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i-gotU GPS GT-120 GPS Travel Logger by Mobile Action Technology, Ltd

Sometimes all you want for GPS is to record where you have been and then later retrieve that data. You might also like to tag your digital photos to that GPS data so you can see where you took the pictures you have for reference later. The i-gotU GT-120 GPS Travel Logger does all of that that. And it does it pretty well.

Although technically the device runs independently, the software for it is a Windows application. I ran it under WinXP Pro and under WinXP Pro as a virtual machine on an Intel iMac.

The GPS Travel Logger comes in a shrink wrap container. Here are some pictures of what you get:

Figure 1. i-gotU in Wrapper

When you open it, inside are the GPS Travel Logger, a USB charge/data-transfer cable and a mini-CD with the @trip PC software.

Figure 2. Mini-CD, GPS Travel Logger and cable

The GPS Travel Logger itself is the small rectangle outlined in light blue below and to the left of the mini-CD-ROM. It has on it is one button to turn it on and off. The cable connects to the bottom of the GPS Travel Logger in a rocking motion. There are two LEDs, a red one on the left and a blue one on the right. The blue one flashes when the GPS Travel Logger is on. The red one flashes when it has a fix and is logging the position. When the battery gets too low or memory gets full, the blue one goes out. I don’t know exactly how much memory it has, with 6500 fixes it reported 88% free. Doing the math, that means it can hold up to 50,000 fixes. That’s between 15 and 75 hours of fixes, depending on the profile you set (more later on that topic).

The hardware specs as given by the manufacturer are:

• Dimension: 44.5 x 28.5 x 13 mm
• Weight: 20g
• Built-in SirfIII low power chipset
• Built-in GPS Patch Antenna
• Built-in 230 mAh Lithium-ion battery
• 2 LED for tracking and battery/charger status indication
• Average acquisition time: Cold start < 35 seconds
• USB 1.1 interface
• Operating temperature: -10C to +50C
• Water-resistance: IPX-6
• Battery Life:

1-6 seconds: 10 hours (default: 6 seconds)

10 seconds: 24 hours

15 seconds: 30 hours

30 seconds: 60 hours

l Waypoint: 65000 waypoints

Basically, the GPS Travel Logger is really small. Here is a picture next to a standard SD Memory card:

Figure 3. Size compared to SD Card

To turn the unit on you press the large button. You press it again to turn it off. The light blue is a skin that is tacky to the touch to keep the unit from sliding around. It is removable, but I left it on so that I could throw the GPS Travel Logger on the dash of my car and not have it move around.

But driving is not necessarily what the GT-120 is all about. What it is about is recording where you are and letting you bring out the data to a file you can manipulate. And in that arena it works well with the provided software.

@trip PC PC is the name of the software. Installation was easy, and it worked well on both a Windows XP Pro laptop and on an Intel iMac under VMware with an XP Pro image. The software installs from the mini-CD, but there is a new update available at the website that has some new features. It’s that newer version I want to talk about. If you don’t have a CD reader that can take the mini-CD format, the entire installation package, including the USB drivers for the hardware, is available at the i-gotU website.

After it installs, you connect the GPS Travel Logger to the PC with the USB cable. The proprietary connector on the GT-120 itself is a simple four-pin connector that mates to the end of the GPS. In Figure 3 you can just barely see the cutout at the bottom of the light blue skin where the connection is made. There are two small slots into which the cable hooks. You install with a rolling motion to seat the hooks. It’s easy to do and makes for a secure connection.

@trip PC starts up with a window that shows the connection and files. Here is the window:

Figure 4. @trip PC PC software

In this image I have downloaded two trips, one made on November 23, 2008 and another on the next day. To get the data from the GT-120 to the software, you start the software and connect the GPS Travel Logger. When that is done, the software asks if you want to download the trip data and suggests the name based on the time you are downloading. You can see in the image that one of the names was “20081123120720” for 2008, November 23 at 12:07:20. You can pick any name you want but using their names will guarantee a unique name for each trip file.

The download proceeds and you are presented with a screen to pick the format you want for the map and then a screen to add any pictures you want to tag and include. Once that is done, the system then goes out to the network to get the map data from GoogleMaps and displays the map, with any tagged pictures at the side and some controls that are dependent on the style of display.

To view those trips, I simply click on the name of the trip it connects to GoogleMaps to get the map data. Once it has that data, a window opens that shows the trip. This is a screenshot of the map picture from several trips I made with the unit:

Figure 5. Screenshot of @trip PC map

On this image you can see several trips, each in its own color. I used the “car” profile on the GT-120, so the fixes are every 2 seconds, which means the fixes follow the roads pretty closely. The “S” and “E” mark the Start and End of the current journey, respectively. You can zoom in, select whatever map option available to you at GoogleMaps and manipulate the map with the data just fine. If you have pictures tagged, there will be a camera icon at the locations that have tagged pictures.

Here is another screenshot, this one from the @trip Travel Blog (a-trip.com). Note that it also uses 3D, a really slick feature:

Figure 6. Screenshot from @trip Travel Blog (a-trip.com)

In Figure 6 you can see the icons for places where the camera was tagged to the trip. Under one of the camera icons you can just make out an icon of a red car. That car shows where in the file the image is looking at the time. You can play back the trip to show how you traveled, if you want to. The car icon will move along as you moved and the fixes were recorded. You can share your trip with others on the Internet through the a-trip website . There is a video demo on YouTube.

@trip PC also has a function to import data from other GPS a USB charge/data-transfer cables so long as they support a .gpx format. I did one import and it worked well.

Here is one more screen shot from @trip PC, this time a full screen shot showing all the controls and features:

Figure 7. Full Screen of @trip PC

In the black space to the left of the map is an area where the images that are tagged to the trip will show. I don’t have any images for this trip, so the space is blank. At the website, you can see the images of Figure 6. When you click on the icon the image enlarges. Trips can be exported to .gpx or .csf format and include the date/time of the fix, the lat/lon and altitude, heading and speed, plus a “type” data point that for almost all of my fixes was zero, so I don’t know what that indicates.

Conclusion
If what you want is to track your travels and be able to tag pictures to the GPS data, the i-gotU GT-120 will do that pretty well. It has a very small size and weight and has pretty good battery life. It is customizable through the @trip PC software and works well with Google Maps and Google Earth. You do have to make sure your camera time is synchronized, or the pictures will tag to the wrong fix, but at walking speeds that should not be a major problem. But if you forget to do it while traveling abroad, @tripPC can help to move the stamp-time of photos to match the foreign time zone. When you import the track, you can choose the time zone for track and photo. For example, if American users travel to Taiwan then after the trip when they import the track and photo to @tripPC, you should choose the correct GMT for the track (GMT+8) track and don’t need to do the same thing for photo if you didn’t change their digital camera time. The software will sync them up. (Note: the camera still needs to be on the same minute as the GPS, so you still have to do some checking to get this exactly right.) I didn’t test this time zone feature, but I do plan a European trip later this month and will update with a comment when I return.

Cost: varies by vendor, in the $70US range on the Internet

GT-120 is available on following online stores,

• http://www.buygpsnow.com/i-gotU-GT-120-USB-Travel-Logger-GPS.aspx
• http://www.semsons.com/itrblmawjogo.html
• http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GT-120&cat=GPS
• http://www.pacificgeek.com/product.asp?id=98936
• http://www.buy.com/prod/i-gotu-gt-120-usb-gps-travel-logger-w-blog-software-record-and-trace/q/loc/111/210402984.html

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.