Review of a $30 GPS Speedometer

Can’t say what the sampling rate is on my Android. I haven’t seen anything clipped - use it on bike too, and used it to figure out the train I was on was doing 114 mph. Same app?
Geotracker


Thanks kevburg, mine clipped both times. I’ll have to figure it out. It was spiking 5.4 - 5.7 going out and 5.7 - 6.3 on return. My low was down to 2.9 when I dropped into wave troughs. Happened on 2 trips. GPS gives 1 second updates, (1k). The GeoTrack site explained updates. If I interpreted the explanation and it applied to this app, the more frequent update uses more battery. More satellite triangulation also takes longer, but provides greater location accuracy. The GeoTrack updates every 10 seconds (10k). The GPS plots the dots and fills in the lines, so as long as your course is relatively straight. The speed is corrected based on dot to dot updated, but also averaging the trip. When I do repeat trips from point A to B and back to A, distances are the same for all trips unless, unless I take a small course correction. I love the graph and the map course line, because it’s saved in the phone memory and l can compare trips. The GPS has the same essentially the same info, but has current speed has 1 second updates. It only stores course track on one screen with no storage feature.

I like your track. I notice your speed spike at the end. Do you go all out for the final run or is that an assist from tides or wind. Tides seem to be a bigger hurdle than wind. What kind of boat and paddle?

That trip is up river first half, then back downhill. Back is usually against the wind. Epic 18x, Werner Kalliste bent, 65 year old motor. I don’t pause it during pit stops.

Couple of tidbits found out over the years:

If you like google earth you can send the route as kml file to your laptop and open it there. Earth has under Edit (for some reason) an elevation/speed chart which interacts with the satellite view. Very cool to see the downed trees that dropped my speed - not an easy boat to maneuver thru them.

Note the app tracks you even when off. I suspect your phone logs your location (for 911and those creepy “where you went last month” e-mails from google) and the app just taps the log.

I could not get service in Canada and my phone ate battery like crazy trying to make a connection so I put it in airplane mode. Surprised the app still worked! The map had zero detail though since it couldn’t download from google maps. Wish I had tried zooming in on my route ahead of time since there is a chance the google map service caches maps locally. Other lesson learned: airplane mode drops power consumption to maybe 1/5 of normal.

I get dropouts where it loses track and draws a straight line. Thought it was because 2 feet off the lowest point of land for miles gets poor reception but usually it works just fine on the same route. My guess is the phone stops spending energy tracking you if you haven’t used it in a couple of hours, so I occasionally open the app or at least take a picture to keep android awake.

I used it on about 5 trips previously and the colored line stopped but there was a straight dotted line. There are permissions that keep it running as background, even if the phone is powered off, put to sleep, blank screen or whatever. Battery saver kills it as soon as the screen blacks out. Make sure you don’t close all apps, but I think it might run though that. The app is actually a tracker for to monitor fleets, packages, etc. From what I read. I use a 145 Tsunami with straight shaft Kalliste 250 cm. Making a comeback and happy with progress. Next year hopefully better.

I use the Meilan and it works very well.
Tells me everything I need to know, (speed, distance, etc), and a charge will last a similar 10 hours.
Route can be reviewed later on phone app and very revealing about actual arc of travel when I thought I was straightlining it.
Cheap at $45 here in Australia and its small so it fits easily in to PFD pocket.
I recommend to all kayakers.

Wellington, I looked at the site. Mostly 5 rating with a few commenting on waiting to link with satellites, hard to set up and poor directions. One complaint was dropping out in NY City; possibly signal blocked by city high rise canyons, which could be a problem in mountain area. Since it’s a GPS, do you know if the program continues even if it drops signal; have you experienced that problem. Any tips?

Displays two lines of data: Riding time, speed, max speed and avg speed. For the price, that gives everything you need in front of you. Can the mount be adapted for the deck of a kayak.

Although I get more data on my Garmin, I now only use it for basic information reported on the bike computer. A smart phone with an app like GeoTrack can operate in the background to save phone battery; however, settings have to be on or off as noted or the solid course track drops and a dotted line shows up instead. I believe that dotted line is used to base course speed and distance. The big problem is battery saving mode, which kills the travel line. Other posts mentioned transfering the recorded data to a laptop for future comparison. I like the travel track because it shows how well you are handling deflection due to wind or current.

Using the bike speedometer with a phone app is the best of both worlds and offers big possibilities for measuring progress and things like paddle efficiency covered in another thread. My understanding of paddles, paddle efficiency, paddling technique and GPS apps has grown exponentially since joining the forum a few months ago. Thanks to the comments and many contributors.

I wouldn’t take a review by someone who complains about weak signal in NYC serious. That reviewer really has no idea how GPS works. That is in the nature of GPS and you could test a military-grade GPS and have the same problem. It is like a reviewer complaining about butter melting in the sun.

You are spot on (IMHO) with using the phone to track since you don’t need to constantly see that while paddling. And then use a cheap GPS computer to know instant speed while paddling.

That’s spot on.

I just ordered a Meilen based largely on Wellington’s post. I’ll share my impressions after I use it a few times.

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Great. Can’t go wrong.

Compared the phone gps to Lowrance in my boat. They were 3/4 mph difference.

I’ve used my $30 Meilen M3 3 times now. Overall I’m impressed. It mounts easily and securely to a front thwart with one rubber band and can even be tilted for easier viewing. The display is easy to read. The buttons have a nice feel.

Yesterday I used it side by side with an older Garmin. The Meilen speed display sometimes jumps around…like showing 5.1 then 5.2 then 5.3 then 3.6. So you have to sometimes ignore false readings and get your speed estimate when the readings are stable. I think the speed readings are more stable the faster you go. It shuts down somewhere around 1 mph. The Garmin has a smoother speed reading and works below 1 mph. At the end of my test route they both showed 2.4 miles, both showed an average speed of 5.2 mph and both showed a 6.8 mph max speed. I was impressed with how closely they matched. I still haven’t used the Meilen on smaller rivers with more tree cover.

I’m enjoying it and the sanity checks it provides. It’s darn difficult to average even 3 mph upstream on my local river at current water levels. Going downstream anything over 6 mph feels fast. One reason I was interested in using a GPS again is that I was curious to see the speed of a used 16’ Bell Magic that I bought since it really didn’t feel much faster than my 15’ Bell Merlin II. So while it’s not conclusive it was interesting to me that both boats averaged 5.7 mph downstream when measured on consecutive days.

Overall I’m happy with the Meilen.

Always wondered about how a canoe compared to a kayak. The GeoTrack app and Garmin track very closely. Except for glitches in the max/min speeds, times, distance, and average speed is a match. Even if there are errors, without it, you have no clue. I initially checked my distances on a chart with dividers against the scale, and the stopwatch on my digital watch. Numbers were consistent. I found GPS to be reliable checking point to point, and has been accurate in marking partially submerged underwater obstructions, old piers and such objects. Even if a GPS is only capable of read accurately to within 50 ft, the error rate is insignificant when coving 10 or 20 miles.

Not if you’re looking for a sprint speed. Ten miles I’ll trust mapmyrun as you said.

True, but it give a starting point.