UPDATE: Found a nice self contained unit that replaces the Pocket PC, and Bluetooth gps receiver, more information at the bottom of the post.

I have been wanting to set this up for some time and recently found a combination of hardware and software that work for me. What is this all about you ask? Well let me shed some light on this. Geo photo, coding, or what ever you want to call it, is the ability to write GPS data to jpeg EXIF headers. This text data is stored in the header of a jpeg adding the longitude, latitude and altitude you took your photo at.

You can do this a few ways, first of all you can buy a camera with built in gps (as of this time they are still pretty low quality), buy a hand held gps device that stores (waypoint, GPX, NMEA data) or a combination of devices. I have chosen the latter because I had a few piece of hardware already. Most if not all devices export out to some data format the one I choose is NMEA data since it works with the software im using on my PC.

My hardware setup consists of:

• Pocket PC with built in bluetooth
• Canon SD900 10 mega pixel camera
• i-Blue 737 bluetooth gps.

and the software im using:

• Navio for the Pocket PC
• RoboGeo for my PC

So how do you make this all work?
Well in theory you connect your gps to your pocket pc via bluetooth launch the Navio software, start it’s gps logging option which can record every few seconds your location to a file and then take your photos.

After your done taking photos its time to do the magic on your PC. First transfer over the log file that Navio created on your Pocket PC to your PC and also save any photos you took during this process to your PC as well. I just created a temp folder on my pc where i put both log file and photos together. Next you launch the RoboGeo application and follow the 3 easy steps to Geo coding your photos.

One very important thing before doing all of this is to sync up the time on your gps, pocket pc and camera to the same time and date. This is a key factor and if you don’t do this your location of where you took photos can be off by quite a bit.

The cool thing about RoboGeo is that it can also save your photos to your flickr account and generate links for you that when the user clicks on your photo they can see the location you were at (Google Earth, Google Maps,). There are also plenty of other export options you can do once you have embedded the longitude and latitude into your photos.

Of course this is a very quick crash course, but you can imagine the possibilities that can be done with this data in your jpeg files. Here is a link to a sample I did this weekend while testing out this whole process. Take special note to the links below the photo, clicking on one of them will show you the location of where I took this photo. If you use the Google Earth link you will need the free application installed first.

Once I get more time I’ll take more and post them on my filckr account and in my photo section of my blog as I get time.

UPDATE: Ok after surfing around for a single unit that records NMEA data which is used in RoboGeo to geo code your photos I found the Sony GPS-CS1 which is a very small device that you can clip on your belt and take your photos. This will replace the hardware I have listed above in the post, so no need for a Pocket PC, external bluetooth GPS. The Cost of this device is about $100 from Amazon.com. Read a small review of this device here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 8:28 pm and is filed under GPS Fun, Photos and Videos, Rants and Raves, Tech Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.