iPads and Field Mapping: First Steps

* sorry about the hyperlinks, i'll fix them later...

After incessant drooling over the ipad's potential for mobile mapping with a bluetooth GPS and GIS applications, I've finally taken the plunge. Tom Tartaron pioneered the use of mobile GIS for field survey at the East Korinthia Survey Project, and its been taken up by the good folks at the Avkat Project (http://www.princeton.edu/avkat). They used ArcMap on palmpilots with garmin bluetooth gps's, but has anyone tried to use an iPad for survey work? I'm quite suspicious of the possibility that, once again, people doing North American archaeology are way ahead of me on this one - I would love to hear how you've configured your rig.

I quickly realized that Apple's well-known, proprietary nature is not going to let me get my way without a fight. But where there's a will, there's a way.

iPad comes in 3G (cellular) and Wireless (internet) versions - the 3G has a GPS built in, that apparently works by cellular triangulation for a rather inadequate error of +/-10m. To make matters worse, existing mapping and navigational applications are of course designed to use this built in feature, and thus the integration of 3rd party GPS hardware is difficult. The 3G also requires a subscription and carries *enormous* surcharges for data transfers while roaming internationally. That's not good.

Because I won't pay thousands of dollars for Apple's archaeologically inadequate 3G plan, i've opted for un-3G'd ipad - this would be fine if my apps of choice (ArcGIS, GIS Roam, and Google Earth) would recognize a 3rd-party hand held GPS via Bluetooth, like the Garmin 10x I bought off Amazon for $50.

After the jumps are discussions around a few of the options i've discovered so far

- Using the BitMaps application to view and edit small map files offline with pinpointing by a bluetooth gps. (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1452897.html)

- With a jail-broken ipad, using BTStack GPS to manage bluetooth connections to a 3rd-party GPS. (http://www.ipadforums.net/apple-ipad-news/3247-how-use-btstack-gps-add-gps-jailbroken-wi-fi-ipad.html - available from the Cydia store for $5)

I'll post pictures once I get mine working, one way or the other! Thankfully I have a little more than 3 weeks before I leave for Berlin, and about 4 until I get in the field with friends for some informal extensive survey in Eastern Turkey.

For more on jailbreaking, by the way, see the Spirit application at http://spiritjb.com/ - note that this requires having an older iOS and iTunes pre-9.2.

Coming soon, my quest for high quality old maps and new satellite images of Turkey, preferably at as low a cost as possible!!