ATV Riding in Indian River, MI, and GPS Tools

I've tried most of the GPS mapping solutions out there for Android, using my $45 Samsung phone (Craigslist find) as the test bed.  I was really hoping I could get an open source solution that would meet my needs.  The closest I found was called Aripuca.  It is almost exactly what I want, and I started playing around with the code, there is a lot of promise to this app.

The most advertising I saw was for Backcountry Navigator.  This app has good ratings on the Google Play store, but costs $10.  I figure this is not a bad price to pay if it is decent.  I tried the trial version and eventually bought the pro version.  I was quickly finding a lot of bugs with this app, such as my tracks drawing in the middle of a lake or a lot of flicker on the screen when the maps would redraw.

In between I'm not sure how many others I tried, but my favorite by far is a gem called OruxMaps.  If you're used to a Garmin eTrex, you will feel pretty close to home using this app.  It is EXTREMELY customizable and 'just works'.  Never had a FC, and almost always had expected behavior.  The only strange thing I found was at some point I had it navigating to a point, and I could not figure out how to 'cancel' the navigation, so it was always drawing a straight line from my position to the point it was trying to navigate me to.  Other than this annoyance it performed flawlessly.

So, here is our route in the Indian River area.  I used OruxMaps to record the route.  I shared it with myself by uploading it to my Google Drive account as a GPX file.  Once in drive I downloaded it to my laptop, where I tried to re upload it to Google Maps with very poor success.  I played with this for several hours, trying to modify the GPX file and get Maps to load the whole thing, but it would only display about half of the entire track.

I finally came across GPSVisualizer.com, a cool site that will let you upload your gpx file and visualize it in a number of different ways.  One of the ways you can save the file is to a site called EveryTrail.com, which is kind of like a blog site for your trips.  Here is the link it generated for our trip in Indian River:

Indian River CES Trip 2012 at EveryTrail

EveryTrail - Find hiking trails in California and beyond

Later I'll post about my Ram mount on the four wheeler and maybe some screenshots of OruxMaps in action.

Craigslist Pickin': Handheld Computer with Touchscreen, SD Storage, GPS, Wifi, and Bluetooth, $45.

How about this for a deal:  Used Samsung Admire, purchased used on Craigslist, that I plan to use as a standalone GPS on my ATV.

I rooted the device and removed all of the bloatware, and tested out an offline GPS app this morning, worked great.

Seriously, this is a lot of hardware for $45.  Entry level phones like this get kicked to the wayside, but they have a lot of life left in them!

Alternative Cell Phone Screen Adhesive

My wife dropped her Motorola Defy while pulling our kids in the wagon down a hill.  Two kids in the wagon (roughly 70 lbs total) plus the downhill momentum meant the poor Defy met its 'life-proof' match and lost the battle.  The Corning Gorilla Glass was totally shattered.

I bought the glass replacement on eBay for about $20.  One thing the seller failed to mention is that I'd need some special adhesive strips to actually install the screen.  From what I observed during disassembly, the adhesive is a thin, foam-like material with a strong adhesive on both sides.  A little research and I found that it is readily available from some online cellphone repair shops or, of course, on eBay.

Welp, I already had the phone apart so I ran down to my local hardware store to see what I could use in a pinch.  I had some contact cement in my hand and ready to purchase, but before checking out I asked one of the hardware store guys what was available in the way of double-sided tape.  Because there are so many options I told him what I was doing.  He thought for a moment and led me over to the aisle with all of the draft sealing stuff.  He tore open this box (see below) and said he thought that the tape included might be perfect.  I think it was a great suggestion and I bought this window insulating kit for $2.99 with the roll of tape included.  The included tape is thin, extremely sticky, and presumably can handle a wide temperature range (this is just a guess, however).  I am not sure if it will yellow or become brittle over time, but I decided to give it a shot.

Here's what I purchased:

 

The first stem was to cover all of the edges of the glass, being careful not to obscure any of the holes where there might be a light sensor or a hole for the earpiece. 

 

After application, I trimmed around the edges with a razor blade.  Here is the final assembly, after trimming, with the adhesive exposed and ready for installation:

 

And here it is, reinstalled into the plastic bezel:

 

Reassembled and working fine.  Of course, I doubt there is any sort of water resistance any longer, but it looks as good as new.