Intelligolf - Tips and advice

[fundonny]

I'm going to buy Intelligolf this weekend for my blackberry. Any tips, advice, recommendations etc? Eagle vs birdie editions... Promo codes?

[Kilroy]

Eagle if you want GPS capability.

Note:
I have found that the GPS reciever in my Nokia N95 Smartphone was not as reliable for yardages as my old Garmin Palm PDA so I grabbed a keychain size Bluetooth GPS reciever that is awesome. It solved my accuracy issues and it has huge battery life. I can now go about 7 rounds between charges.

If you plan on doing some mapping using their tool let me know I have some tips for that.

[fundonny]

Dan, what's the make and model of that GPS, just in case I find the BB GPS limited.

[Kilroy]

i-Blue 737 A + Bluetooth GPS Receiver (66 ch, AGPS)

This thing actually gets 5 satellites while in my basement! 7 or 8 in the living room, 9-11 in the forest and 11-13 in the open. There are 27 GPS satellites around the world so 13 is pretty much all that could possibly be seen overhead.
My old PDA would see 4-5 in the bush and 8-10 in the open. Not bad, I used it for 3 years and was happy with it. Sometimes not perfect on tree lined holes.
The Nokia phone sees less than that. 6 -8 in the open. It's great for driving but not so good for golf. Accuracy was off by 20 yards in less than ideal conditions but OK in the open.

I think the combo I have now will work out very well. It was great yesterday.

[sillywilly]

donny, what BB are you using??

[fundonny]

Pearl

[fundonny]

Gonna get that GPS Dan, Bell wants to charge me $10 a month for the GPS option on my phone. $120 a year vs. one time charge. Yep, sold!

[Kilroy]

I am really happy with it. It is super fast triangulating and sees a lot of satelites even when under trees. I highly recommend it.

Not sure how Bell can charge you to use the phone's built in GPS reciever though. I'm on Rogers and I'd only need a dataplan if I used Google mapping and needed the maps to download on the fly. That would be a waste of money. A stand alone mapping program like Garmin XT or Intelligolf does not need the internet and therfore no data. What would they be charging you for?

[fundonny]

Not sure, just got off the phone with them and I was told for teh GPS chip to work, they need to activate it and it's $10/month for that.

[Kilroy]

Holy cow. That's nuts. You bought the chip with the phone and GPS satelite service is free.

Oh well you have a good option.

[sillywilly]

i was told if you have a data package on your phone the GPS is free.

[BG458]

That is a pure scam if they are charging you. You should go on line or to one of the smaller phone booths in a mall and see if the can unlock it they usually charge like $20 for that kind of stuff. Bell does not own the chip you do and the satellites are for sure not theirs. Are you sure they did not misunderstand you?

[sillywilly]

That is a pure scam if they are charging you. You should go on line or to one of the smaller phone booths in a mall and see if the can unlock it they usually charge like $20 for that kind of stuff. Bell does not own the chip you do and the satellites are for sure not theirs. Are you sure they did not misunderstand you?

you can't unlock GPS on a phone. not to my knowledge anyway. Donny just but the bluetooth gps dan has, its a good one. globtop 51ch is the one I have. its fantastic. its the size of a credit card and as thick as 4-5 cards combined. very slim. works in the basement

[fundonny]

I bought the one Dan recommended on eBay, so hopefully i'll have it by next week.

[Bisch]

Hi guys, I've been playing around with the different software (Intelligolf, freecaddie, bbgpsgolf) on my Blackberry 8830 and PDA using a standalone bluetooth receiver I bought for my pda many years ago (Sirf II with Waas). I do like the idea of it but I wonder where you guys leave your receiver while playing? I put mine on my golf back or in my pocket, but have my BB on a belt holster. So when I go to putt out I loose connection with the reciever?

Do you wear the receiver or the bluetooth distance is good enough that you don't loose connection between devices? How do you find the accuracy of your reciever if you hit mark and don't move (how much does it fluctuate for a stationary position), this is how I somewhat get a feel for the accuracy or drift.

Thanks

[Kilroy]

I use a power cart so I made a mount for my phone and GPS receiver that I attach to the steering wheel. I don't use the GPS for putting. Having it on the cart works just fine.

Besides, if the GPS reciever is in your bag, it's giving you yardages to your bag, not to the Blackberry in your hand.

Mine locks in at a new location in just a few seconds. Virtually no drift. Your mileage may vary.

[sillywilly]

I bought the one Dan recommended on eBay, so hopefully i'll have it by next week.

if you are itching to try one asap, you can take my glosat on monday and hold onto it for two weeks. Very easy to use... if you aren't expecting to get yours for 2-3 weeks

[Kilroy]

If he ordered from the same place I did it will probably be here in under a week.

[Bisch]

I always walk and carry my clubs, so I attach the receiver to my bag and always have been of habit of putting my bag level and off to where I will hit the ball, so the distance from the pin should be accurate.

Since I like to always keep my blackberry on my hip in its case, the main annoyance occurs when I have to leave my bag and gps receiver off to the side of the green, it'll mostly lose sync if I'm too far away (bluetooths advertised usable radius is much more generous then reality). I didn't like leaving my phone on my bag, as I don't want to lose/drop it.
I know all l minor annoyances. They are a non impact to the walker.

I'm glad to hear the newer bluetooth receivers are very accurate. I've been messing with forcing waas and making sure static navigation is off (feature for Sirf chips) to try and improve accuracy, but overall accuracy was good, but not great [felt to be on average 3-6 yards off, which is fine] but occaionaly would drift higher.

I found the google earth/bbgpsgolf coordinates to be quite accurate. What adjustments do you make to improve this? Is it just much better to map the course yourself over using a clear pic of google earth?

[Kilroy]

Intelligolf offers a tool using google imaging to map out points on courses. The closer a course is to a populated area the more accurate it is. Some outlying courses can be off but if you look at google maps overlayed on areas around the course you are surveying you can dertrmine an offset if one exists. It's a good start but hand survey touchups are needed. See my thread in Local for my survey IG project for local courses..

[Weazl]

My buddy uses this and loves it but from what I read here and gather if I want to download the Eagle edition for my Blackberry with GPS I need an unlimited data plan as well as the GPS receiver uses data right?

[Bisch]

Weazl, not at all. You need the following:
-Blackberry with bluetooth capability (Data plan is not required Intelligolf, or freecaddie. Intelligolf syncs with the BB desktop manager initially for the install, then later just syncs with the portion of the intelligolf pc desktop piece for scores and courses.)
-a bluetooth GPS Receiver. http://store.canadagps.com/bluetoothgps.html has from what I can find the best selection and prices for BT GPS receivers. I've done a lot of research and agree with Dan, any model that's got the MTK V2 chipset latest of this has 66 channels is the best option for tracking accuarately on a golf course. The difference from the models seem to be size and battery life. the larger the reciever, the better the battery life. I've not seen anything conclusive saying the smaller credit card version are any less receptive. I'm likely going to go for the Qstarz BT-Q890, as I'm a walker and think it'd be less of a pain in my pockets.

I've been playing around with 3 Blackberry applications thus far:
a) Intellicast ~70$ for eagle edition Intelligolf is rock solid and by far the most mature gps/golf application on the blackberry.
b) Freecaddie (free for base model, 20$ for enhanced model. Note this is pretty early in dev for BB, and is not quite there yet)
c) BBGPSGolf. My favorite is the BBGPSGolf as it's free, has a great/easy mapping utility, and if you have a data plan it nicely tracks all your shots for the round and you can for free go on the webpage and see a google maps/earth overhead shot showing every shot on the golf course. It's quite impressive to see, it'll say the club, distance travelled etc. It's currently being developed by a Waterloo student, and he's adding features all the time, and seems to have good support community. the feature set and price is great.
**If you don't have the data plan you can access downloaded courses off the internal memory/miniSD. Requires BB OS of >4.3 or 4.5 (can't remember) That was the only pain I encountered, but just updated my OS from 4.2 to 4.5.

I played 18 holes tonight using BBGPSGolf and an old Sirf II BT reciever (it's not too accurate, but much more so than the GPS internal to in my BB 8830). No crashes or issues for all 18 holes. I'm excited to pick up a new BT Receiver and will likely order tonight.