Best way to make a gpx tracklog ?

I want to make a tracklog of a days movements in order to geotag photos. I’ll be driving and hiking. My options seem to be:

1. iPhone. Easy, but will I chew up the battery?
2. Garmin Instinct – small but a pain in the butt to use the tiny buttons etc.
3. Garmin 830 – any reason that will not work ?
4. Buy some dedicated thing – what ?

What does the team think?

What’s a track log

I’m pretty sure that you used to be able to do this in Garmin Basecamp using a Garmin generated gpx track that geotagged the photos with the gps position whose timestamp matched the photo’s time taken Exit data (other utilities are also available).

Presumably taking the photos with a phone negates the need for this.

Also, my cheapo Canon camera had an app. that would connect with my phone & use its gps coordinates to tag the photo it was taking.

I used sports-tracker    (note hyphen important) for years but got fed up with it crashing but a good thing is that on the map of an activity there is a camera icon where a picture had been taken, click for thumbnail click again to see full pic pretty good and the app is still around….ridewithgps which I now use does show a tiny tiny wheeny wheeny tiny tiny miniscule black dot on map where photo has been taken and have never worked out if can make a bigger icon…useless as have to know that’s where you took a picture and max magnification to see them

Just to expand a bit on my original post – my camera writes the capture time into the image file and if I have a gpx file showing my route, a software like Lightroom will make a map showing the route and also where each photo was taken. The question is – how best to create that gpx file?

(My camera brand also has an app that supposedly connects with the camera and tags photos with GPS coordinates. Like all camera apps, it’s a complete waste of electrons so I don’t use it)

Both your Instinct and your Edge will create a tracklog, probably in .FIT format only though. If Lightroom won’t read that, then you can just export the file from Garmin Connect in regular .GPX format.

I bought a Lumix camera with built-in GPS to geotag photos but just use my phone now that image quality has improved. I’m mostly using it for signposts and track/path issues.

Not got an iPhone. But with an external battery this would be an easy option.

Instinct, just start it in the morning and stop it in the evening. Then wait 5 minutes while it slooooooooooowly saves the activity. Not sure why you think the buttons are “tiny”, tbh.

Edge 830 probably won’t have enough battery for a full day’s activities. My 530 can manage about 7 hours or so, granted that’s with Varia + HR + power connected – assuming you turn off all unneeded externals you should get a bit more.

I’ve got an Instinct, and my instinct (ha ha) tells me to go with that as it’s easy.

My 530 can manage about 7 hours or so, granted that’s with Varia + HR + power connected – assuming you turn off all unneeded externals you should get a bit more.

Have you considered a new battery? I get twice that with the same peripherals, and my 530 is 3 years old.

Drive in, drop the laptop off, drive home.  Then do your bike commute

Have you considered a new battery? I get twice that with the same peripherals, and my 530 is 3 years old.

Not really an issue, longest bike ride I ever do is <4hrs, and while I do sometimes use it for navigating on ultras it’s more of an emergency-switch-it-on-where-the-****-are-we kind of thing, rather than something I leave running all the time.

Presumably there are apps that will record a gps track straight onto your phone.

I used my Instinct for a 5 day 100 mile walk last year and it was just ok battery wise if I started each day with a full charge. Strava or OS maps on the iPhone might work, but you may have to use aeroplane mode to eke out the electrons. I’m another one that doesn’t understand the comment about the instinct buttons, particularly since you’re only going to be pressing them at the beginning and the end of your day.