Compass & thermometer on your wrist for £50.
https://www.casio-europe.com/euro/products/watches/collection/sgw-100-1vef/
Compass needs reseting every so often, but I just set it before an expedition or holiday away. Useful for finding out how cold things are and by going with a 200M water resistant watch, you can actually surf with it, anything less than 200M WR on a watch is not practical for most day to day uses like taking a shower, bath, washing up, washing car, sitting hot tub etc etc.
I have my compass on a lanyard round my neck when out so its not in the same pocket as a phone.
Smart phones can be useful with gps compasses etc, especially one's that hook into glonass (Russian system accurate around the poles, dire around the equator), GPS (US system which is good around the equator, dire around the poles), or the other one whose name escapes me.
But if you need really pinpoint accuracy over and above what GPS can offer, check out RTK. Its not cheap, normally found on the farm, but portable one's will be making their way into farmyard drones but they are what helps tractors dig furrows to within about 2.5cm accuracy. There are signals sent out that cover large parts of the UK if you dont have a local one on your farm you can tap into, but I suspect this tech has been used to hide individual plants around East Anglia in amongst sweetcorn as the smell was covering very large distances.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-40430610
Plus I also saw on hacker news (ycombinator) an article about some new tech coming to smart phones to make GPS more accurate but never read it to see if its a RTK hook up or something else.
I also take an OS map with me as well because all of the above can fail one way or another.
That is a GPS compass, not a magnetic so will need resetting a lot and often only kicks in once moving. Nice to see you carry a magnetic as back up. If using a phone,viewranger is an excellent app but to get the best out of it,you have to sacrifice battery life.
An RTK unit can be had cheaper than a garmin but no colour maps.
Whats a GPS compass? The casio watch isnt and it works just by pushing the bottom right button as it shows the temp at the same time whether you are moving or not.
Smart phone's could have a digital compass or calculate from GPS, but as smart phone's are slow to calculate GPS unless it can pick up some guidance from nearby wifi which is why Google streetview cars also noted the wifi in the area and google maps still does to keep the accuracy up because people change their wifi over time.
Got any links for the RTK units, as these normally cost thousands but prices are coming down lots as drones are now appearing on farms?
A GPS compass shows direction using the GPS signal. The Casio does not have a magnetic compass. It basically works the same as a compass app on your phone. The reason you have to reset it is because it is GPS. Often they only start to show north when you move a few metres. This also applies to any that use magnetometers. Casio don't say if they use a magnetometer or a GPS fix.
Page 1 of http://support.casio.com/storage/en/manual/pdf/EN/009/qw3157.pdf
"Digital Compass/Thermometer
You can take direction readings and temperature readings in the Digital Compass/Thermometer Mode.
Direction readings are taken by the watch’s built-in magnetic bearing sensor and displayed as one of 16 directions. A temperature sensor is used for temperature"
Considering how long it takes smart phones to get a GPS fix not using wifi even with todays faster cpu's, not to mention the cost, I'd have been very surprised if Casio had somehow managed to fit a cpu et al into a watch this size even when looking at the size of the apple watches.
Edit.
Mind you if you can give us some links for cheap RTK units I would be very much obliged as I have a use for them but cost is prohibitive so I need to come up with other ways for +- cm positioning. The farm stuff I've seen is very expensive and nothing has turned up in any searches when I've looked.
So, they do use a magnetometer. There are similar priced watches that have a GPS chip running android.
I will see if I can find the link. I read it in a trade magazine on an article for the national ploughing competition in Ireland.
It was a cab mounted system if I remember rightly so it would be vastly cheaper than a plough mounted or one with a steering interface. I will email some of the agri lot and see if they have a copy of the magazine. I am on the dairy side.
Just found a bluetooth GPS receiver small enough to hide on a car for just £1 on an auction site! First time I've ever seen one of those for that money.
Thats the problem with these search engines, they only show you what they want you to see especially since its gone all encrypted. They can seriously influence markets and put some manufacturers/companies out of business by showing you sites they want you to see.
Side note. Its interesting to see Fendt are going for smaller robots/devices unlike the other manufacturers dont you think? Me thinks they are looking to tap into the consumer market if I was a long term betting man.
Not just Fendt. Some robotic mower companies are looking at fitting them. No more wire boundary on the lawn. I expect you would use a smart phone app and Bluetooth to set them up and leave them.
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Topic: Compass
