving, transporting, and sharing. KMZ is a compressed KLM file in XML format for supplying geographic information to Google Earth. Additionally, Pharos Trips and Pics will take input from multiple sources, including data from other brands of portable GPS devices (GPX format). GPX (GPS Exchange Format) is a XML data format for the interchange of GPS data (waypoints, routes, and tracks) between applications and Web services on the Internet.