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(More customer reviews)Hopefully it's fairly clear to all from the product description: this is a niche gadget, not a full-featured GPS. It doesn't have a display (nor audio) and you can't access its data in real time. Instead, you upload the logs later and can use the included Sony software to match the log data to your digital photos. The compact size and low price of the GPS-CS1 make it a great deal for those of us who only want a photo tagger, don't need a full-size GPS unit, and don't want to buy a GPS camera.
The GPS-CS1 unit is about the size and weight of my clamshell cell phone.
It takes a good several minutes to acquire GPS signal, which was sometimes frustrating. It doesn't track very well indoors, and I found that I had to take it outside to turn it on or it wouldn't track at all (even if I took it outside later). It tracked great on the dashboard of the rental car; so-so in the center console; very well in the outside pocket of my soft-sided tote bag. I read that if it loses signal, it'll try to estimate location based on before and after readings, which may be why it worked just fine when we went in and out of buildings throughout our day.
The unit is kind of a "set it and forget it" thing, so the little indicator lights for signal and battery life are easy to overlook and it's easy to forget you've left it on. We were fortunate to notice the low battery warning. Battery life was good; we got about five solid days of use out of it (several hours at a time each day) before needing a replacement. It takes one standard AA, which is handy for the road.
It isn't waterproof, but it tracks just fine inside a Ziploc bag. (No, I didn't immerse it.)
There's no interface to update (or even see) what time the GPS unit thinks it is; presumably it's getting that information from the satellites. Make sure your camera's time is synchronized in advance to a source that's reasonably likely to match satellite time.
You upload the GPS logs to a computer using the included mini-to-full USB cable (conveniently, the same cable my camera uses) and the included GPS Image Tracker software. It prompts for a GMT (UTC) offset, but it wasn't clear to me what would happen if I changed this value from the default (based, I think, on the offset of the computer). I had synched both my computer and camera to local time while I was traveling, so everything matched correctly without any adjustments.
Once you've uploaded your photos, Image Tracker will match the timestamps from the logs to the EXIF timestamps on the photos to determine the location of the photos. (It works with any JPG files having EXIF timestamp data, whether they came from a Sony CyberShot camera or not.) It's easy to open multiple GPS logs or entire folders of photos as a single batch, and the timestamp processing is reasonably quick. If you upload photos from a time period that doesn't match any log, Image Tracker will make its best guess about how to geotag them. Unfortunately, there's no way to view its guess on a map to see whether you agree, and no way to manually override if you don't. You either tag them with Image Tracker's guess or you don't tag them at all. Image Tracker only handles lat + lon, no altitude.
I was wary about saving the EXIF data out to the photos, but it worked extremely well with no loss of any other EXIF or image data. You can choose whether to save the results as new images or replace the original ones. A cryptic warning pops up when you try to save and SEEMS to suggest that you can't, but if you select "Yes, Save Anyway" it goes right ahead and works just fine. I don't know whether this is because I have a Canon camera, or some other reason, but it doesn't matter since it does work.
Apparently the Sony Picture Motion Browser really does only work with CyberShot cameras, so I didn't try that.
The logs are standard NMEA format (with a non-standard .log extension), so once you upload them you can share them, or parse them however you want and use them for other things (you may need to change .log to .nmea).
The latest version of RoboGEO (which is not free) recognizes Sony's .log extension as NMEA; it handles the matching more quickly and provides quite a bit more functionality than Sony's basics (altitude, tag copying, manual tag editing, Google Earth integration, etc., etc.), so I switched to that and prefer it. The altitude readings were frequently way off and I don't know whether that's the fault of the GPS unit or of RoboGEO.
I use Flickr for photo sharing. There's a setting there that you have to manually change BEFORE you upload EXIF-geotagged photos; once you do this, it'll map all newly-uploaded photos automagically!
I really enjoy this gadget and I'm currently the envy of all my Flickrin' friends. Sony's awfully clever to have identified this niche and they've filled it well; the limitations of the included software are the reason I am giving it four stars rather than a full five.
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Sony GPS-CS1 GPS Device for CyberShot Digital CamerasKeep track of your photo locations and dates easily with satellite precision. The GPS-CS1 calculates and records position data. When used with the supplied GPS Image Tracker software, the GPS-CS1 allows you to match the time and location data in the device with your photos. And by using the Picture Motion Browser software, supplied with certain Sony cameras*, your photos will be shown on an online map, giving you a whole new way to organize, manage and enjoy your pictures. No need for complex set-up or connection. Turn on the GPS unit and check its positioning status, match the data and enjoy the new photographic enjoyment. Holds approximately 360 hours (31MB) of data, equivalent to one month of tracking recorded at 15 second intervals. Number of log entries may differ depending on satellite coverage and signal strength. The GPS Unit records a location log every 15 seconds. When a photo is taken between two log points, the supplied GPS Image Tracker software estimates the locations by extrapolating from logs recorded before and after (before or later) photos are taken. the software creates an estimated location between the two recorded locations. Also If the user takes a photo when there is no satellite signal available, such as when going underground or indoors, the software makes its estimation in the same way. based on the two nearest location logs. *The GPS-CS1 is compatible with Cyber-shot DSC-S500, S600, S45, W30, W50, W70, W100, H2, H5, T30 and Sony ? (alpha) DSLR-A100.
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