Does anyone know when and where I could get one, possibly two ?

I'd be keen for a couple as well. Contacted Julian over a month ago but no reply. Guess your best chance is buying one off someone who's not using it anymore. I don't seem to be able to get any here in NZ

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Imax1 said..
wanted. mini motion

Yeah I know. At our age even just a little movement is good huh

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Mark _australia said..

Imax1 said..
wanted. mini motion

Yeah I know. At our age even just a little movement is good huh

Yes.
At our age we can sleep wrong.

Just received a new one from Andrew Daff (sailquik)
Send him a message

In my experience best way is to "order" one using the form on Julien's website. Then just wait as there will be earlier orders to work on.

Then get surprised by his email (can be months later) and follow his instructions (pay and wait just a little more).

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Mr Keen said..
Just received a new one from Andrew Daff (sailquik)
Send him a message

Just to let everyone know who sees this, I am cleaned out again and trying to order another batch, but it looks like it could be a while, as usual.

The shortage of approved devices is getting worse unfortunately, I still have a paid order from October last year to be shipped and a wait list for those, plus a couple of warranty replacements still to come. In the meantime can we ask for anyone not using their mini to put it up for sale in the second hand market? There are hundreds in Australia now and many seem to not being used or kept as spares perhaps.

I will take any spares lying around PM me

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Gps/A-plug-and-play-GPS-?page=2

That was pretty easy to do with Andrews instructions

Simple as a donation to Chronic Pain Australia, what ever you feel if right for you in the donation. PM the proof that you donated and I will post it to you.
They both work and have 2gb cards for them as well.

chronicpainaustralia.org.au/donate/

Cheers
Nudie
One day Pop's one day , area 45

I'm sorry but it just seems wrong to buy an ancient GT31 so you can post to the GPS Team Challenge. This is rather ancient technology that uses a single GNSS system, and has well known limitations. Based on the promising results that tbwonder had posted quite a while ago, I bought a Garmin Forerunner 255 watch, and routinely compare it to data from "approved" units. The watch uses both multiple GNSS systems and dual frequencies. My results are very similar to what tbwonder has reported - the accuracy is astonishing (and superior to any other watch data I have seen, including the GW60). In u-blox GPS data (ESP-GPS and Openlog based units), there are typically multiple "very high speed" points in a session that must be filtered, usually in crashes. In the Garmin data, there is no such thing. It seems the firmware in the Garmin watch and the GPS chip it uses is very good at using the dual frequency to avoid artifacts that are typical in u-blox (and Locosys) data. Whereas old units like the GT31 absolutely need accuracy data to remove artifacts, and the same thing is also true for u-blox based prototypes, the data from the Garmin 255 do not require accuracy data since they do not have similar artifacts.

From everything I have seen so far, I think the Garmin 255 watch meets the very stringent accuracy requirements of the GPS Team Challenge. I believe that it is more accurate than the GT31, although I don't have any direct comparison data since all my GT31s died a long time ago. Note that this assessment is limited to the Garmin 255 watch, and does not extend to other watches. Many watches are reasonably accurate most of the time, but not always, and would distort the rankings in the GPSTC. One example are the Coros watches, which have a history of both artifacts and firmware updates that severely distort data.

Nina and I will be in the Perth area in a few weeks, and hopefully will be able to get a lot more comparison data there. If anyone else also has the Garmin 255 watch and wants to contribute data, that would be great.

On a not fast day ,after a crash ,my GW 60 clocked 75 kts ,2 sec When I got home and downloaded it was around 24 kts. That seemed right because my 5x10 was around 22 kts. At no stage in the crash , my wrist went anywhere near 75 kts. What actually is happening here ? What has corrected this , the watch or ka72. Sorry I'm a total numpty when it comes to this kind of stuff.
ps,
because my watch buttons are getting dodgy , I sometimes use both the watch and a mini motion and the results are amazingly close. They alternate in which reads faster in all disciplines . By a tiny fraction. This confirms to me that both are very accurate.
Could a slightly less accurate device be approved and still be good enough for the average punter . Possibly posted in a different colour as to not be official , but still be part of the fun ? Because , as it is now , there are no approved devices that people can readily buy. The only options I know about are ,.. second hand ,a long wait for a mini motion, make one yourself , and buy new old stock from overseas the very expensive fragile GW60. Not very inviting options for newcomers to play.

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Imax1 said..
On a not fast day ,after a crash ,my GW 60 clocked 75 kts ,2 sec When I got home and downloaded it was around 24 kts. That seemed right because my 5x10 was around 22 kts. At no stage in the crash , my wrist went anywhere near 75 kts. What actually is happening here ? What has corrected this , the watch or ka72. Sorry I'm a total numpty when it comes to this kind of stuff.
ps,
because my watch buttons are getting dodgy , I sometimes use both the watch and a mini motion and the results are amazingly close. They alternate in which reads faster in all disciplines . By a tiny fraction. This confirms to me that both are very accurate.
Could a slightly less accurate device be approved and still be good enough for the average punter . Possibly posted in a different colour as to not be official , but still be part of the fun ? Because , as it is now , there are no approved devices that people can readily buy. The only options I know about are ,.. second hand ,a long wait for a mini motion, make one yourself , and buy new old stock from overseas the very expensive fragile GW60. Not very inviting options for newcomers to play.

Yes get the no approved devices in a colour or with asteroid or something. Correct devices are too hard to find. KA72 will clean up most devices data. It would be great to have my team posting on GPSTC again as it was all about us & not coming first.

I have to eat some Humble Pie, in the past when there was discussion here on approved devices for GPSTC, I argued we had to stick to the rules and use approved devices, like it or lump it
Now that's all good for me as my GW60 is a rare one and is still working great, but others aren't so lucky and getting an approved device now is near on imposible unless you want to build one. I now think we should be approving devices like the watch Boardsurfr mentions, otherwise we will keep losing contributors and won't attract new members, my 2 cents

You got it right Bob, it is about time we all grew up and just had fun.

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Imax1 said..
On a not fast day ,after a crash ,my GW 60 clocked 75 kts ,2 sec When I got home and downloaded it was around 24 kts. That seemed right because my 5x10 was around 22 kts. At no stage in the crash , my wrist went anywhere near 75 kts. What actually is happening here ? What has corrected this , the watch or ka72. Sorry I'm a total numpty when it comes to this kind of stuff.

I'll attempt to answer this in very general terms.

GPS receivers (more generally, GNSS receivers) are constantly tracking the individual signals from all of the available satellites. As a consequence of signal tracking, the GNSS receiver knows a couple of useful things for each satellite:

1) The approximate distance between the satellite and the receiver. This is referred to as the pseudo-range and is based on the travel time of the signal which is travelling at the speed of light. I'll not go into atmospheric effects in this post.

2) The rate at which the satellite and the receiver are moving towards each other (or away from each other). This is based on the frequency of the received signal. The received frequency is different to the original frequency due to the Doppler effect.

Here's a nice little animation of the GPS constellation in its early years (just 21 satellites). The visible satellites are shown in red.


Position and time are determined from the pseudo-range observables (distances between the various satellites and the receiver) using a process known as trilateration. Time needs to be determined at the same time as position, but I won't go into why right now.

Speed can be determined in a similar way but it is based on the rate at which the receiver is moving towards (or away) from the individual satellites. Since this is typically performed using the Doppler observable, our community uses the colloquial name "Doppler Speed".

Lots of factors affect receiver accuracy, but during a crash the signal tracking can be severely impaired and result in "loss of lock". Under these circumstances the observables can be very wrong for several seconds, until such time as the signals are being tracked properly.

I won't go into how the signal tracking is performed in this thread. To do that topic any justice would require a lot of detail. Suffice to say during any period that signal tracking is severely impaired and the observables are very wrong, position and speed will be impacted.

KA72 corrected the data for you. It either did this using the speed accuracy estimate saved by the GW-60 (aka SDOP / SDOS), number of satellites being tracked, HDOP (which relates to the satellite geoemetry) or the acceleration being unrealistic.

Incidentally, I wrote a short series which attempts to explain the principles behind GNSS (including signal structures).

medium.com/@mikeg888/what-is-gps-gnss-fd0092a794ea

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firiebob said..
I have to eat some Humble Pie, in the past when there was discussion here on approved devices for GPSTC, I argued we had to stick to the rules and use approved devices, like it or lump it
Now that's all good for me as my GW60 is a rare one and is still working great, but others aren't so lucky and getting an approved device now is near on impossible unless you want to build one. I now think we should be approving devices like the watch Boardsurfr mentions, otherwise we will keep losing contributors and won't attract new members, my 2 cents

Agree. My 3 year old GW60 battery is starting to lose it's punch and if the battery dies before I download the results (I have around 90 minutes), I lose all the data or it's corrupted. With Motion Mini's being the only commercially available approved GPS device with unknown, extended wait times and no on-the-fly results screen, GPSTC will see it's numbers plummet unless it seriously looks at other alternatives.

I quit gpstc. I am ready to sell my Mini motion for $1000. I don't think it is overpriced given the long years of painful waiting I had to endure before I could get it. Also it is the most reliable and practical way to record your sessions, mine never skipped a bit, has been firmware updated, battery life is great.
If you care about your pbs and are ready to spend thousands for equipment and traveling to the best spots you can also pay for it.
Comes with new arm band and 2 chargers.

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powersloshin said..
I quit gpstc. I am ready to sell my Mini motion for $1000. I don't think it is overpriced given the long years of painful waiting I had to endure before I could get it. Also it is the most reliable and practical way to record your sessions, mine never skipped a bit, has been firmware updated, battery life is great.
If you care about your pbs and are ready to spend thousands for equipment and traveling to the best spots you can also pay for it.
Comes with new arm band and 2 chargers.

I've got a near new Mini for $950

I'm not sure if this is serious or not. It could go this way. Some of the slightly lesser accurate devices have to be approved or GPS challenge will wither and die. A device with a screen is important for on the water adjustments.. When I'm trying , at a punters level ,there is at best a half hour of good conditions to make adjustments or tactics to know if I'm improving or not. I need on water info. I have to do this in the small window that I have. You can't compare the next session. That's probably why most GW 60 watch buttons rusted. If it's not simple and fun , people will lose interest.

There's a couple of minis orders still to come to Australia in coming months but there won't be any more produced after this except for warranties and perhaps some one offs. A big contribution by Julien to our sport over the last 5 years or so, many mini motions in use with a relatively small failure rate in recent years, sadly he's not able to keep this going due to other commitments.


Look after the minis you have and persuade any friends with one not using it to sell them on. There are no other approved devices available commercially for Gpstc, there maybe some limited stocks of gw60s, not sure. You can post with garmins and coros watch's to gps-speedsurfing.

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Dezza said..
You can post with garmins and coros watch's to gps-speedsurfing.

That's what needs to happen with our loved GPS Challenge. When I joined up our group , ( got adopted), there was at least half a dozen still having GPS fun , chewing the fat. We're down to three. Broken watches, ( which were the best easiest fun ), then downloading problems..., then no easy options. It got too hard. It was just meant to be fun , stoking the sport. We're not cracking records, but it is fun getting a PB in one of the areas. It's all just fun freeriding stuff. Bearing off for a couple seconds , getting comfortable overpowered for a NM , not being hungover and doing km , or doing a snazzy U Turn. It's not easy what we do ,and needs to just be fun again. I'm not saying you need to record your stats to have fun... But it should be , if you want to.

I agree that there must be a commercially available, reasonably priced GPS that is approved. That has barely been the case in the last few years, with Mini Motions really hard to get.

There are really only two options now:

Option 1. Insist on the current standards (in particular requiring error estimates), and let GPSTC die as slow deaths as devices are stopping to work, and new people cannot join because they cannot get devices that let them post.

Option2. Approve at least one device that is currently commercially available. This may require to change the "approval standards".

I am strongly in favor of option 2. The approval standards were developed when GPS units were a lot less accurate than they are now. With inaccurate units, error estimates were really useful. But nowadays, there is at least one device available that is at least as accurate at many approved units still in use (the Garmin Forerunner 255). The main reason why it is currently not approved is that it does not have error estimates (that it records only at 1 Hz is not a valid argument considering the GT31, which has inferior technology and accuracy, is still approved). The Garmin 255 does not need error estimates because is eliminates speed errors by intelligent use of the two-band signals it gets from it's much newer technology, compared even to u-blox based units.

Peter, I think option 2 could happen,

Back in April I asked for comparison files from the FR255, but none have arrived as yet.
All we need is proof of the devices' accuracy and it can be approved.

Good to hear, Mike. While the Garmin 255 is the best from the data I have seen so far, I think even allowing watches that we know are not as good is better than option 1.

Regarding Garmin 255 data, I had put the comparison data I had up for anyone to download at github.com/prichterich/Garmin255. I think I mentioned this in a post here. The data on there are all from Nina, I did not get a watch until a few months later, and rarely windsurfed since April. But we will hopefully get a bunch of nice sessions very soon, and we can then look at the data together. The recent sessions in Coodanup and Albany were quite impressive!

It wouldn't please everyone. If it was possible it would be great to see the Garmin watch with TBwonders app approved. I use on my Fenix 7x solar, just to see numbers while sailing as my motion doesn't have a screen. Seems to be very close to what the motion shows each session for me. If it was the uploaded through ka72 for all to see as a must for posting to GPSTC too would be my thoughts

If we are going to move forward, maybe it's time to become alot more inclusive. I think it wouldn't be wise to just limit approval to just one Garmin watch it seems that they are alot of models that are accurate enough.
I know alot wont agree but I think if possible the program could be updated with a drop down menu for Windsurf, wind foil and winging. The die hard gps windsurfers might cringe , but there are so many windsurfer that ride a foil of some description on lighter days and there is potential of alot of new members.

There are a number of people who use unapproved devices for on the water feedback, perhaps they could provide feedback on how close they are to posted speeds. My DIY-GPS, GW60 and Motion are always within 0.1 kn, interestingly sometimes up sometimes down.

Wake up and let the garmin watch in, you will get alot more people back into GPS team challenge, it is all about having fun on the water.

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boardsurfr said..
Option2. Approve at least one device that is currently commercially available. This may require to change the "approval standards".

I don't believe that there is any requirement to change the approval standards. As there is no written requirement for a device to provide error data. Devices without error data have been approved before.

A point on my App. Whilst many people use my app for sailing and it does generate the six category results. These are all generated in real time on a tiny watch processor that is no match for GPSSpeedreader or other filtering programs. My program in no way changes the raw GPS data that produces the Garmin FIT file data. So the Garmin 255 could be approvd for GPSTC use with or without my app.

I don't believe the committee would approve just a single watch. It would most likely be for watches that use the same multiband technology.