Other Verified GPS Devices

Besided the devices already listed before in this section we currently have approved and verified these devices:

1. Motion - A high-end custom made GPS Device, . Additional information can be found here -> http://onandon.be/motion/index.html 
2. ESP-GPS - A high-end custom made GPS Device, developed by Jan Heynen , more info can be found here -> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j86kj3bNMID3sHCRT7QTYyrL7IHeQnGPec1LajsDfB4/edit?usp=sharing
3. Gyro1 - A high-end custom made GPS Device, developed by Raymond Wortel, more info can be found here -> http://gearloose.nl

We encourage designers and developers to introduce new devices suited for our platform. The devices mentioned above are fully approved for GP3S and all sessions posted with these devices will be listed in all rankings provided at GP3S. 

Other Devices

In recent years we have worked a lot with standard devices,  very suitable for normal day-to-day use, and the average surf-sessions this devices could be a nice alternative for some windsurfers. We continue to explore the possibilities of enhancing the software of “standard” GPS-Devices. Target is to reach the current standards of GPS logging at GPS-Speedsurfing.com, so making it possible to measure at a 1 per second rate, and log the number of satellites

In general we allow any GPS Devices that’s is capable of logging GPS Data with a sample rate of 1 per second and support the industry standard data formats.

Setting  up a general Standard GPS Device for GPS-Speedsurfing.com

• Make sure that the devices supports a 1 per second GPS Frequency Rate, not an automatic / smart interval.
• Export your session to .FIT (if available) otherwise .GPX format, please follow instructions by your own manufacturer
• Import your .GPX or .FIT file in GPS-Speedsurfing.com with our auto-upload feature, you can find this in the “My GPS” Section

Specifications for Hardware Vendors

We strongly encourage hardware vendors to develop GPS devices on the highest possible specifications for GPS-Speedsurfing.com. To make a GPS truly an attractive and practical alternative and able to be verified and approved for our use to set these are what we need:

Certification Process New GPS Devices

The GP3S GPS Certification Process for new GPS involves a series of steps to evaluate the technical specifications and performance of the potential new GPS Device.

• The first step before certification is to inform GP3S by email at info (a) gps-speedsurfing.com about the scope of the project and the objectives
• During the development process it’s crucial to inform GP3S about the progress of the project on a regular basis and share interim results of data logging in an early stage. This way we can support the development process and prevent potential rejection of the device during the final certification
• In the final stage of certification GP3S must receive two identical devices (both on hardware & software level), those two devices will be tested and benchmarked by an independent test-authority. The results of this benchmarked are decisive for official certification and approval for the use on GPS-Speedsurfing.com

The minimum requirements for an official GPS Record device are:

1. The normal positional data at minimum 1hz
2. The Doppler derived speed data (speed over ground) at minimum 1hz
3. The number of satellites tracked for each data point
4. HDOP 
5. COG
6. SOG
7. Display current speed and max speed for a session
8. Display distance travelled in a session
9. Have to ability for the data recorded to be easily downloaded to a computer via a standard type of interface or post it directly by Wifi t to the gps-speedsurfing website.
10. The data downloaded is in a standard format easily read by our current software (FIT, GPX, UBX, OAO, SBN or SBP)
11. Data recording at 1hz or higher, , The units should always run with the highest possible sampling-rate since omitting points to get less data leads to aliasing artifacts. Positional data can be downsampled by leaving points out, not so the Dopplerspeeds - that would only be possible after low-pass filtering the doppler-data with half the sampling frequency (Nyquist-theorem) and that is not done by the GPS-chipsets if you run them at lower sampling rates. So one would throw away essential data by omitting points leading to wrong average speeds.
12. The system error estimate data produced by the GPS engine recorded in the data. We use this to determine the correction to the recorded data needed to correct the speeds to a 99.9% confidence. That is, we can be 99.9% confident that the speeds were at least as fast as what we claim. To do this with the Locosys GT-31 we were able to record the Sirf binary data in .sbn format to the memory. We also have the essential data recorded in a more compact format called .sbp. 
13. Data recorded in a compact Sirf binary format or similar like UBX as mentioned above ionly u-blox chipsets do that ever since in the UBX-format (sAcc in NAV-SOL, NAV-VELECEF, NAV-VELNED u-blox 5, 6, 7, 8; NAV-PVT u-blox 7 and 8). For Sirf-chipsets used in the GT31 that value was added later.Only GT31 / GW52 and all u-blox based GPS’s give this value in their binary output. NMEA- or GPX-output can also be programmed with these chipsets, but requires computational overhead, results in about 10-times the storage space as compared to the binary output and contains less information.”
14. Battery life for recording of over 24 hrs. 24 hours is a world record category but also many of our users may want to sail for a number of consecutive days without easy access to recharging.
15. Large capacity memory for at least 24 hours of logging.