I tried everything I could, including restores of iOS, restoring the phone/bluetooth kit, restarting the devices, switching wireless off during use (which has helped others), along with a vast array of other things, all to no avail.

I finally figured it out the other day, partially by accident.  With the devices paired, it was of course automatic for the phone to connect to the Parrot automatically when I switched the engine on.  However, I finally worked out the following:-

1. Disable Wifi (not totally sure if this is vital – your milage may vary).
2. Disable Bluetooth, then re-enable it.
3. Lastly, and this is important, BEFORE the iPhone connects automatically to the Parrot, tap the Parrot in the bluetooth device list to manually connect it.

iPad, Desire and Navicore

Falling short…

Since I got my iPad, the only thing I’ve really lamented is it’s lack of GPS and 3G.  Being the Wifi (read: cheaper) model, I had to make do with WiFi only.  As usual, my tendency to over-analyse and get the most out of anything I have got the better of me, and I started to look into how to plug the gaps in capability.  The spur was the lack of an official Geocaching app on the android OS as of yet.  Supposedly, there’s an Android version coming ‘Soon’ (and has been for about six months!).  At the moment, it’s definitely in ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ territory.

Navicores and Desires

As you may or may not know, I recently took the leap from my trusty iPhone to the ‘other side’ – i.e. Android.  Specifically, I went for an HTC desire, and haven’t regretted the switch.  Seems as though the switch was a good call at the moment.  Android, you see, is much less locked-down than Apples iOS, which although it is excellent in itself, is rather crippled, mostly to keep the control of the OS firmly in Apple’s grasp.  Android, on the other hand, whilst not being completely open, is getting much more in that direction.  Out of the box, Android is less locked-down, with just a little techie work required, in a process called ‘rooting’, to make it more-or-less completely open (in an OS-sense).

With a cool little app called ‘Wireless Tether’ installed on the rooted phone, it created an ad-hoc wireless network for your device (laptop, iPad etc) to join.  Once joined, your device can use the internet connection of your Android phone, avoiding the need to take out a separate plan for your iPad. Bear in mind this may be against the terms and conditions of your mobile contract, but take it easy, and avoid using for VoIP and other network-angering activities too often, and you may escape notice – depends on how vigilant your provider is…

So that’t the 3G side of things sorted.

Where am I?

Next comes the GPS.  The iPad Wifi is equipped with Bluetooth, which should make it a doddle to pair a standard Bluetooth GPS unit with it, right?

Wrong!

Apple, in their infinite wisdom, have decreed that you can only use your Bluetooth for very limited activities, specifically, headsets, headphones keyboards and, ummmm, well, not much else really.  My lovely little Navicore SiRF III Bluetooth GPS unit has been languishing in a drawer for about the last two years or so.  Luckily, some clever developer has come up with an alternative Bluetooth stack for the iPad (and iPhone), which enables these devices to support accessories that they previously couldn’t.  This wonderful bit of code is known as ‘BTStack’.  The caveat?  Well, Apple wouldn’t like you doing this, so your iPad needs to be Jailbroken.  This is ridiculously easy to do (just google for it), and enables you to install homebrew apps.  The particular app in question is called ‘BTStack GPS’, and is available via Cydia (the homebrew app installer that gets installed when you Jailbreak the iPad).  It is one of the few ‘paid’ homebrew apps, and after furnishing the developer with all of $5.00 via paypal, you get your full-capable version of BTStack GPS.  A free version is also available, though all this does is display the position within the BTStack GPS app itself, and doesn’t pass it on to other apps.

Once installed, all you have to do is run the app, and pair it with your Standard SPP GPS receiver.  Once paired (and your reciever has a GPS signal), it causes the iPad to act as if you have built-in GPS.  All apps I’ve tried so far work flawlessly with it, including the official Groundspeak Geocaching app.  This is, currently, just the iPhone version running on the iPad, but it is sufficient until Groundspeak sort out an iPad version.

So there we go.  A WiFi iPad with 3G and GPS Connectivity.  Simple!

The one thing I’m missing in using my iPhone for this is the restriction that film photography places on you.  The thing about digital is that, in the end, if you don’t like a shot, you can delete it.  I’ve purposely been trying NOT to retake shots I’m not happy with, reason being that I wouldn’t have the chance to review and reject with film like I do with digital.  I’ve been really enjoying it, and I’m going to carry with the iphone Lomo – Including a run down of the apps I’ve been using to produce the shots (more on that later!).

Talking of yesterday’s Eureka moment, I had another, even bigger on this morning. A real slap on the forehead, why-didn’t-I-realize-that-before moment.

I was thinking back over the film cameras I’ve still got, and digging through my collection of old Zenits, Canon EOS and Minoltas, when i remembered an old TLR (Twin Lens Refex) medium format box I got hold of years ago.  I got hold of it back in university, in an attempt to do some experimentation with Medium Format 120 roll film.  Unfortunately, it’s something I never actually got around to doing, what with the advent of digital and all the cheap snappyness associated with it.  So I dug it out…

Turns out, it’s a Lubitel 166B.  What’s a Lubitel 166B when it’s at home I hear you cry (or not). Well… it’s a Russian camera, produced in the early 80s, but based on a design from around 1950.  It was cheaply made as a way for Amateurs to experiment with using Medium Format. The best bit…?

It’s made by LOMO.

I’ve had it here all this time, and never realised I was sitting on a bit of classic Lomography kit!  It’s one of a selection of cameras used by the Lomo community to capture images on film. Examples of such work can be found at http://www.lomography.com/photos/cameras/Lubitel%20166B/popular.

Looking over it – it’s a lovely little bit of kit.  It feels so raw and primitive compared to the most basic of digital SLRs.  It’s completely mechanical, so no batteries, and no electronics.  It’s a box, with a variable hole at the front, that allows you to project a fixed image on a piece of film.  In short – it’s a camera – with no bells and whistles.  No auto focus, no auto exposure.  Nada.  Why is it that that makes me feel so excited???  Shouldn’t I be looking at this, in all it’s out-of-date plasticness, and be horrified at the prospect of having to manually work out exposures?   The answer is a resounding no. The simplicity of all this is what interests me.

Anyway – I thought I’d take a few shots of the little beauty (ironically, with my Digital SLR) and share them with you…

It’s got a plastic-covered body, with a metal underframe.  Focussing is done manually on a groundglass screen (pic two), and there is a little pop-up magnifier which assists the process a bit, though ease of focussing is not meant to be one of its strong points.  There is something nice though, about using a focussing screen to frame the shot rather than a held-to-the-eye viewfinder – not sure what – I just like it! Aperture (f4.5-22) and shutter speed (Bulb, to 250th Sec) are done manually.  It does have a self-timer though, so selfs are a definite possibility. Pic one shows it all packed up and capped.  It only weighs about 500g – nice and easy to carry.

The upshot of this is that I now have a ready path to follow in actually trying genuine Lomography.  Bizarrely. I’m actually looking forward to the restrictions that this camera and the use of film will place on me.  The fact that it has the viewfinder on top is also going to be interesting.  This will allow me to ‘shoot from the hip’ so to speak. I know for a fact that getting interesting candids probably wont be as hard with this. I will, of course, blog about it once I’ve done a bit more fiddling around…

Let me explain…

Photography is an art.  In the end, it’s all about the aesthetics.  Beautiful photos opportunities rear their heads in the most unlikely of places.  There are things, that, unfortunately, generally need to be present in order to produce most photos.  One, not surprisingly, is a camera of some sort.  Kit. Equipment. Tin. Glass.   Also needed is some form of technique.  Rules of thirds, exposures, shutter speeds, so on and so forth.  Not to say that these things are the be all and end all, but they help.

So.  Now take the large proportion of that clutter out of the equation and out of the process.  So – what do we have left?

Raw potential – that’s what.

What am I babbling on about?  Well… I love photography; that much is clear.  However – sometimes, I feel like having to make sure I have kit with me (from camera, to tripod, to batteries, to memory cards, blah blah until the end of time), as well as having to carefully consider technique and the pressure of finding a shot to start the inspiration flowing, end up producing a grand total of bugger all.  You can easily end up being stifled by everything and anything you have with you, be it in your kit bag, or in your head.  So – what about the times you’ve got too much in your head to fit any more in (never mind photographic technique!).  What about the times (and there are many), when you don’t have your kit with you?

There is something that many of us now carry about our person that is capable of producing basic reproductions of the scenes around us.  That something is our mobile phone.  The majority now have some sort of camera in-built.  This applies to my very own iPhone.   I have a 1st Gen iPhone 3G, with the 2-odd Megapixel camera, no flash etc.  To use an internet cliché – meh.  Its pretty useless in most situations.  Bar brightly lit scenes, with nobody actually moving, it’s output it is, at best, severely lacking.  Mostly, I’ve looked at these shots and tried to work out how I can make them better – turn them into something beautiful.   Its not an easy task,  and has meant that the iPhone has really been mostly confined to the limits of I-haven’t-got-anything-else-with-me-but-want-this-snapshot trivialities and keepsakes.

Then I had bit of a back-to-front idea.  Instead of trying to bring up to standard something that was not, why not play on it’s weaknesses, and revel in its low fidelity?  In other words, rather than messing about trying to make them better, I would see if I could make them ‘worse’ (in a manner of speaking).  I started to punch various synonyms of lo-fi photography into google, and came back with some interesting stuff.  Not surprisingly, there are a lot of bods out there with similar ideas.  It seemed that lo-fi photography was (paraphrasing the Wikipedia entry), a reaction to the general perceived ease of taking technically perfect photos in the digital age.

Another term which reared it’s head was Lomography.  Again – from the Wikipedia entry…

Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, “happy accidents,” and alternative film processing are often considered part of the “Lomographic Technique.”

There are 10 ‘rules’ of Lomography (again, more details can be found here)

1. Take your camera everywhere you go
2. Use it any time – day and night
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it
4. Try the shot from the hip
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible
6. Don’t think (william firebrace)
7. Be fast
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. Afterwards either
10. Don’t worry about any rules

So… Lomography is the art of photography sans rules.  I like the sound of this.  Something a bit more freeform, a bit less constrained by the aformentioned technique and kit. I’d heard of this a while back, but only today linked the iPhone camera to the possibilities.

Thing is, the rules above are great, but some of the rest of the philosophy is a little skewed.  The whole thing is based around the ‘Lomo’ brand of Russian Cameras, and shooting on 120 film.  I’d love to do that, but unfortunately, both associated cost, and time would be a hindrance.  Unfortunately, the community based around the art tend to be rather protective about what can be defined as Lomography.  Don’t get me wrong – I’d love to do it properly.  I started out in darkrooms, and the smell of developer and fixer is still something that takes me back to some of my most formative and creative days as a photographer.  However, for now, I’d have to be happy to embrace the philosophy encompassed by the ten rules above, without conforming completely to the standard.  In essence – dancing round the first nine rules, whist fully embracing the tenth.

I’m going to give it a go with my iPhone.  I’ve set up a separate Flickr account, as I want this to be as freeform and spontaneous as possible.  I don’t want these photos muddying my standard Flickr Photostream, as I don’t want my standard photos muddying this.   I want it separate.  The ‘Lomostream’ will be at :-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/axemanlomo

It’ll also be on a constantly playing slideshow on my homepage for the time being, which will look something like this :-

Well.. truth be told, it’ll look exactly like that, and will update in real-time as I upload more shots.

Let’s see where this takes us shall we?

Geocaching App

Finally, the official Geocaching.com iPhone app is available on the iPhone App Store.  It costs a grand total of £5.99 in the UK ($9.99 in the US).  The app promises to be the first to link directly into the Geocaching.com website and bring you real-time cache details based on your current GPS coordinates (unlike the previous 3rd-party apps which relied on offline databases).  Added to this the ability to look up trackables, this is building into a potentially great app for Cachers all over the world well… where the iPhone is available anyway!).  You can save chosen caches to a ‘saved’ area to view offline. 

Soon to be added will be the ability to log finds from the app and more detailed linking of multi-caches.  I’m yet to try it, but as soon as I get to try it out ‘in the wild’ so to speak, I’ll let you know how it goes.  If they added to this the ability to download multiple caches, or pocket queries, then this would be a killer paperless Caching app. 

Cheers!

Runkeeper Tracking Screen

Just a quick post about a nice piece of software I got for the iPhone today.  It’s called RunKeeper, and is an application that uses the iPhones built-in GPS to track you on a run or cycle ride or similar).  It works out your distance, average speed, and graphs your elevation, as well as plotting your course on Google maps.  It works extremely well, and allows you to submit your run after you complete it to the online repository.  You can then view it there plotted on the map, or use the site to compare subsequent runs.  

Runkeeper Run Summary

The shots here don’t really do it justice as such, as they arn’t ‘in use’ shots – but they do give you an idea.  For a better shot, see the website at http://www.runkeeper.com/.  The bottom shot shows the summary screen on the website once you’ve uploaded your track.  

What does this all mean?  Oh yes… I’m running again!  About bloody time…!  Felt pretty good actually.  Thought it would kill me, but it didn’t!   As you can see from the shot, i did 2.29 miles in just under 29 mins.  Not too fast, but not too slow either!  Just gotta keep it up now, which is definitely the hard part! 

Shot of the summary of a run on the website

For full details, see the geocaching.com forum entry here.

Review to come when the App is available…

Those who’ve tried geocaching will probably know that one of the major limiting factors to ‘on-the-go’ caching is accessing the information about each cache.  The original idea was that you find the cache on the Geocaching website, and print out the information about it to take with you when you go out to find it.  This info may have clues as to its whereabouts, or just general interesting info on the cache location.  However, its usually required in some form or another.  

‘On-the-go’ caching requires that you have access to several things :-

1. A GPSr preloaded with the caches for the area you’re in.
2. Access in one way or another to the info on those caches. 

Effectively, this enables you to whip out your GPSr, find the nearest caches, and use your iPhone to look up the details.  

The first part is fairly simple.  You just have to be prepared enough to upload a PocketQuery GPX file containing all the caches to your GPSr via your favorite caching app.  There are quire a few of these available.  I use GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) on the PC (via VMware on my Mac), as there doesn’t yet seem to be a Mac app that is comparable in feature set.   Until a GPSr with a mobile network connection becomes available, then this is really unavoidable.  To generate PocketQueries, you need to be a premium member of Geocaching.com, which costs $3 (about £1.60) a month (I think!).  

The second part is a bit more difficult.  There are two ways to do this – Online or Offline.  The online method requires you accessing the Geocaching.com website whilst you are on the go, which obviously requires some sort of mobile device.  You can access the full geocaching.com website via the iPhone, or wap.geocaching.com (a cut-down text-only version) on less-capable phones.  There are also other options for viewing info online – e.g. http://m.cmiyc.com/  (an online Pocket Query Viewer – developed more for pre App-store iPhones) and This is fine where you have a connection to the mobile network, but the nature of Geocaching is that it often takes you to places that you don’t get a signal (happened to me yesterday!).  The net result of this is that you are basically cut off in many places.  

The offline method needs a bit more thought.  With this you need to be able to view the info without any sort of network connection being required – i.e. from the storage space of your device.  I’ve tried several methods of doing this :-

• Via PDF files – exported from Geocaching.com and put on the iPhone to be viewed with one of the file viewers available (I use AirSharing – it’s free and works very well).  This means exporting the PDFs oneby-one and transferring them over – hardly the best way when on the go.
   
• Via HTML exports from GSAK – GSAK can produce HTML exports of its database of geocaches.  In other words, you can produce a nice, indexed list of geocaches that matches those you send to your GPSr.  Use a file utility (again I use AirSharing) to transfer and view these HTML files.  This works fairly well.  However – I’ve found a problem that makes the actual cache info pages jump to a point halfway down each, which I haven’t yet been able o sort out.  Also, I find that Airsharing tends to be a bit slow when viewing these files.  However, if I can sort out the jumping issue, then this is a definite possibility.  These can also be viewed by transferring to a PocketPC (Windows Mobile) PDA too.  
   
• By using my iPod and exporting the info in the GPX files to text via MacCaching.  This is quite good, but involves me having to use another, separate app to GSAK – again complicating things.  Also, this is a text-only method.  Sometimes this can be restrictive, as there may be images that are required for finding the cache, or the reformatting that happens can make the entry hard to read.  

So – a minefield of options thusfar (and I probably haven’t covered half of them here!). 

A new contender to the offline throne on iPhone has recently surfaced.  iGeocacher (http://www.ayefon.com/geo/index.cfm) is a native app for the iPhone which takes GPX files (which you initially have to upload to web space, or use the author’s own server), and stores them locally in a SQL-type database.  This is then accessible offline.  Hurrah!  The damage?  £8.99 in the UK (not sure how much in the US – could anyone confirm?).

So – how well does it work?

iGeocacher Screenshot

Well… the answer is – pretty well!  This is the first Geocaching app that has been designed around the idea of offline viewing of the cache info.  This means that once you’ve been through the rigmarole of getting your caches onto the iPhone (which you do via any network-accessible URL, or by registering for free at the app’s homepage – all the instructions can be found there too), the interface is surprisingly nice.  You can search, group, and sort your caches.  You can utilize the 3Gs in-built GPS to show the caches in order of distance from your current location.  You can also plot the caches onto a map directly on the iphone using the google maps app (which does require a network connection to download the maps as usual).

Cache Info Page

 When you click the relevant geocache, the info appears in a nicely formatted way, showing the location coordinates, the cache info entry, and the last few log entries (depending on how many you chose to include during your Pocket Query generation on geocaching.com).  The entry even shows any included HTML elements (i.e. usually pictures) if you have a network connection.  Even if you don’t, these are usually not required, just useful.  

The hint is hidden, and can be revealed by pressing the hint button.  A nice little touch is being able to click the ‘Log’ button at the top of the page, which (again, network connection permitting), sends you to the log page for that cache on Geocaching.com, where you can log your find quickly without having to go through the whole search thing on the site.  This may seem like a small point, but it’s the searching and navigation to the relevant caches that takes the time through a mobile interface like the iphone.  

So – first impressions?  Well… I’m yet to use it in the field, but I have a feeling this little app is going to be extremely useful in the future.  I’ve been looking for an easy way to keep a database of cache info to hand, and I think this has just about done it.  Shame Apple have decided to hide the file system of the iPhone from us (officially anyway), so you have to go through the URL method to load the GPX info into the app, but once this is done, the rest is easy.  

If you’re still unsure, take a look at the site (again, it’s at http://www.ayefon.com/geo/index.cfm) – there are a pile of videos to watch.  The usefulness of this app makes it well worth your £8.99, and I can guarantee that you will find this an asset when out and about.  It ain’t perfect by any means.  The ability to see if there are trackables in the cache would be an asset, along with the ability to go straight to the log page for the trackable in question.  Also, a simple ‘Found’ button, which automatically moved the cache into another group would also be great.  Lastly, a way of automatically showing which caches you have already found when you upload them to begin with.  I’ll probably think of other things as I go along, but to be honest, this is a very good app already.  Looking forward to updates!

Cheers!

Meanwhile, I’ve still got to get the rest of the sidebar stuff working. And that’s something I can’t easily do with a 4″ screen…

http://geopherlite.blogspot.com/

At the moment it’s quite basic, with no GPX or LOC support, which means you have to enter coordinates manually.  Once it has support for those files, and support for saving cache details etc, then it could turn ito a nice little app.   I’ll check it out an report back soon…