Unleashed, Wireless Geotagging

[James Shadle]

http://www.foolography.com/products/

Finally, the leash that tethered the camera to a GPS is no longer needed. Our tiny Unleashed module sits
directly on the 10-pin-port of the camera. A 2.5mm jack socket retains the possibility to use a remote
release. The Unleashed connects wirelessly to any Bluetooth® GPS receiver, which can be kept in your
pocket or backpack. The current location is embedded in your photo immediately within the camera. No
additional steps are required at your computer.
Features
• Completely wireless geotagging solution
• Very compact, light and unobtrusive device directly on camera
• Compatible with all modern Bluetooth® GPS receivers
• Compatible with Nikon D200, D300, D300s, D700, D2X, D2Xs, D2Hs, D3, D3X, D3s and Fuji S5 Pro
• Low power consumption thanks to intelligent power management
• Fast connection time
• Use last known position on GPS signal loss
• 2.5mm remote release connector
• 2 color status LED
• Updateable firmware
• Coming in next (free) firmware updates
o Manual configuration via Bluetooth®
o Remote release via Bluetooth®
o Two Unleasheds with one GPS
How it Works
Before you use your Unleashed for the first time, it has to be paired with your GPS receiver. It comes with
short instructions to start a quick automatic pairing routine, directly on the camera. The Unleashed
remembers your GPS, and from then on always automatically connect to this GPS, until you rerun the
pairing routine (in case you want to connect a different GPS receiver).
When you turn on your camera, the Unleashed immediately connects to your GPS. The GPS data is passed
on to the camera, which saves it directly in every photo you take, even RAW photos. The Unleashed
monitors camera activity in order to save power when it is not being used. After 2 minutes of inactivity it
stops sending GPS data to the camera, allowing the meter to turn off (even on the D200 and D2 Series,
which had no such feature). This saves a lot of power. For 15 minutes, the Unleashed keeps the connection
to the GPS, so that the instant the camera is reactivated, the current position is sent to the camera. From
the first photo on, the position is embedded in the metadata. After 15 minutes of inactivity, the Unleashed
will drop the Bluetooth® connection, saving power for both the GPS and the Unleashed. It will however
remember the last position for another 30 minutes, so that when you activate the camera again within
those 30 minutes, it will instantly have a position, maximally 30 minutes old. Within seconds, it will
reconnect with the GPS to update that position. This also works when you go indoors and the GPS signal is
lost – you will still have the position just outside the building in your files. Whenever the GPS receiver is
further away from the Unleashed (for example at the window while you’re shooting indoors), this feature
bridges short Bluetooth® connection disruptions. Of course, these “old” positions are marked, easily
identified and removed later, should this option not be wanted.
After 45 minutes of inactivity, the Unleashed goes into standby and uses so little power, that it would take
3 years and 9 months to drain a D300 Battery. In other words – it’s designed to stay on the camera at all
times. It will not be in your way physically, nor will you have to worry about battery drain.
The Unleashed’s firmware can be upgraded by the user via Bluetooth®. Updates will be available on our
website.

[Myer Bornstein]

Jim
here is a link to Phototrackr plus http://www.gisteq.com/plus/ that works the same way as the one from England
It is for Nikon

[David Gancarz]

Any user/field experience with this unit? I have read some cautionary remarks about bluetooth connectivity problems, difficulty and/or lengthy lag times acquiring satellites. If it works as well as advertised I'll be in line!

[Norm Dulak]

I wonder whether this might be another gadget that is desperately looking for a practical use.

If you find a good spot from which to photograph, can't you get back there again using simple, visual markers?

And if in your zeal to reveal to the world that you have this gadget and you've found a great spot to photograph wildlife, and you actually publish gps data from it, won't your special place be lost to you as others rush in to take advantage? And what will your disclosure do for the wildlife that you hopefully wish to protect as well as photograph, if others can suddenly find that place due to your disclosure?

I like gadgets too, but I always consider whether they might do more harm than good! And whether they are really necessary! ;)

[David Stephens]

Norm, I post the geo-data for most of my images. I do it manually by looking at maps and satellite images online and find it relatively easy to do manually. My friends and I are tying to help each other and it's an easy way to communicate very specific locale information.

Generally, I find that the easy places to get to are going to have crowds, but those are greatly reduced at dawn. At Rocky Mountain National Park last Sunday evening I stood on the roadside with several hundred others observing a nice bull elk and his harem. I didn't feel constrained at all and the elk didn't give a big hoot. The next morning I was out before dawn and had the best places pretty much to myself. (One idiot did park right behind me and almost drew the rath of a huge bull when he got out of his SUV too close to the animal. That would have made some great images).

On private lands you still need permission and the pack-in areas are still going to be remote.

Anyway, you can roll your eyes all you want, but there's a market for this kind of thing. I'd love to load actual coordinates in and see the exact location from satellite. Trying to do it manually, particularly in back country, can be pretty challenging from memory.

I'm not buying yet, but I see this as something for my wish list that may make it to my kit in the next few years.

[Chris Ober]

No, it's not looking for practical use. It has several. There are plenty of trails in the Wichita Mountains that aren't very clear and are often broken up by patches of rock. You can only remember so many groupings, areas, patches of rocks before they all blend in together. GPS tracking on the handheld lets me repeat the trek back to areas I want to revisit with out having to locate the hidden pathways again. For my next trip, I found locations there from photos people have on Google Earth with coordinates for places I've tried to find before but couldn't because there aren't clear trails or there are no trails at all. Another site I found lets you upload/download the gps tracks and see exactly the path others took to areas. It's a huge time saver not having to search for something that may be hidden from site from overgrown brush that wasn't there when previous hikers described the areas. With large areas to explore and limited time to visit, tools like this make that time more productive.

How many places are you going to remember how to get to if you've only been someplace once 10 years prior? How would describe the location of remote areas to kids, other family members, or friends that want to visit also?

Nobody has to publish the data if you don't want to. If a site is "secret" and precious, you aren't forced to spill the beans. Some of us have good uses for the tools, some don't. No biggy.

I wonder whether this might be another gadget that is desperately looking for a practical use.

If you find a good spot from which to photograph, can't you get back there again using simple, visual markers?

And if in your zeal to reveal to the world that you have this gadget and you've found a great spot to photograph wildlife, and you actually publish gps data from it, won't your special place be lost to you as others rush in to take advantage? And what will your disclosure do for the wildlife that you hopefully wish to protect as well as photograph, if others can suddenly find that place due to your disclosure?

I like gadgets too, but I always consider whether they might do more harm than good! And whether they are really necessary! ;)

[Ken Childs]

I wonder whether this might be another gadget that is desperately looking for a practical use.

If you find a good spot from which to photograph, can't you get back there again using simple, visual markers?

And if in your zeal to reveal to the world that you have this gadget and you've found a great spot to photograph wildlife, and you actually publish gps data from it, won't your special place be lost to you as others rush in to take advantage? And what will your disclosure do for the wildlife that you hopefully wish to protect as well as photograph, if others can suddenly find that place due to your disclosure?

I like gadgets too, but I always consider whether they might do more harm than good! And whether they are really necessary! ;)

I wish I had the budget for such gadgets! I manually geotag some of my photos using Google Earth and Picassa and it's great for some of the butterfly research that I do. It's necessary to know exactly where some bugs are photographed and geotagging is a simple way to keep the info all in one file.