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I posted to blog.makezine.com
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/07/1920s_version_of_gps.html
In response to our post on the 1930s car-based mechanical mapping device, MAKE reader Simon posted a link to this earlier, wrist-borne scroll-map navigator, from the 20s!
Here's a bit more background on it.
Plus Four Wristlet Route Indicator: Original GPS
More:
1930s answer to GPS
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July 10 2010, 6:01pm | More »
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I posted to blog.makezine.com
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/07/1930s_answer_to_gps.html
Found this on Bored Panda, in a round-up of cool, wacky inventions from the past. Apparently the paper-roll map advanced based on the speed of the car. But wait, what happened when you turned onto a new street? You'd have to have quite the library of map-scrolls stashed in your car, and be doing a lot of scroll-swappin' At least the idea was pointing in the right direction.
18 Cool Inventions From the Past
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July 9 2010, 7:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2010/06/20/reverse-geocache-puzzle-gets-downsized/
June 20 2010, 11:00am | More »
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I posted to blog.makezine.com
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/05/custom_shapelock_gps_mount.html


Having a hard time figuring out how to affix your GPS unit to a secure spot on your dash? Crappy suction cup mounts always falling off? Sandbag mounts sliding around all over the place? If you don't mind sticking things in your HVAC vents, you might consider trying something similar to this custom ShapeLock GPS mount from Portuguese maker Rui Cabral.
In the Maker Shed:


ShapeLock
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May 10 2010, 7:00am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2010/04/20/gps-embedded-in-visor/
April 20 2010, 9:07am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2010/04/06/a-cop-in-every-car/
April 6 2010, 9:27am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2010/03/21/more-functional-gps-in-minutes/
March 21 2010, 4:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2010/03/17/arduino-balloon-tracking/
March 17 2010, 1:42pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2010/02/11/hud-for-real-life-capture-the-flag/

If you’ve played any of the Splinter Cell games you’ll remember the PDA that [Sam Fisher] carried around with him. What if you could have one of your own when playing capture-the-flag? [Brad] has created the ZephyrEye as an electronic command and communications device for real-life games.
Each player carries around their own unit. The ZephyrEye has a GPS module, Xbee module, LCD screen, and control buttons. This allows a player to setup one of several different games, map out the game field including base locations and flag locations, and monitor a time limit and scoring. Other players can join the game in progress. The best part? The GPS modules report tracking to each handheld and act as radar for your team and the enemy team. We’ve got a couple of demo videos after the break.
Words can’t describe how delighted this would have made us back in the day. We don’t play outside with the other neighborhood kids anymore (insert dirty-old-man joke here) but that might change just because of this device. We may end up joining [Barney Stinson] for some amazingly awesome laser-tag games after all.
[Brad's] posted hardware information and source code so that you can use to throw together a dozen or so units. We think the next version should incorporate a wearable display.


[via Tom's Guide]

February 11 2010, 1:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/12/11/advanced-in-car-computer-system/
December 11 2009, 12:28pm | More »
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I posted to blog.makezine.com
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/11/google_maps_navigation_ported_to_g1.html
If you own an older Android phone and were curious about Google Maps Navigation, but were afraid to ask, here's instructions to get it running. [via AndroidCentral]
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November 13 2009, 6:00am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/11/07/urban-defender-location-aware-game/

What do gangs, territories, cities, and glowing blue balls have in common? No, not that one drunken night you can’t seem to remember, rather a new location aware game called Urban Defender.
The concept behind the game is simple. A player hold a ball that knows its current location and can notify you if needed via LEDs and a speaker of changes in its environment. He or she then runs around the city until the ball tells them of an unclaimed or enemy territory. Bounce the ball against a building and that territory is now claimed.
The ball itself is a prototype combination of an Arduino, Accelerometer, vibration motor, LEDs, XBee, batteries, and wire all packed inside of an industrial rubber gym ball. Unfortunately after testing the Urban Defender team found the GPS and a few other components would need to be kept outside of the ball and on the player.
Finally, a project that warrants the use of an Arduino. Anyone up for a game?

November 7 2009, 2:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/10/30/aida-the-dashboard-bot/

In an attempt to create more interaction with our vehicles, researchers have created AIDA. AIDA is basically a car computer and GPS that has some well designed personification. That cute little face will learn your daily habits and schedules and make recommendations to keep you out of traffic. We really like the idea, and the little bit we see of AIDA already has us falling in love, but won’t the placement be a distraction? We already know some people who give their car a name and treat it like a person, we don’t want to imagine what would happen if their car actually had some interactive personality. AIDA’s motion and emotive display are worthy of the crabfu challenge for sure, but do we want AIDA on our dashboard? Yes, most emphatically. She can sit right by the little hula girl.
[via BotJunkie]

October 30 2009, 9:15am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/10/19/reverse-geocache-puzzle/

[Mikal] wanted to create an awesome electronic wedding gift for his friend who was moving to France. After experimenting with a few things, he settled on creating a puzzle box that would only open in a certain location. Since his friend introduced him to the Arduino, he fittingly used one in the design, along with a serial GPS module and a mini character LCD. The box itself is locked using a servo-controlled chopstick, which could theoretically be snapped if [Mikal] really screwed something up. To save battery life, he used a small Pololu module to provide power that uses only 0.01 microamps in standby, and can be shut off by the Arduino.
The box was designed to be mysterious yet self-explanatory. When the button on the front is pushed, the box comes to life for 3 minutes, displaying the distance away from secret location. Additionally, it warns how many tries are left: the button can only be pushed 50 times before it is sealed “forever”. In order to open the box, you have to be within 2km of the destination. Theoretically, you can narrow down the location to one of 2 points after 2 readings, but a less scientific approach would probably be a lot more fun.
This seems like an amazing gift, and the same concept could be repurposed into hundreds of other devices. For extra fun, he could have placed it at a geocache location.

October 19 2009, 8:00am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/10/18/alzheimers-victims-fitted-with-lojack/

First it was for finding stolen cars, then keeping track of criminals, now Alzheimer’s sufferers are being fitted with tracking devices. This has been going on for some time now, but unlike the old tracking devices we’re seeing an update in technology to take advantage of the cell network for communications. The person wearing the device can be located using Uplink Time Difference Of Arrival or U-TDOA. This is the same technology that is used by 911 services to calculate the location of a cell phone.
Alzheimer’s is a frightening disease. The thought of a loved one wandering off with nothing to identify them and no recollection of who they are is a fear of every family dealing with the illness. There’s no doubt that this is a cost-effective solution that really works.
But from our perspective, can someone hot-glue a $3 Seiko to this thing? If you were designing this, would you even consider something that straps to your wrist and doesn’t have a clock on its face?
Update: Andrew corrected an error in the original post. This system uses U-TDOA for location, not GPS.

October 18 2009, 4:01pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/10/09/external-gps-for-ipod-and-iphone/
October 9 2009, 4:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/09/30/farm-hacking-7-amazing-corn-mazes/

If there’s one thing we’ve got a LOT of here in America, it’s corn. In the past few years Corn Mazes have become a wildly popular fall activity for all ages. We’ve enjoyed many ourselves and part of what we like about them is that they’re a hack. Whether made by the farmer down the road or a professional company most now use GPS to ensure a fun, challenging, and cool looking corn maze.
We spoke with [Scott Skelly] who owns Corn Mazes America, read the interview after the break. When [Scott] originally started building corn mazes they were using a grid system to layout the mazes without GPS. He knew there was a better way and started looking into some solutions. He spent quite a bit of time looking for software and talking to developers about how to meet his needs. In the end, he designed his own system using both commercial and freely available software, getting everything to talk to each other for his final product. Here’s one of his designs from 2006 at his own farm in Wisconsin:

A maze starts as nothing more than a large field of corn. The design is created using a computer, then translated into GPS coordinates by fitting it into a field whose outline coordinates were previously captured on foot. Once the field coordinates are reconciled with the map design the data is used in one of two ways; the routes can be made by tilling under a path when the corn is very young, or more commonly it is cut lawn-mower-style when the corn is anywhere from knee-high to full grown. This corn-meets-satellite hack makes for a whole lot of fun!
We’ve collected 7 more of our favorite corn maze aerial pictures and posted them after the break. When you’ve finished building your zombie escaping from the grave load up the family and visit your local maize maze.

2008 Sever’s Corn Maze, Shakopee, MN

2002 Fairwyn Farms, Burlington, WI (photo: cornfieldmaze.com)

2009 Tom’s Maze, Germantown, OH

2004 Liberty Corn Maze, Liberty, MO

2009 Jonamac Orchard, Malta, IL

2005 Larson’s Farm Market Maze, New Milford, CT

2007 Uncle Shuck’s, Dawsonville, GA

September 30 2009, 3:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/09/17/gps-usb-port-repair/
September 17 2009, 11:00am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/09/05/harry-potter-marauders-map-realized/
September 5 2009, 4:25pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/08/26/wifi-mapping-with-a-smartphone/

Not so long ago, mapping WiFi required a laptop, GPS, a big antenna and Kismet/NetStumbler. Today’s smartphones have replaced even this task. For those of us running a GPS and WiFi equipped Windows Mobile phone, WiFiFoFum is an excellent and simple solution, as well as a great companion for installing an AP. Start up WiFiFoFum, put your phone on the dash and let it collect the locations of the APs you find while driving around. You can then save the file in several formats: XML, txt, Wi-scan, POI Database, MemoryMap, Netstumbler, and even as a KML File for Google Earth/Google Maps. We have also found it to be a really handy tool for setting up WiFi in a large area, to help find the best home for the router which provides the best coverage. WiFiFoFum is also available for the iPhone via the App Store.

August 26 2009, 2:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/06/25/keychain-gps-finder/
June 25 2009, 1:30pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/05/24/usb-gps/
May 24 2009, 3:57pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/05/10/gps-logger-with-wireless-trigger/
May 10 2009, 10:36am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/05/08/whereavr-aprs-tracker/
May 8 2009, 1:26pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/05/04/aprs-tracking/
May 4 2009, 3:07pm | More »
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I posted to hackszine.com
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/05/gps_on_ipod_nano.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

Using a GPS reference board and an Atmel ATMEGA324 microcontroller, engineer Bengamin Kokes has created a prototype GPS peripheral for his iPod nano. To display coordinates, the device uses Advanced iPod Remote commands to send a 4-color image to the iPod screen, a technique Kokes picked up after seeing it implemented in an Alpine car stereo.
iPod GPS [via Hack a Day]
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May 1 2009, 11:00pm | More »
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I posted to blog.makezine.com
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/05/gps_on_ipod_nano.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

Using a GPS reference board and an Atmel ATMEGA324 microcontroller, engineer Bengamin Kokes has created a prototype GPS peripheral for his iPod nano. To display coordinates, the device uses Advanced iPod Remote commands to send a 4-color image to the iPod screen, a technique Kokes picked up after seeing it implemented in an Alpine car stereo.
iPod GPS [via Hack a Day]
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May 1 2009, 11:00pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/04/27/ipod-gps/
April 27 2009, 8:31am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/03/23/autonomous-atv/
March 23 2009, 7:14pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/03/18/gps-cradle-upgrade-to-bluetooth/
March 18 2009, 2:19pm | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/03/08/model-rocket-gps-and-data-logger/
March 8 2009, 7:23pm | More »
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I posted to blog.makezine.com
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/gps_mapping_meetup_in_nyc_221_222.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

There's an OpenStreetMaps group mapping going down in Manhattan next weekend, no prior GPS-ing required -
OpenStreetMap is only as good as the contributions of the people who edit it. To encourage and help people to edit, experienced mappers run Mapping Parties. The public is invited to them. Often the organiser has GPS receivers to loan out. The attendees receive instruction in the use of the GPS receiver. The simplest way to record information is to take waypoints, and write down notes about that waypoint number on paper. There are more efficient methods, but require more fussy fiddling and aren't appropriate for the beginner.
When they return to the venue with a list of waypoints, the experienced mapper(s) help them download them off the GPS receiver and load them into an OpenStreetMap editor such as JOSM. The points get converted into Map Features and the hand written information is entered. The data gets uploaded to the map and made available to the world.
The Mapping Party is a convivial, community event. After the mapping is finished, the participants share food and drinks, and enjoy themselves. It's a party, after all!
More info available on
OpenStreetMaps' site plus be sure to
RSVP.
[via NYCResistor]
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a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2009%2F02%2Fgps_mapping_meetup_in_nyc_221_222.htmltitle=GPS%20mapping%20meetup%20in%20NYC%20-%202%2F21%20%26amp%3B%202%2F22bodytext=%20There%26apos%3Bs%20an%20OpenStreetMaps%20group%20mapping%20going%20down%20in%20Manhattan%20next%20weekend%2C%20no%20prior%20GPS-ing%20required%20-%20OpenStreetMap%20is%20only%20as%20good%20as%20the%20contributions%20of%20the%20people%20who%20edit%20it.%20To%20encourage%20and%20help%20people%20to%20edit%2C%20experienced%20mappers...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a
February 13 2009, 7:00am | More »
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I posted to hackaday.com
http://hackaday.com/2009/02/10/vaio-p-xp-install/
February 10 2009, 5:12am | More »