A GPS-Enabled Camera For Drones: Garmin Virb Elite
Continuing to track this subject of the feasibility of getting geotagged photos and videos using an Iris+ drone/UAV. It’s easy enough to do with their higher-end mapping models, but is there a hack that can enable the Iris+ to do this as well?
Apparently, the GoPro Hero4+ which you can buy with the Iris+ as the “standard” camera is not itself GPS-enabled, but Garmin has released a camera called the Virb & the Virb Elite that is GPS-enabled.
There are two different VIRB models, with the higher-priced VIRB Elite adding built-in Wi-Fi and GPS tracking. But both units include low-power ANT+ connectivity, so even the cheaper model can connect to other GPS-enabled Garmin products for GPS and Wi-Fi integration. Garmin feels that integrated GPS is the missing link, a feature lacking from the GoPro cameras, which allows richer videos by allowing for easy insertion of location, speed and elevation information.
Garmin Virb
[Via]
Example footage from an operator using a DJI Phantom equipped with a Virb Elite:
The footage looks “good enough,” but I’m personally really skeptical about going with Garmin on this one, simply because the GoPro Hero is just so widely utilized. For someone who wants to tinker, it can often be a better idea to go with the leading package — if it’s versatile enough — because more adoption means more people tinkering with it and sharing their hacks freely online…
Plus, I don’t want to be superficial, but I think the GoPro just “looks better” — and if this Vibe Elite is hitting the market, how long before GoPro puts out their own GPS-enabled model that’s better? Can’t be far behind!
But this is smart of Garmin: it looks like you can even use the Virb Edit software to overlay GPS data (recorded from another device) onto video data from a non-GPS-enabled GoPro, as in this example:
But if you’re using a GoPro, you still need some way to capture GPS data… In this video, the author says that he uses a Garmin bicycle computer to capture GPS:
So, conceiveably, there must be a way also to attach a small lightweight GPS unit to your drone (Iris+ or other), so that it can then be synced to your GoPro, if that’s your camera of choice. I don’t know if this is the one for the job, but the Edge 200 is one of Garmin’s cheaper bicycle computers at $129 (just including it as an example):
But having to go through a secondary GPS unit (such as a bicycle computer) seems like kind of a redundant process, when we know that the Iris+ already has a GPS chip embedded in it. I feel like I must be missing something here… Can’t we just access the GPS data from the flight path?
