Home made GPS with mapping and tracking

I used the Hope light mount, think it was £7 from CRC.

There’s a hole which runs down the middle of the “light-clamp” bit which is perfect in size for the self tapping screws used to mount fans on computers.

I wouldn’t trust glue alone with this kind of clamp.

I picked up a Defy+ and flagrantly copied the mount used by Conan257. Couldn’t find a suitable screw even with a small mountain of scrap computers to pick through. A small bolt/nut/washer has done the trick though.

Gave it plenty of abuse along the canal and it’s holding up fine. I’d still prefer a proper screw on mount but I can’t find a thing.

Defy+

Any OruxMaps users found a cursor that is actually visible?

Managed to pick up a Defy mini at Tescos for £39, have mounted it to the stem using a garmin etrex mount, slightly modified to get a flat platform and used heavy duty velcro to mount a plastic back case for the phone.

Tested it out this afternoon on a 25 mile ride taking in some pretty bumpy tracks and no movement at all.

The heavens opened half way round so also tested how waterproof the phone was, no problem apart from the amount of water on the screen causing it to open up various menus on oruxmaps.

Impressed with the phones GPS as it didnt lose the signal at all, even through some woods.

Result!

My Cases have turned up now, along with a Hope light clamp so I just need to join the 2 together and I should be able to just snap the phone into the hard case and remove it afterwards.

Cheers for the Pics Markgravo, thats what I was thinking but using a phone case instead of the actual phone back.

Glad others are having success. For sure it’s not Garmin 8XX, but still serves perfectly well.

Waiting to see if the case option works, I was always worried about a drop/rock/descent knocking it out!

SRAM have just released an adaptor to allow 605/705 to mount to the new quarter turn mounts.

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/sram-quickview-computer-mount-adaptor/

one of these might be a good way of mounting a phone to a standard Garmin mount. SRAM do a central mount for about 13 quid for the quarter turn GPS’s

The cheap back case that I got off the Bay is a very tight fit around the phone, I think the case is more likely to come off the mount before the phone comes out of the case!

link to the case?

Cant get a link at the moment as I am at work, but the item number was 380651028725.

I’ve finally realised that I don’t have the spare cash to go with a Garmin 8* and I think this will provide most of the bang for a lot less buck

Can someone set me straight on the requirements?

A Motorola Defy Mini (other small smart phone would do I guess?)

Does it need to be able to read SIM cards?

A USB connection to download the App (OruxMaps?) – I assume this can be done without SIM?

An SD card to store extra maps

A connector for the bars or stem

Can you carry extra batteries for these phones?

thank you!

Any Android phone will do, the defy mini just happens to be small, cheap and quite robust.

You dont need a SIM as you can download oruxmaps and any offline maps you want using your home wifi, if you have it, the phone just uses GPS when your riding.

You will need an SD card as the offline map files can be quite large and oruxmaps writes to the card, the Defy mini comes with a 2GB card which I have found OK at the moment.

The Defy mini does have a removable battery so you could carry a spare, I have done a couple of 4 hour rides recently with oruxmaps tracking the route and the phones battery has had about 35% left at the end.

There are a few mounting options for the phone as mentioned earlier in the thread.

Hope the above helps.

With no sim in my defy mini, and wifi turned off, I’ve had it tracking and mapping (using alpine quest) all day one day, and all the next, off a single charge.

It gets pretty epic battery life IME – big battery for the size of screen and CPU.

Conan257 – Member
Glad others are having success. For sure it’s not Garmin 8XX, but still serves perfectly well.

Waiting to see if the case option works, I was always worried about a drop/rock/descent knocking it out!

I did 3 hours racing at the Summer Enduro last weekend using this to log the route and times on Strava, the case option + Hope light mount works a treat, it holds the phone very securely, and the whole lot survived being flooded by water/Torq mix when I had a Camelback malfunction
I`ll get some pics of it when I get a minute

Yes please for pics. I’ll probably move to this if it’s suitable as it allows me to leave the mount in place when taking the phone inside for updates/uploads.

Only trouble is I have a hole on the battery cover which will need sorting to stop water getting in…

great thanks – defy on order!

will post some pics once it’s working and in place

Excited! 😀

I just thought I’d post back here with my current solution which seems to work pretty well. Today was very sunny and I had no problems reading the display.

I got a rubberised case as discussed earlier in the thread, from ebay for a couple of quid which holds the phone pretty solidly on its own.

I’ve made a couple of slots in it and am using a velcro pump strap to hold it on the stem. It seems to work pretty well though if I do it up too tight, it bends the case and tends to make the phone pop out. Otherwise (eg I tighten it just enough), it’s rock solid in terms of holding the phone and I think I’ll just put a small plate of metal between the slots (so that it can’t bend if I tighten it up more) then there’ll be no chance of me moving it if it hit it with my hand when using it.

Click this one for full size

Excuse the crap pics, the bike was in the back of the van at the time 🙄

Ebay Phone case, M4 or M5 CSK screw, corresponding Locknut, Hope Light mount from CRC 8)

I got myself a defy mini off eBay with faulty speaker for under £30, had an old reflector bracket, so have bodged it on the bars with that for now, is strong, but currently not removable very easily. I want to try and get a quick release set up with 2 clamps so I can quickly swap it from road bike to mtb.

I’ve tried mapmyride, and planning to have a look at strava (as it generally sounds more reliable), but would really like to run orux for the os maps, has anybody got any links to easy(as poss) how to guides for android?

I’m fairly I.T. literate but not played about with digital maps much before.

Cheers,

Sam

Oruxmaps has a user guide that covers off the maps…it is a good user guide.

The system is very good, but as I only use it for tracking, I’ve never seen the screen during operation. App is started, GPS turned on, tracking started and phone in bag on my back. Do ride and once done, remove phone and stop tracking.

100! 🙂

Orux is very easy – To download maps:

– Set the map to the one you want – click the map icon at the top right and then ‘switch map’ and select the one you want (I’ve been using Ordnance SM (UK)).

– download the maps for the area you want – click the map icon acgain and then scroll down to ‘Map creator’

– Select the area you want and then the tick
– Select the layers you want – the higher the number, the more detailed it is (eg you see a smaller area on the map – smaller scale) – the higher numbers require much more space (since there are more tiles for a given area). You may need to scroll the screen to see this bit
– Give it a name and then click download.

Then in the main view, click the map icon at the top right and then ‘switch map’ and select the one you want from the ‘offline’ list.

FWIW, I’m thinking of switching to OSM maps instead of OS – I find that OS is actually a bit too detailed and hard to really read when riding the bike.

Very interesting thread this. On the strength of it I’ve just bought a second hand experia mini pro which isn’t water proof but does have ant+ so I can connect a hrm. all of this comes in a lot cheaper than a bryton etc so thanks guys.

Very interesting thread. I have downloaded Oruxmaps, now trying to get maps. I have tried to follow what clubber says above but I am not getting any maps. It says that it has downloaded tiles and files are created but nothing to view.

What am I doing wrong?

Mike

Yes, got it sorted. Downloaded maps. Does seem to take a while to get a fix on satellites.

Just got my new Defy Mini on ebay – can’t wait to start the DIY GPS project!

Is it possible to buy the 1/4 turn male connectors (ala Garmin) so you could use the nice “out front” mounts?

I though it should be possible to screw one of these onto a hard case and then the phone/computer could be used with one of these[/url]

take this mount[/url]

aradite/screw/etc to phone then should be able to use garmin style mount.

any idea how well or badly a Galaxy ace is likely to fair, granted they are crap phones ime, but they are common, and it should be possible to get one reasonably cheaply on ebay.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do – unfortunately the adapters seem to be taking longer to get to stock than planned (it was supposed to be by now).

mrmo – the defy mini has a pretty low spec and mine seems to run fine for what I’m using it for – eg mapping. I’ve deliberately only loaded what I need on it and turned off syncing, etc and use airplane mode to try and stop anything unnecessary running/using the battery.

Hi Clubber, i re-read the thread after posting (dur) and saw your link – hopefully those adaptors will be in stock soon!

Thanks clubber, just have to trawl the spares and repairs on ebay and try and find a small phone! that android phones keep on getting bigger is annoying when you want a tiny one!

anyone want to strap a Galaxy note on the front?

I dont know if they are still doing them but Tescos had the motorola defy mini sim free for £39 a couple of months back. You had to go in store and they were not on display, I had to ask the chap in the phone section, who was not even aware of the offer, he found one of the phones out back.

Yeah, I think someone on this thread did that 🙂

I’m very interested in doing this for route following on my road bike.

Any one know what the max battery life I could get out of one of these defy mini’s with everything bar the GPS turned off and occasional use of the screen when I need to know which way to go?

Is it feasible to use all day for 12h + ?

Also how low rent could you go on the mount. Would some of that fancy velcro combined with a simple plastic plate and some zip ties do the trick.

Also we need a list of the best phones to get for this. I suppose a decent candidate needs to be small, weather/water proof, long battery life, decent GPS chip, ANT+ if possible.

12+ h might be a push – think what most phones will manage… If I was doing that, I’d be using my ‘proper’ GPS – eg Garmin 605

Mind you, you could take spare batteries given how small and light they are now and if you’re not using the screen much, you could certainly extend the life a fair bit.

For the mount, see my pics on the previous page – that cost £3 for the case and whatever a bit of velcro costs. I’ve now got a nicer one on the go to allow me to mount it further forwards over the stem to be more in my eye line when riding (as set up above, I need to look down to see it properly). I’ll try and post pics once I’ve got it set up properly but basically, it’s the Hope light mount with a piece of aluminium to get the position right and then the case bolted on the alumninium, out just above/in front of the stem face plate.

My iPhone has tracked for 9 hours and had a decent amount of juice remaining, it could have done 12 with no bother. Everything was turned off appart from the GPS.

Don’t really want to tape my iPhone to my bars though and its not waterproof and this set up would cost about the same as a decent waterproof case for an iPhone.

Would checking the screen every so often drain it that much? How long has anyone else been able to manage?

Agreed that a Garmin would be better but I probably only ride a couple of times a year where I don’t know where I’m going and need a GPS at all so can’t justify the cost and this would have the additional benefit of being a half decent cycle computer the rest of the time.

mrmo – if it’s any help, I have Oruxmaps running on a Samsung Galaxy Europa i5800 and it runs OK. I am looking for a Defy on Ebay at the right price but this is OK for now. I don’t attach it to the bike, just set it tracking and put in a pocket.

Assuming the screen is set to turn off after 30s or so of inactivity, I’d say you’d get 12hrs.

The screen is the biggest drain in my experience, and I’ve have 6 hours of screen-on use.

Be warned, I’ve tried a couple of different glue related mountings, and after time the glue becomes unstuck. Feel free to experiment though.

My Mount arrangement is looking a little worse for wear after an OTB dismount on Saturday…..
Phone popped out and is fine but the hardshell case has cracked near the mount.
Still works ok but I doubt it`ll survive another one 😆
Ideally it needs a plate or something stiffer between hope mount and Phone case, so that will probably be the next item to make

Oops…

The phone came out of the case at 30mph when I hit a bump in the road and then got run over by at least two cars…

Shame as it was all working nicely just before that. Pics below show my latest mount (Hope clamp, section of aluminium to space the case to the middle of the stem and then the case). Anyone seen a cheap defy mini as I think I’ll replace it and just use some electrical tape to ensure that it can’t come loose…

On the bright side, I guess I’ll have a spare battery when I get a replacement 🙂

Ouch – that’s annoying! Good looking mount though.

I managed to get a nearly new one from ebay for under £40, yet to do the mount yet but will pay heed to your experience.

What about velcro in the case (hooks) and on the phone (fuzz)?

The case is too close fitting to put anything like velcro in it. I don’t intend to take the phone out of the case very often so I don’t see an issue with taping it in – just a small amount will be enough I reckon. Or some double sided tape inside the case, probably. The case is really to fit the phone in without drilling a hole in the phone’s back cover.

I see – I was hoping to use 2 cases, one on the road bike with a SRAM 1/4 turn thingy and one with a hope clamp.

I guess I can use the 1/4 turn one with other garmin a-like mounts for the other bikes, and keep the other case for spares.