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Columbus V-900 Multifunction GPS receiver (review unit provided by buyGPSnow.com)
Price $US109.95 (currently with $US10 discount it is $US99.95)

The Columbus V-900 Multifunction GPS receiver is a lightweight, very versatile receiver that records your position, allows you to connect to your navigation software by bluetooth and that also records audio records tagged to the time and GPS location.

Review Environment
I tested the V-900 with an Axim X51 running Lenny’s WM6 and Makuu’s WM6 ROMS. I used OCN8 and several GPS utilities with the receiver. I also tested it as a stand alone GPS recording device.

The review model came in a box covered with Chinese writing, as it was a pre-production model. Your packaging may be different. Here is a picture of what I got:

Figure 1. Box contents

As you can see, the box includes, from left to right, a CD-ROM with software, the receiver itself, a car power adaptor, lanyard, user manual, a USB cable, SD Card adapter with 1 Gig micro-SDHC memory card and a wall power charging unit. There was also a little pouch for the unit. The pouch covers up the buttons and indicators, so I didn’t use it, but the case is pretty slippery and the case is useful to keep it from sliding around so much. As I said, the box was covered in Chinese, but the manual was in English.

Here is a picture of the unit with the SD card adaptor for sizing:

Figure 2. Receiver with SD card for size comparison

You can see on the top of the receiver four icons. From top to bottom the icons are the POI button, and the three LEDs for log, gps status and bluetooth. The POI button is used to flag a location with a pin, which you can later turn into a POI.

All around the edges of the receiver there are buttons and controls. Here is an image from the buyGPSnow.com website showing the various controls and features:

Figure 3. Buttons and controls

On the top of the receiver you find the power button and the mini-USB power port. On the side is the record button to trigger the voice recorder. On the bottom is a microSD card slot and the holds for the lanyard/strap.

The power cable is not a standard USB cable. The unit has a function to come on when power is applied and to go off when power is removed, but that function only works with the specific USB cable that comes with the unit. You can use a standard USB cable, but it does not trigger the automatic on/off function. When used in your car with the adaptor provided, it allows you to leave the GPS in the car all of the time, and it’s only on when the power comes on. When in the SPY mode, this function is disabled.

If you press the power button, the unit turns on, no matter the availability of external power. There is a small LED in the upper left corner of the unit that shows the battery status.

As a gps receiver, the unit is very good. It uses the MTK chipset with 51 channels, gets the fixes quickly and well. Even in the basement of my house it got a fix in just a few seconds. It connected to my Axim X51v with no problems. The BT connection seemed very solid and I could see no lag in the fixes. Here are some of the features of the unit:

• MicroSD slot with support up to 2GB capacity (Note: buyGPSnow is including a 1GB microSD card in the package
• Push-to-log (POI key) enables you to mark a POI in the log at any time
• SPY mode allows tagging location for up to a month (more on this later)
• Audio cues for prompts to augment LED display
• Auto on/off with car cable
• Li-Polymer batter (1000 mAh) provides up to 24 hours operation
• Speed Alarm if the car exceeds set speed
• Time Album software for Windows, Mac and Linux (written in Java)
• Bluetooth supports SPP profile

There are a ton of pictures at the buyGPSnow.com website, so I’m not going to go through them all. However, there are a couple of unique functions of the receiver that do warrant special attention. These are the SPY function and the Time Album software.

The SPY function is a feature where the unit will go into a quiet powered down mode, then wake up after a set time, take some fixes and then go back to sleep. This cycle can be set with the provided software. You can see how this can greatly extend the battery and why it is called SPY mode. You could put this in a vehicle that you wanted to track, for example, and let it record fixes every few minutes, then later retrieve the unit and get the file from the storage card. I put the unit in spy mode for a 24 hour period and then looked at the file to see what I had gotten. I had set it to open every 3 minutes and get fixes. It took 8 fixes every 3 minutes. (That number of fixes will let you get a trend for direction if the vehicle is moving, or average the fixes for greater accuracy if it is stopped.) When I plotted the fixes, you could see where I had travelled, although you could not tell exactly what roads I had used between the fixes.

The Time Album software is an application provided with the unit. Originally the version 1.4 ran well on XP, but would not run on my Mac. Version 1.5 fixed the problem with the Mac. There are still some Chinese characters in version 1.5, but the software is completely usable as it is. Here is a screenshot of the software:

To get the software, you remove the card from the receiver and put it into your PC. I use a USB/microSC adaptor, but you can connect with the provided SD card adaptor as well. The “import” function is used to get the files from the card (where they are stored as .csv files) into the software. You can see the one imported file in the image. When you then click on the filename the table to the right fills in with the data from the fixes. I took this trip from this morning. You can see below the filename box some meta-data about the trip. Each fix is tagged with the date, time, lat, lon, altitude, speed, direction of travel, fix mode, validity, PDOP, HDOP, VDOP and any associated image. The Export button allows you to generate a .kmz file from the log that you can then use with any software that accepts that format (GoogleEarth, for example). Here is this track in GoogleEarth:

You can see the track as the green line. The larger circles to the left of the screen are moving to show the track playing back. Fixes with POI tags, images and other highlights will be shown in even larger dots, with words to describe the fix.

In the Device Settings you can set whether the data stored is tracked in standard or professional mode. In the latter you get all the DOP data, in the former the data is just the fix, heading and altitude. If you have a small memory card, or if you are not interested in the DOP data, it will save space, but in a month’s use of the device, for at least an hour every day, usually two hours, I used 32MB of the 1GB card. According to the buyGPSnow.com website, the card will hold 25,000,000 fixes. Assuming one fix each second, that’s enough space to store 289 days of 24 hours/day operation!

Conclusion
The V-900 multifunction GPS receiver is a well engineered device. Using it is intuitive and the software is good to track and tag fixes. It tags to pictures, voice recordings and POI tags. If what you need is a tracking GPS receiver with all the bells and whistles, the V-900 is the way to go.

JakeRich (8 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Program Executive for a large international IT company. I've been using PDAs since the Casio Cassiopeia! Currently have an iPhone, HP211, Axim X51v, Axim X50v and an Axim X50. I was a navigator in A-6 Intruders in the Navy, became interested in GPS navigation a few years ago and now do reviews of GPS related products for Chris.