Hey Ben and crew,
FIrst off, love the show. Great work on your projects.
Your GeoCache project made my mind start rolling with ideas. And I want to make a device for an upcoming trip.
I live in South Louisiana about 40 miles south of New Orleans.
In February 2016 my family is taking a trip. We escape Mardi Gras every year. We are leaving and heading over to the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, NC for 2 days then over to DC for 6 days and then to New York for 2 or 3 days. And finally make the journey home. I am a fan of flying but we are gonna Chevy Chase this one and Lampoon it.
I want to make a small device that would log the trip continuously and just plot the coordinates every so often and save it to a file or memory. There are devices out there but some are cheap, some are expensive and some actually require a monthly subscription. I imagine the latter is for private investigator work. Those come with magnets which I assume are to attach to a car chassis if need be.
There are phone apps out there but some say they stop logging during calls / other actions and some reviews state the apps crash unknowingly and you end up with nothing. I also take a lot of photos and videos on trips and I utilize Apple iCloud photo which eats up battery During syncing. If the phone dies, again I loose logging. I am not looking to GeoTag photos as my iPhone already does this as well as my Nikon.
I Would like to make a kind of small device that would hang off of a backpack or at least be, for the most part, portable. Charging nightly would not be an issue but if it would last the length of the trip, that would be awesome.
The output would be something simple. Could be just text coordinates or GPX? Think that's the right terminology.
The women in my family all scrap book, and I thought this would add some nice touches to their scrapbook pages to include a small printed out Google Maps with either the line of travel or the pin location. It could at least log the raw data and i could import into maps later. I know I could just do this upon my return and just make a map with a pin but what fun is it with no electronics.
Platform is open. I don't care if it utilizes Arduino, Pi, BBB etc. I love Adafruits Trinkets but not sure if this would even be feasible for this project.
Laisles les bons temps roule!!
Ryan Meaux (pronounced Moe)
Angie
Lila
Adalyn