The Butt Ugly Weblog

or kilometres away for the Imperially challenge :)

--Hugo, 28-Mar-2007

They were in the US ;-)

--JanneJalkanen, 28-Mar-2007

Moi Janne,

I've been running (and biking) with Nokia Sports Tracker also. Previously I used the Nike+ sensor with iPod nano but grew frustrated since it proved very inaccurate. Which is not very surprising, since Nike+ is just an accelometer or something very simple - it seems to give different results if I run on soft or hard terrain, for example.

Now, just to compare the results, I've been running with both, Nike+ and Nokia GPS. Yes, it's a lot of electronics to lug around, but actually not THAT bad. :) The funny part is that the stats they give are all over the place - sometimes Nike+ shows more than GPS, sometimes less. I thought that GPS should be the accurate one, but after reading your post, I guess I need to reconsider. :(

I guess I need to hire somebody to drive a car next to me when I run, seems like it's the only way to get some accurate mileage. :)

--Aki, 28-Mar-2007

Yeah, GPS can sometimes be very accurate. But sometimes the jitter can be very, very bad. My example above is certainly among the worst.

--JanneJalkanen, 29-Mar-2007

Yes, I got the same problem today... I have Nokia LD-3W. Is this common situation? I just switched off the app and continued running.

--AnonymousCoward, 23-Apr-2007

Yes, it's pretty common. Depends a lot on things like space weather and the visibility pattern of the satellites. There are ways to compensate for it (e.g. D-GPS, WAAS, A-GPS), but still, the baseline comes from the GPS satellites.

Some post-processing might also help; obviously, if you're running, you're not going at 150 kph, so maybe someone out there has created a filtering program that can give you better accuracy.

--JanneJalkanen, 24-Apr-2007

There's an update to Nokia Sport tracker thar filters GPS Data: i had the same problem of inaccurate data depending on weather and coverage (running under trees could give same bad results even on a sunny day). With the updated v.1.42 versione you could filter gps data the get better results, even if i noticed a bit of lag when it updates position on calculated perofrmaces.

--Dado_one, 06-May-2007