GlobalSat DG-500 Data Logger & Bluetooth GPS Receiver, Black

Not many choices for such products after Holux 241 retired. Long battery, iPX4 & accurate position are remarkable. Bundled software outdated, the map layer be "developer marked". Luckily not a great problem as can find resources to read the exported kml / gpx logs

I just want a simple GPS data logger which can create a GPX file that I can import into LightRoom CC's Map module to geotag the photos I take with my A7-series camera. This one does that and works great. Another of my requirements is day-long battery life. I want to turn it on in the morning when I begin a day of vacation shooting, and forget about it until I turn it off at night, then recharge it over night. This one does that. My final requirement is that I want to be able to back-up the data while on a vacation without a PC. I have a RavPower that I use to backup my camera SD cards to large cheap USB thumbdrives. By pulling the micro-SD card out of this GPS Data Logger and using an SD card adapter, I can do the same with the GPS data on the card, providing a bit of peace-of-mind that I won't lose data. When you turn the unit off and back on, it starts writing to a different file on the micro-SD card, again reducing the changes for data corruption or loss.As a bonus, the unit is quite small, approx garage-door-opener sized, so is not cumbersome to stick into my camera bag or pocket.Thus far, I have no need for Bluetooth, so I haven't tried this out.There are two minor negatives I have with the unit, but they're not deal-breakers. The instructions say to keep it 8 inches away from your body due to FCC radiation exposure limits. I suspect I will keep it in my pocket usually, so hope it doesn't burn a hole in my leg. Also, I wish the logger just saved a GPX file directly on the micro-SD card, but it doesn't. Instead it saves a GPL file, and the PC software they provide can be used to easily convert the GPL files into GPX format.

The good: Fast startup time, good battery life, near-infinite storage due to a user-replaceable SD card, and a large button on the side to record waypoints.The bad: I had the same experience as @Paul Shelton, except mine started from day one, the DG-500 would record tracks with largeish gaps where the location recorded was FFFF.FFFF. This seems to be a systemic problem with the DG-500, since GPSBabel has special-case code to handle FFFF.FFFF positions from DG-500's.To check things, I ran both the DG-500 and an old Canmore GPS logger through Lassen Volcanic National Park, in other words somewhere with a perfect high-altitude view of multiple satellites. The two were separated by a few inches of space, so should have recorded near-identical tracks. The rather old Canmore, despite its various problems (awful user interface, long startup time) produced a perfect track, while the DG-500 had large jumps where it was just recording FFFF.FFFF, and lost the entire last 10-15 miles of the route where it was nothing but FFFF.FFFF.Just to repeat that, on an identical circuit under identical conditions with two GPS loggers running next to each other, the DG-500 had large gaps in the route where it wouldn't record any useful position while the brand B comparison produced a perfect record. From looking at the raw data, it records a position every five seconds, then there's nothing for anywhere from ten seconds to several minutes, and then a bunch of FFFF.FFFF until it goes back to recording valid positions again. See the attached photo for an example, with the brown line being the actual route traveled and the two green lines being the DG-500's recorded route.I really wanted to like this logger since it seems to have all the right features, but the one critical requirement for a GPS unit is an actual working GPS...

First one was a dud but they sent a replacement. Works good the software isn't very useful other than converting the files to somthing else. I put in a waterproof box and put in my dive float to record my dive tracks works great for that.I put the sd card in my computer then use the softwar to change from a gpl file to a kml file then open with Google Earth and use that to edit out erroneous data points and save the track on Sat image.

The delivery is fast and the operation is good. But I have been unable to use Bluetooth, so I have not received an answer yet.

I really want to give this unit a 5 star rating as it was exactly what I was looking for but unfortunately it stopped working after two weeks of extensive use. I was on an extended vacation and was using this logger every day. After approximately two weeks it was operating intermittently. I tried using the recessed reset button but that did not correct the problem. At this point it doesn't even operate intermittently. It still dutifully records the file onto the micro sd card but I am not picking up any lon/lat data, just FFFF.FFFF in the file. Perhaps I just received a bad unit but I am very disappointed that this has stopped working and especially in the middle of my vacation.

I liked the small size of this gps logger. Only issue I had was I couldn't set waypoints, despite following the quick start guide's instructions. Returned it to Amazon.

Pros: Easy to use, software is great.Cons: Have to wait few minutes when the cold start.