I’ve been looking into interesting uses for GPS lately. A recent discussion on the Make Magazine Blog highlighted GPS loggers: devices which record location info for later download.
Today the Make blog featured another GPS logger: the Wintec WBT-200 which costs below a hundred bucks. I’ve crowed here before about a cheap USB GPS, but that still needed a PC to work. This GPS logger is self-contained: the only time a PC is needed is when the data is ready for download.
You could take this with you when you wanted to mark a trail but couldn’t take a PC with you. You could attach one to a weather balloon to track its movements. Or an elephant. Or a passing freight train. Or a business competitor. Or a spy. Or a cheating spouse. There are plenty of uses!
When cool technology drops below a certain price, it becomes available for all sorts of interesting uses. How would you use it?
I’ve just bought a WBT-200 and I’m really impressed with it. The supplied software is Windows only so I’ve written a patch for GPSBabel and some instructions for getting it going on other platforms here:
http://www.hexten.net/2006/06/18/using-the-wintec-wbt-200-with-mac-linux