Experience with GPS-logger Holux M-241. We work from under Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Inspired by the latest article on GPS loggers.
I would like to talk about the Holux M-241 GPS logger (GPS Receiver / Data Logger), its features, capabilities, and usability. Maybe this review will be useful to someone in choosing such a device.
I needed a logger to create tracks for bike riders, forest walks on skis and snap photos to coordinates. I bought this device in Dealextreme back in 2011 for about the same price for which it still sells there, something around $ 70. There are, of course, newer and cheaper devices, but for some features they lose to this logger.


(Photos of the device borrowed from the Dealextreme)



When choosing a logger for myself, looking at the few sparse reviews of devices, I spent quite a lot of time to form an idea of ​​the functions I needed.
As a result, I came to the following requirements:
1. Power supply - necessarily removable, preferably standard AA or AAA batteries. After all, if there is a sortie to be outside civilization for> 4 days, there will be nowhere to recharge, and it is not optimal to recruit a dozen batteries of a special form factor. It is easier to take a stock of standard batteries, and you can buy them in almost any remote village. Yes, and the proprietary form factor of batteries is alarming, today analogs are released, and after a year or two - try to buy these.
2. Navigation is optional.
3. Bluetooth is desirable. To make it easier to connect to a laptop, for example, when driving in a car with location tracking enabled in the corresponding programs (Oziexplorer, SAS. Planet, etc.).
4. The ability to save a point of location (POI).
5. And if there is also a screen, it will be generally good to view current coordinates, altitude, speed ...
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Therefore, the choice fell on the Holux M-241.

I'll start with the general characteristics.
1. Dual interface Bluetooth + USB cable (For those who do not need Bluetooth and need more battery life, you can disable it in the setup).
2. Power supply from one AA element. (The official documentation states that you cannot use rechargeable batteries, only alkaline ones. But I personally use batteries, and I do not have any problems. Of course, there may be less sensitivity or battery life when using batteries, but I have enough sensitivity. And on autonomy, on my batteries (2500mAh) it works 8-10 hours, on “fresh” batteries it pulled 12-14 hours.)
3. LCD display with backlight, shows information about location, speed, date, time.
4. The memory capacity is calculated for 130,000 positions, including longitude, latitude, time and altitude. (The “speed” parameter was added to the firmware version v1.13, so the journal volume was reduced to approximately 100,000 positions).
5. Personal settings, including the ability to register by time (1,5,10,15,30,60,120 seconds), or by distance (50,100,150,300,500,1000 meters). It is possible to switch miles / kilometers).

Features
The device is built on an MTK (MediaTek) chip (yes ... yes ... quite old and voracious).
Antenna built-in.
32 parallel channels.
Sensitivity up to -159dBm.
Full compatibility with Bluetooth Serial Port Profile (SPP).
LCD display (32mm8,9mm / 12832pix)
Supports NMEA0183 V 3.01 protocol.
Compact and lightweight. Dimensions 32.1mmH30mmH74,5mm. Weight (without battery) <39g.
Working temperature is 0-50 degrees. Storage temperature -10- + 60 hail. (In winter, in the breast inside pocket, he used it successfully on ski walks in the forest at -25, the battery lasted 5-6 hours).
Repositioning time <0.1 sec, hot start 1 sec, warm start 33 sec, cold start 36 sec. (In urban development, a cold start is up to 2-3 minutes).
Accuracy of measuring speeds 0.1M / s.
Horizontal deviation 95% of the time <2.2M. Vertical deviation 95% of the time <5M.

Included is a software CD (this software is also available on the manufacturer's website www.holux.com ): drivers for Windows 98 / 2K / XP / Vista / 7, Linux, Mac. Firmware v1.12 (without the “speed” parameter for 130,000 positions) and v1.13, instructions for use, Holux logger Utility utility (Windows only) for configuring, downloading results to a computer, converting track formats, recording gps data into Exif photos. There is also a Holux ezTour for Logger program (Windows only) for working with tracks. The capabilities of these programs will be discussed below.

Approximate calculation of the amount of memory. (rounded down)

Measurement interval, s	Track length (time) v1.12 (v1.13)
one	36 hours (27 hours)
five	180 hours = 7.5 days (138 hours = 5.7 days)
ten	15 days (11,5 days)
15	22.5 days (17.3 days)
thirty	45 days (34,7 days)
60	90 days (69 days)
120	180 days (138 days)

This volume is quite enough for me.

To work with a logger, the manufacturer provides the HOLUX ezTour for Logger program (unfortunately only under Windows).

A settings window where you can select units of measure, at what time difference between track points make them separate, etc.

You can configure the GPS logger either from the device itself, through the display and buttons (which is a good plus), or through the program menu.
You can configure the recording at intervals of time (1,5,10,15,30,60,120 seconds) or through a distance (50,100,150,300,500,1000 meters). There is also the possibility of including overwriting old data, if the memory suddenly runs out.


When unloading tracks, they are divided into separate parts, but not one track, which is very convenient.

You can download only part of the required tracks.

The tracks provide information about the distance, full time, time of movement and stops, speed of movement and maximum, climb and descent. And all this is drawn on the graphs.

There is a primitive track editor where you can drag and drop points, delete them, split tracks into parts.

You can export tracks to the following formats: GPX File (*. Gpx), NMEA0183 File (* .nmea), KML File (* .kml), Excel File (* .csv).

When exporting to GPX format, it is possible to save in a simplified version (for example, for uploading to the web).

It is also possible to export to KMZ or Html.

For photo amateurs there is a function of geotagging photos. For this you need to specify a folder with JPEG photos.

In this case, the photos will be distributed along the track and you can watch their attachment to the map and graphics, as well as add a comment.

If desired, you can upload photo data to Flickr, Locr or Facebook from the program interface.

This photo binding to coordinates does not prescribe information in Exif. This must be done separately. Like this. After these actions, information with coordinates will appear in the exif file.

You can make a correction time.

Result of reference coordinates.



It seems that you can bind a video, but I have not tried it and I will not tell you what happens there.

A map with tracks and attached photos looks like this.

As I already mentioned, this logger allows you to manually save POI points. When uploading tracks, they are displayed as follows. You can attach a photo to them and add a description.

From the program itself, you can save screenshots of maps with tracks. Here's what it looks like.

We are trying to export to HTML.

The result is this. Interactive map, with tracks, photos and slideshows. It looks and works a little clumsy, but what it is is ...

The program, I think, is quite successful and convenient. There are all the most necessary functions.
For those whom it seems to be too functional, it comes with a very simple utility - Holux Logger Utility.

Here you can also configure the logger settings.

We unload tracks. Each is saved in two files * .trl and * .kml. POI points are saved separately from the tracks.

Then these .trl files can be converted to text (.txt), Google Earth (*. Kml), NMEA (*. Txt), GPX (*. Gpx) and enter the time zone.

The resulting tracks and POI points can be viewed in any relevant programs. I will not give examples of how the tracks look in them. And this is how the POI file opened in Google Earth looks like.

To link photos to coordinates, we specify a folder with JPEG, if necessary we introduce a temporary amendment.

This is all the functionality of native logger programs.

For those who work on Mac OS, do not worry that there is no native software. There are many similar programs, freeware including.
When I connected the Holux M-241 logger to Mac OS 10.8.4 (Mac mini) via USB, I was faced with the fact that it was not detected. I tried to install the USB Cable Driver (Mac) from the manufacturer’s website (CP210x Macintosh OSX Driver v2.1). But it did not help. Here you can get a more recent driver mytracks.zendesk.com/entries/20656011-drivers (CP210x Macintosh OSX VCP Driver v3.1). Direct link www.mytracks4mac.info/download/SiLabsUSBDriverDisk31.dmg . Only after that I earned via USB. Here is what he writes in the system log when connecting a device.

In general, you can connect via Bluetooth. It works great.
You can use the free and free GPSBabel utility (http://www.gpsbabel.org) to easily download tracks. There are packages for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. It is possible to start from the GUI, and through the console. To run in the console version, you should use the options indicated in the screenshot. The program supports a fairly wide range of devices and formats. Also can convert from one format to another.

What seemed inconvenient to me was that the entire set of tracks from the device was unloaded by one file. To separate them, for example, by day, you need to take additional steps. And also, with reference to the logger Holux M-241, can not unload points of POI. If the unloaded track to throw Google Earth, then you get something like that.

For further reference of the coordinates to the photo, you can find several programs, both free and commercial.

From commercial software for Mac OS X, I liked the myTracks program (www.mytracks4mac.info). Which also allows you to upload tracks, edit, attach photos and much more. The site has many videos of what it allows you to do.
We try to unload the track and throw photos.

Next, save the information about the coordinates in Exif.

As a result, it looks like exif.

!!! This program has a good plus. She can write information not only in JPEG files, but also in RAW !!!

For example, I registered the GPS information in the Exif file in the RAW format, and opened it through the Raw Converter Canon DPP. And Raw Converter perfectly saw this information.

Tracks with attached photos look like this. Tracks can be divided into parts, duplicate, create folders for them in a hierarchical structure. And much more.

In general, the program is excellent and worth the money (in the Mac App Store $ 14.99).

For fans of GNU Linux, I can report that there will be no problems with the Holux M-241. On Linux Debian (Testing, Jessie), my logger was determined immediately, without installing drivers.

To upload tracks, you can also use GPSBabel from the official package repository. To bind coordinates to a photo, you can use GpicSync. There is a version for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. (I didn’t run the binary package for Mac OS X, although I installed all the dependent components like Python, wxPython. The program looked for libraries in completely different ways. Creating symlinks eliminated some errors, but still did not work. I didn’t understand much , postponed until better times. Has anyone managed to do this?) The author’s site has a ready-made deb-package for ubuntu, which will also fit for debian. Everything worked fine.


As you can see, no matter what OS you work with, the Holux M-241 gps logger will not cause any special problems. There are quite a few programs for uploading tracks and linking coordinates to photos for any OS. And everyone can choose for themselves the right.

This was information for those who like to record their tracks and attach coordinates to photos.
For athletes, this logger will also be useful, you can record the tracks of your workouts, and with the help of relevant sites to analyze and collect statistics. For example, I cite the tracks of bicycle coils and what can be done with them.




And a few more photos.
General view of the work.

Current coordinates.

The icon at the bottom left indicates POI saving.

Speed ​​and altitude.

Item settings and firmware version.


As a result, I want to list the advantages and disadvantages of the Holux M-241 gps-logger.
Advantages:
1. Dual interface Bluetooth + USB cable.
2. The ability to save the point of location (POI).
3. The presence of a screen for displaying information (backlit).
4. Ability to change settings without a computer, from the device itself through the menu.
5. Ability to enable rewriting of old data, if suddenly the memory is out.
6. The power source is AA (for some, this may seem a disadvantage).
7. Rather functional and convenient "native" software.

Disadvantages:
1. There is no moisture protection (I already pick and choose ...).
2. Not very successfully made a notification about the end of the battery charge. (There is no sound alert, and the discharge indicator starts to blink about 60-90 minutes before turning off.)

PS Somewhere on the Internet I heard complaints that when a logger is worn in a pocket, buttons may accidentally be pushed and the recording switched on / off, the settings spontaneously change. Well, gentlemen, read the manual. There is also a screen lock. Activated by simultaneously pressing two buttons.
Lower left lock screen icon.


By the way, such a question to the knowledgeable, what other software for recording gps-information in exif photos supports RAW format? (I assume that Aperture for Mac is able, but not sure.)