Looking for a simple GPS for "trackback"
 

The countryside around me is interesting but very confusing - a mixture of country roads, farm tracks, bike tracks, canal tracks, patches of forest. It's both a temptation and a navigational nightmare, and I have no sense of direction, so I want a GPS that will let me retrace my path home.

- Do the cheap Garmins work well for this? I was thinking of an Etrex H

- Is the Etrex H's screen reasonably easy to read when it is mounted on bike handlebars?

I hope this proves to be a good thread to follow. I like keeping things simple. Already having a good computer and not desiring all the cardio bells and whistles on the fancy Garmins, I too, would like to have a solid, basic GPS. One with a big, bright screen and that can be updated with maps of roads, trails and shortcuts around the USA and other countries.

Well, that's not the H! The HCX has a colour map screen - but I wouldn't call it big. Your best bet for a large screen might be a PDA with GPS attachment or a smart phone. Some of the cheap Amdroid phones have GPS; this one is only £100:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/android-2-2-du...item3cb5c4e700

But you'd need the right software, and I doubt that GPS reception is as good as an H series Garmin.

Smartphone with a cyclometer app, I've used Cyclemter and B.iCycle with an iPhone, or a Garmin Edge 500. The main issue with the smartphone is battery life. They work fine without reception but you need connectivity for them to depict maps. They'll show your track on the screen without connectivity.

Have you tried a smartphone off road under heavy tree cover?

The garmin Forerunner 101 can function as a cyclometer and has a simple track back feature. I've used one on my folding bike for years. Another Garmin I've heard good things about is the "Gecko".

I have this model...

http://catalog.ebay.com/Garmin-Forer...d=p3286.c0.m14

Here is a pic of it on one of my folders...

http://s164.photobucket.com/albums/u...t=DSC01999.jpg

I use it for running, but I have a Garmin ForeRunner 305 GPS watch that has a 14 hour battery life. When I get home, I can plug it into the free Windows software package SportTracks, and it overlays where I ran over a Google Maps map, shows elevations, speeds, and all sorts of stuff. Very interesting and probably just the info you're looking for.

-Warr

I haven't experience a significant issue with that but perhaps the tree cover wasn't heavy enough? The iPhone GPS receiver seems to be pretty sensitive, perhaps even more so than the Garmin 705 I have.

I also have the Garmin eTrex Vista HCX.

The screen isn't big, but you can see where you've been, so it's not difficult to turn around and "follow the squiggly line" back home. You can also create a "track" using various websites and download it as a .gpx file. Then use the Garmin software to send it to the GPS. I used that method to plot a 4-day tour (up to two tracks per day).

If you want maps, you'll need to purchase the map, and an micro-SD card.

Yes, the eTrex H has a decent trackback feature and the screen is quite usable in place of a cyclometer and to see your squiggly-line path. When you activate 'trackback' it'll analyze your path and identify where you made significant turns (most of these will probably be at road junctions but some will also be where the road has a curve). Then as you approach the turn an arrow pops up showing the direction.

But note that using trackback only works to retrace your path - frequently there will be shorter ways to get back on course which you can see if you have a unit that includes maps of the area. So you might want to consider models like the eTrex Venture or Legend which do have map capability.

I go the smartphone route. I have a Droid X and the stock GPS on it is great, especially being able to zoom in to streetview along the route (too cool)! The simplest free apps all have total distance, max speed, elapsed time etc, those basics are also good enough for me. GPS running on a smartphone will kill your battery fast. Amazon - 3 extra batteries for <$25. Just in case that isn't safe enough, I keep my old Garmin Nuvi that the Droid X replaced in the panniers. And paper bicycle transportation maps. If I get lost after all of that, I deserve it!

Thanks - that's exactly the information I was looking for.

I went for the H, as the UK maps for Garmins have a very poor reputation - there's no way that they'd show the trails that make up a lot of my routes. You can get topographical maps for free, but they don't show bridges and the area I'm riding is crisscrossed with canals and streams. So getting a map screen and "detailed" maps would cost me several times the cost of the H and give me very little in return.

The b&w screen on the H is nicely readable in daylight and by entering 20-30 keypoints and constructing 5-10 routes out of them (which the H will let you do directly, without a cable - its slow but tolerable if you do a few points a day while watching TV) I can provide a network that runs through most of the places I ride. So if I don't want to use trackback I can just aim for the closest point on the network and then I'm on a sure route home (or wherever.)

If I was road touring in new territory, instead of off-roading in the same area most of the time, I'm sure a map screen would be much more attractive. Especially if Garmin's UK maps caught up with their US ones. And even more so if they broke them in $10 chunks covering small areas instead of £100 cards covering half of England.

Ok - that really is cool!