Automatic Geotagging with GPS Compact Flash Card

GPS Enabled Compact Flash

Geotagging photos is a great way to add another level of organization to your photo collection, but it can be quite time consuming if done manually. There are devices you can carry with you that record your location while shooting so you can sync up your images after the fact and apply geotag information, but that's still extra work and those devices can cost more than a memory card. Some cameras have GPS and geotagging built-in, but it's far from mainstream.

A new company, Geo-Card, has come up with a different solution to geotagging photos on-the-fly. These new Compact Flash cards have a built-in GPS receiver and microcontroller that automatically inserts geotag information right into your photos as they are written to the card — and they're fast enough to keep up with even the fastest of cameras at 15fps. The cards are available in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB capacities.

The GPS receiver and microcontroller fit snugly inside the standard CF card shell, so it's compatible with any camera that accepts Compact Flash cards. The GPS receiver has 20-channel support, and has a very low power consumption. The microcontroller also has low power consumption, and the firmware can be updated by plugging the card into any card reader — which allows for updates and support for future camera models.

WHERE CAN YOU GET ONE?

You can't… I made everything up; these cards don't really exist — and if they do, I don't know about them. I'm sure that the technology isn't that far off, and you might expect to see something like this within the next couple of years. I do know that as soon as somebody makes one that works, I'm all over it.