Now I don't have a GPS unit myself (although I would like one), but from
what I understand, they do have a current speed, not an average, although
you can get that as well. Most units update about every second, so they can
give you a pretty good speed indication, although probably not nearly as
accurate as a bike computer (I do have one of those, on my bike though). I
consider Garmin to have the best GPS products, here is a link to one of
their units: http://www.garmin.com/products/emap. They do show you the path
you've traveled, not as a crow flies - they have backtrack functions so you
can't really get lost. Neat units. I've even heard of a guy that used one to
get out of a speeding ticket. He was pulled over and the cop said he was
speeding and he had been using a GPS unit as a speedo since his was broken,
and he said to the cop, "This GPS unit said that I wasn't speeding," and
showed the cop the unit. Unbeknownst to the cop, he had changed it to show
average speed instead of current speed, and the cop bought it.
-Mitch
-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Tyler [mailto:mtyler@hctc.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 5:19 PM
To: Daniel Neuman; mitch@ias.net
Cc: roadster List
Subject: Re: Bike speedometers in the roadster
>BUT..there is no way GPS is going to be as accurate
>as my bike comp in sensing things like speed, trip distance and total
>distance.
>My comp is accurate to.1 MPH can GPS do that??
No, but it can target a missile to within 30 feet ;-)
Seems like a GPS is not going to give you an istantaneous reading of
current speed as much as an average speed over a given increment of time.
I wonder if the distance part of the speed is calculated as the crow
flies...........
Marc T.
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