Ricoh 500SE GPS Log

Ricoh 500SE+SE-1/3
Description	digicam
GNSS	20 channels chipset: SiRFstar III augmentation: WAAS
Memory	Internal: (1.000.000 max logging).
Connectivity	bluetooth
Features	addresses points of interest mass storage mode Waterproof
Price	575£
Website	http://www.ricohsolutions.com/geo/
Notes	GPS-ready digital camera with Bluetooth and wlan

Log Format

The GPS track log created by the Ricoh 500SE is in a proprietary format and must be converted (eg. to GPX format) before it can be used. The popular GPSBabel software can do that. A sample log looks like:

115.973600,-31.990389,23.4,1,14-06-2009 15:17:40
115.973625,-31.990364,30.0,0,14-06-2009 15:17:52
115.973633,-31.990358,31.5,0,14-06-2009 15:18:04
115.973642,-31.990353,33.2,0,14-06-2009 15:18:19
115.973625,-31.990336,30.4,0,14-06-2009 15:18:39
115.973683,-31.990367,39.0,0,14-06-2009 15:19:04
115.973667,-31.990342,37.6,0,14-06-2009 15:19:28

The fields are: longitude, latitude, altitude, new track, UTC date (DD-MM-YYYY) and time (HH:MM:SS). The "new track" field is "1" when a new track starts.

Log File Naming

The log files created by the camera are stored on the SD card in a folder called "GPSLOG". They are named "YYMMDDNN.LOG", where NN increments from 00 through to 99. The camera appends new tracks into the current file, hence the "new track" field. When the current file reaches about 500K, NN increments and logging continues into the new file. Therefore, there may be multiple tracks in each log file, and tracks may span one or more files. You may want to manually split and reassemble the logs before converting them. Search for ",1," in a text editor to find the start of each track. Alternatively, GPSBabel can automatically split them based on time thresholds. See below.

Conversion to GPX

With GPSBabel, use the "xcsv" input type with the following style (save the following into a file, eg "ricoh.style"):

DESCRIPTION Ricoh GPS Log File
EXTENSION log
DATATYPE TRACK

FIELD_DELIMITER COMMA
RECORD_DELIMITER NEWLINE

IFIELD LON_DECIMAL,"","%f"
IFIELD LAT_DECIMAL,"","%f"
IFIELD ALT_METERS,"","%f"
IFIELD IGNORE,"","%d"
IFIELD GMT_TIME,"","%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S"

Then convert the camera log file using that style:

gpsbabel -i xcsv,style=ricoh.style -f YYMMDDNN.log -o gpx -F YYMMDDNN.gpx

You could also use the "track" data filter to merge all the files into one big track, then split them based on time/distance thresholds. If you perform a fast 1 second log interval, a split on 1 minute gaps should work. Something like:

gpsbabel -i xcsv,style=ricoh.style -f YYMMDDNN.log -x track,pack,split=1m -o gpx -F YYMMDD.gpx