24 March 2007: There are three things that have been preventing most people from jumping on the geotagging craze with their picture-taking, and the NXP SnapShot GPS chip addresses them all.
First, current GPS units are too large and it’s not exactly fun having to lug such a huge device around just to get geotagged information. The SnapShot chip will be just 5mm square when it hits production.
Second, they tend to be too power hungry, ripping through your battery faster than you’d like. The SnapShot gives you one year of operation on a single lithium watch battery. This is because all it does is “wake up for a tenth of second” when a picture is being taken, downloading the raw GPS data to be processed later. Other GPS devices do the processing on the spot and that is why they are such battery hogs.
Third, geotagging can be expensive. By contrast, the SnapShot chip is expected to be remarkably cheap at just $2-$4 “when built into existing devices in bulk.”
Tagging images with the exact SnapSpot solves the problems of traditional GPS approaches, which are often slow and power draining. With the swGPS software, every time the user takes a shot, the camera takes a “snapshot” of all of the GPS satellite signals it can pick up and then saves a tiny file with the information. Then the user can download the photos to a PC, where the SnapSpot client works with the SnapSpot server to turn that information into a location stamp for each photo.
While the SnapSpot technology hasn’t yet been integrated into any digital cameras on the market, NXP displayed the technology at PMA in Las Vegas last week. NXP reported that it is working with digital-camera providers to integrate SnapSpot technology. The first product available using the technology is Jobo AG’s PhotoGPS, a digital camera add-on that fits into a camera’s hotshoe, without the need for extra cables. Retailing at $149, this product will ship this summer in the United States.
